" The Cult of Pharmacology delivers important messages about the bias and irrationality behind drug policy and our approach to drug use, messages that both clinicians and the general public should hear." Walter A. Brown The Journal of the American Medical Association "For many readers [ The Cult of Pharmacology ] will produce a whole new perspective that will have an impact when they reach for the prescription pad or a cup of coffee or disparage the drug user on the street." Allen Shaughnessy The British Medical Journal "Part social history and part polemic, The Cult of Pharmacology offers a compelling, if at times disturbing, examination of the ways in which science has been manipulated by commercial and political interests to uphold otherwise arbitrary distinctions between safe and unsafe drugs, or good and evil consumers, or substance use and substance abuse in modern America." Erika Dyck Isis "This is one of the best books to read if you are coming new to the problems that drugs pose, and also one of the best books for those who think they know everything there is to know about drugs." David Healy, author of Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression " The Cult of Pharmacology pulls apart the mythic powers we have attributed to drugs, showing that drug effects are not the products of mere molecules alone but of the deeply politicized meanings inscribed upon them by society, which shape how they are used. This book charts a new course beyond the repressive excesses and costly failures of punitive prohibition." Craig Reinarman, co-editor of Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice " The Cult of Pharmacology brings badly needed information, insight, and--above all--sanity to the emotionally charged debate over legal and illegal drugs in America, whether LSD, caffeine, or Prozac.

This book should be required reading for those whose lives are touched by the war on drugs--which of course means all of us." John Horgan, author of The End of Science, The Undiscovered Mind, and Rational Mysticism "By showing the powerful influence of social and psychological factors on how the brain is affected by drugs, DeGrandpre demonstrates that psychoactive substances are not angels or demons irrespective of why, how, or by whom they are used." Drugs and Alcohol Today.