On the Shelf at CCBC Libraries
Light up the Night by
A revelatory, moving narrative that offers a harrowing critique of the war on drugs from voices seldom heard in the conversation: drug users who are working on the front lines to reduce overdose deaths Media coverage has established a clear narrative of the overdose crisis: In the 1990s, pharmaceutical corporations flooded America with powerful narcotics while lying about their risk; many patients developed addictions to prescription opioids; then, as access was restricted, waves of people turned to the streets and began using heroin and, later, the dangerous synthetic opioid fentanyl. But that's not the whole story. It fails to acknowledge how the war on drugs has exacerbated the crisis and leaves out one crucial voice: that of drug users themselves. Across the country, people who use drugs are organizing in response to a record number of overdose deaths. They are banding together to save lives and demanding equal rights. Set against the backdrop of the overdose crisis, Light Up the Night provides an intimate look at how users navigate the policies that criminalize them. It chronicles a rising movement that's fighting to save lives, end stigma, and inspire commonsense policy reform. Told through embedded reporting focused on two activists, Jess Tilley in Massachusetts and Louise Vincent in North Carolina, this is the story of the courageous people stepping in where government has failed. They are standing on the front lines of an underground effort to help people with addictions use drugs safely, reduce harms, and live with dignity.
Call Number: HV5825 .L858 2022
Pill City by
In 2015, Baltimore plunged into the worst American riots in recent history. In the chaos, two high school honor-roll students, "Brick" and "Wax, used their smarts, computer skills, ambition and gang connections to change the world of illegal drugs forever. With their gang associates, they looted pharmacies and robbed dealers, stealing over one million doses of prescription narcotics and heroin with a street value of more than $100 million. "Brick" and "Wax" were not going to sell drugs on corners; they used location-based technology and encrypted messaging software to dispatch ordered drugs via delivery drivers--an Uber-like service that eliminated street deals and easily tapped phones. They were soon supplying cities along the East Coast, creating a whole new class of opioid addicts with the FBI and DEA trailing in their wake. To ensure their supply of drugs did not run out, the teens formed an alliance with members of the Sinaloa cartel, headed by El Chapo. Veteran Newsday crime reporter Kevin Deutsch has been reporting on the ground in drug-ravaged neighborhoods for over a year. He's seen the bodies. Across America, thousands are dying from opioid overdoses. This middle-class crisis has been well documented, but the inner cities, where families are being swallowed up by addiction, have been ignored. Deutsch brings us into this underworld, where social unrest and cutting-edge technology allow criminals to seed the next wave of dysfunction and despair.
Call Number: HV5825 .D4858 2017
The Cook Up by
Reminiscent of the classic Random Family and The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, but told by the man who lived it, The Cook Up is a riveting look inside the Baltimore drug trade portrayed in The Wire and an incredible story of redemption. The smartest kid on his block in East Baltimore, D. was certain he would escape the life of drugs, decadence, and violence that had surrounded him since birth. But when his brother Devin is shot-only days after D. receives notice that he's been accepted into Georgetown University-the plans for his life are exploded, and he takes up the mantel of his brother's crack empire. D. succeeds in cultivating the family business, but when he meets a woman unlike any he's known before, his priorities are once more put into question. Equally terrifying and hilarious, inspiring and heartbreaking, D.'s story offers a rare glimpse into the mentality of a person who has escaped many hells.
