High Society: Legal and Illegal Drugs in Canada

Tony Barclay is a retired juvenile corrections probation officer and a
former public-health research associate at the University of Toronto.

This excellent book is really an intelligent layperson’s guide to the
facts, issues, and above all, realities of drugs in Canada. It is
written in an engaging, readable style, and each chapter is enlivened by
discussions of real cases, which add a most welcome human dimension to
the book. Each chapter has a bibliography/reading list, making the book
a useful reference volume.

In many cases the history of the use of the different drugs highlights
surprising facts about the changing attitudes of society and
governmental policies. Above all this work shows that our present
definitions of acceptable and unacceptable substances are neither
universally accepted nor based on entirely rational assumptions. The
close relationship between government policy and political expediency is
all too obvious.

Because drugs have been the subject of intense political and moral
debate in the last few years, it is important that books of this kind
are widely read. Boyd has done an admirable job of distinguishing the
factual issues from those clouded by popular prejudice and rhetoric. He
deals in turn with the major kinds of drugs, both legal and illegal. He
touches on some of the important lines of research about these drugs and
reports on their often-contradictory findings. All this is done with
admirable restraint, both in language and in what he draws from his
analysis. Boyd’s conclusions are inescapable: alcohol and tobacco are
far more damaging to many more people than are the illegal drugs that we
have done so much to eliminate altogether.

In his concluding chapter, Boyd tries to outline a more rational and
effective social policy with regard to the different chemical substances
that are used and abused. While there may be much disagreement with some
of his suggestions, he does make an overwhelming case for major changes
in our social and taxation policy with regard to this important and
often puzzling area of our lives.