The book combines social history and investigative reportage to trace the spread of illegal drugs throughout American culture. The author describes the years from 1885 to 1925 as America's First Drug Epidemic. In 1900 there were approximately 450,000 opiate and cocaine addicts, the bulk of whom were genteel, middle-class women addicted to patent medicines containing heavy concentrations of cocaine and opiates. The country's awakening to the problem of addicts and addiction resulted in the Federal Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. America's Second Drug Epidemic, the period 1950-1970, was characterized in part by a largely subterranean illegal drug culture that regarded heroin abuse along with marijuana as essential to the hip, alienated lifestyle; and the appearance of socially marginal, generally rootless men with few commitments to family or community and few prospects as the primary drug customers. The Counterculture 1960-1975 saw the appearance of a new drug culture composed of white middle-class drug users who chose to become outsiders and who lacked the experience of earlier generations and the knowledge of drugs' dangers. By America's Third Drug Epidemic years 1980-1995 middle- and upper-class recreational users of cocaine had begun to realize the dangers of the drug, Colombian drug cartels came to public notice, drug abuse by teenagers was becoming more prevalent, and both parents and legislators had begun to call for legal remedies to drug problems. Notes, bibliography, index