Call Number: HV5805.W38 A3 2016
How the Drug War Ruins American Lives by
This book reveals the disturbing truth about how the escalation of the War on Drugs over the past 30 years has eroded the human and property rights of Americans--while doing little to stop drug trafficking or use. Unique in its perspective, this eye-opening book looks at the drug war as a rights issue and concludes that Americans' civil liberties are clearly being violated. The volume proceeds from two premises: that over the past 30 years, America's War on Drugs has done more harm than good; and that if the United States is going to reform the criminal justice system, the public must understand that this "war" is empowered by the profits it provides to law enforcement and other groups. A central factor causing the upsurge in the drug war, the author explains, is the fact that laws were passed in the 1980s that allowed law enforcement to profit from seizing property based on scanty evidence and without criminal charges. His meticulous research has revealed that this "policing for profit" is responsible for a variety of assaults on civil liberties, including mass incarceration, SWAT teams, and random drug sweeps. A second factor that infects every aspect of the War on Drugs is racism--the widespread stereotyping of drug traffickers as African Americans and Latinos. These issues and more are explored in this book that lays bare what the media largely ignores. Shows that the War on Drugs has failed to achieve the goals that were originally set Argues that this war continues to erode human and property rights Explores how the climate of the War on Drugs is changing Discusses the powerful actors that support the continued drug war Shares provocative accounts of the impact of the drug war on regular citizens Includes links to further reading and video evidence
Call Number: HV5825 .B436 2016
The Long Shadow by
A volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology West Baltimore stands out in the popular imagination as the quintessential "inner city"--gritty, run-down, and marred by drugs and gang violence. Indeed, with the collapse of manufacturing jobs in the 1970s, the area experienced a rapid onset of poverty and high unemployment, with few public resources available to alleviate economic distress. But in stark contrast to the image of a perpetual "urban underclass" depicted in television by shows like The Wire, sociologists Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson present a more nuanced portrait of Baltimore's inner city residents that employs important new research on the significance of early-life opportunities available to low-income populations. The Long Shadow focuses on children who grew up in west Baltimore neighborhoods and others like them throughout the city, tracing how their early lives in the inner city have affected their long-term well-being. Although research for this book was conducted in Baltimore, that city's struggles with deindustrialization, white flight, and concentrated poverty were characteristic of most East Coast and Midwest manufacturing cities. The experience of Baltimore's children who came of age during this era is mirrored in the experiences of urban children across the nation. For 25 years, the authors of The Long Shadow tracked the life progress of a group of almost 800 predominantly low-income Baltimore school children through the Beginning School Study Youth Panel (BSSYP). The study monitored the children's transitions to young adulthood with special attention to how opportunities available to them as early as first grade shaped their socioeconomic status as adults. The authors' fine-grained analysis confirms that the children who lived in more cohesive neighborhoods, had stronger families, and attended better schools tended to maintain a higher economic status later in life. As young adults, they held higher-income jobs and had achieved more personal milestones (such as marriage) than their lower-status counterparts. Differences in race and gender further stratified life opportunities for the Baltimore children. As one of the first studies to closely examine the outcomes of inner-city whites in addition to African Americans, data from the BSSYP shows that by adulthood, white men of lower status family background, despite attaining less education on average, were more likely to be employed than any other group in part due to family connections and long-standing racial biases in Baltimore's industrial economy. Gender imbalances were also evident: the women, who were more likely to be working in low-wage service and clerical jobs, earned less than men. African American women were doubly disadvantaged insofar as they were less likely to be in a stable relationship than white women, and therefore less likely to benefit from a second income. Combining original interviews with Baltimore families, teachers, and other community members with the empirical data gathered from the authors' groundbreaking research, The Long Shadow unravels the complex connections between socioeconomic origins and socioeconomic destinations to reveal a startling and much-needed examination of who succeeds and why.
Call Number: HV1437.B35 A44 2014
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by
From bestselling author Gabor Maté, the essential resource for understanding the roots and behaviors of addiction--now with an added introduction by the author. Based on Gabor Maté's two decades of experience as a medical doctor and his groundbreaking work with the severely addicted on Vancouver's skid row, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts radically reenvisions this much misunderstood field by taking a holistic approach. Dr. Maté presents addiction not as a discrete phenomenon confined to an unfortunate or weak-willed few, but as a continuum that runs throughout (and perhaps underpins) our society; not a medical "condition" distinct from the lives it affects, rather the result of a complex interplay among personal history, emotional, and neurological development, brain chemistry, and the drugs (and behaviors) of addiction. Simplifying a wide array of brain and addiction research findings from around the globe, the book avoids glib self-help remedies, instead promoting a thorough and compassionate self-understanding as the first key to healing and wellness. In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts argues persuasively against contemporary health, social, and criminal justice policies toward addiction and those impacted by it. The mix of personal stories--including the author's candid discussion of his own "high-status" addictive tendencies--and science with positive solutions makes the book equally useful for lay readers and professionals.
