Overview

Habitual drug use in the United States is at least as old as the nation itself. Habit Forming traces the history of unregulated drug use and dependency before 1914, when the Harrison Narcotic Tax Act limited sales of opiates and cocaine under US law. Many Americans used opiates and other drugs medically and became addicted. Some tried Hasheesh Candy, injected morphine, or visited opium dens, but neither use nor addiction was linked to crime, due to the dearth of restrictive laws. After the Civil War, American presses published extensively about domestic addiction. Later in the nineteenth century, many used cocaine and heroin as medicine. As addiction became a major public health issue, commentators typically sympathized with white, middle-class drug users, while criticizing such use by poor or working-class people and people of color. When habituation was associated with middle-class morphine users, few advocated for restricted drug access. By the 1910s, as use was increasingly associated with poor young men, support for regulations increased. In outlawing users' access to habit-forming drugs at the national level, a public health problem became a larger legal and social problem, one with an enduring influence on American drug laws and their enforcement.

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Elizabeth Kelly Gray is associate professor of history at Towson University. Kitty Hendrix is from Carmel, California, and has been a professional actor/singer since childhood. She moved to New York City after college and found jobs singing in concert venues, cabarets, comedy clubs, and recording studios. She also acted in theater productions, originating more than twenty leading roles; appeared in film and television; and was a founding producer of Legacy Stage Ensemble, a theater company dedicated to the exploration of generational and social issues. Recording audiobooks since 2013 at her studio in NYC and working in nearly every genre, Kitty has consistently received excellent reviews for her work from AudioFile magazine and others. In 2018 Kitty was nominated as a finalist for an Audie Award for her narration of Daisy Miller by Henry James. Kitty now lives and records in the Catskill region of New York with her Shiba Inu, Reiki, and progressive activist/writer husband Alan Charney, where she also enjoys gardening, interior design, and organic cooking. She is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA and Actors' Equity.

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