Call Number: HV5000.C2 M38 2010
Streaming Videos
- America's Longest War Drug prohibition has failed. Drug usage rates have not declined and illegal drugs are more available - and cheaper - than ever before. At the same time, the costs of the drug war are staggering. More than one trillion dollars have been spent. More than 50,000 SWAT raids occur each year. Hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug offenders are wasting their lives away in prison. And more than 60,000 people have been murdered in Mexico over the past six years. 'America's Longest War' provides a brief history of drug prohibition, beginning with Nixon's declaration of war in 1971 and ending with Obama's broken promise to allow states to determine their own medical marijuana policies. It chronicles how, over the past 40 years, the drug war has escalated from a small domestic program, mostly focused on treatment, to the multi-billion dollar international war it is today.
Article Databases
- Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Articles on any subject. This is a good place to start.
- Baltimore Sun This link opens in a new window
Baltimore's newspaper, which is good for local news and issues from 1990 - today.
For articles published 1837-1992, see ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Baltimore Sun. - Combined Video Search on Library Catalog
You can search for all titles from Films on Demand, Academic Video Online and Digital Theatre plus.
- Humanities International Complete This link opens in a new window
Articles and ebooks about humanities topics like arts, history, language, law, literature, philosophy, and politics.
- ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
Articles on any subject. This is a good place to start.
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Baltimore Sun This link opens in a new window
Primary source articles covering the politics, society and events of the time period 1837 - 1992.
- Social Science Database
Articles on social science topics like communication, criminology, economics, education, political science, psychology, social work, and sociology.
- SocINDEX This link opens in a new window
Articles on sociology topics including criminal justice, gender studies, racial studies, social services, and social work.
- Sociology Database This link opens in a new window
Articles on sociology topics including criminal justice, gender studies, racial studies, social services, and social work.
Online from CCBC Libraries
Opinions Throughout History - Drug Abuse and Drug Epidemics by
This new series from Grey House offers in-depth, single volumes that follow the debate, or path, to a decision on a controversial topic as it evolved throughout history. Each volume offers a wide range of opinion essays and editorials, speeches, and journal articles and expert analysis.
Publication Date: 2018-10-01
How the Drug War Ruins American Lives by
This book reveals the disturbing truth about how the escalation of the War on Drugs over the past 30 years has eroded the human and property rights of Americans--while doing little to stop drug trafficking or use. Unique in its perspective, this eye-opening book looks at the drug war as a rights issue and concludes that Americans' civil liberties are clearly being violated. The volume proceeds from two premises: that over the past 30 years, America's War on Drugs has done more harm than good; and that if the United States is going to reform the criminal justice system, the public must understand that this "war" is empowered by the profits it provides to law enforcement and other groups. A central factor causing the upsurge in the drug war, the author explains, is the fact that laws were passed in the 1980s that allowed law enforcement to profit from seizing property based on scanty evidence and without criminal charges. His meticulous research has revealed that this "policing for profit" is responsible for a variety of assaults on civil liberties, including mass incarceration, SWAT teams, and random drug sweeps. A second factor that infects every aspect of the War on Drugs is racism--the widespread stereotyping of drug traffickers as African Americans and Latinos. These issues and more are explored in this book that lays bare what the media largely ignores.
Publication Date: 2016-03-21
The Re-Evolution of American Street Gangs by
The problem of gangs and gang subculture is a growing threat to the stability of neighborhoods and entire communities. During the past two decades, gang members have increasingly migrated from large urban centers to suburban areas and other countries. This book addresses the intricacies and diversities of street gangs, drawing on the expertise of high-ranking law enforcement officials monitoring terrorist activity and gang-related crimes as well as professional private investigators who have spent several decades investigating gangs and learning their subculture, lifestyle, motivations, and relationships. Ideal for supplemental reading in gang violence courses on criminal justice, sociology, law, and psychology, this comprehensive anthology presents thorough coverage of a notoriously difficult subject. It explores the following key topics: Social, psychological, and criminal impact of street gangs on juveniles Psychology of gang membership and the pathways that lead into and out of gang culture Relationship between religion and dangerous criminal gangs How U.S.-based gangs are using technology to advance their operations Use of graffiti by street gangs Evolution of gangs and recommendations for preventing future growth Gang enhancement crimes and associated misconduct of police and prosecutors Like any type of crime, street gang criminal activity cannot be totally eliminated. This book aims to provide a better understanding of gangs so that we can influence today's potential gang members to make the right decisions for their sake and the sake of society.
Publication Date: 2015-09-25
