Women Drug Users

This book is the first to examine how female drug user's identities, and hence their experiences, are shaped by drug policies. It analyses how the subjectivities ascribed to women users within drug policy sustain them in their problematic use and reinforce their social exclusion. Challenging popular misconceptions of female users, the book calls for the formulation of drug policies to be based on gender equity and social justice. It will appeal to academics in the social sciences, practitioners and policy makers.

Some of the problems discussed in this book include women and alcohol, women and minor tranquillisers, women and heroin, women and smoking, and women and food dependence.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Examining the impact of drug criminalisation on a previously overlooked demographic, this book argues that women are disproportionately affected by a flawed policy approach.

From the 1950s 'girl junkie' to the 1990s 'crack mom', Using Women investigates how the cultural representations of women drug users have defined America's drug policies in this century. In analyzing the public's continued fear, horror and outrage wrought by the specter of women using drugs, Nancy Campbell demonstrates the importance that public opinion and popular culture have played in regulating women's lives. The book will chronicle the history of women and drug use, provide a critical policy analysis of the government's drug policies and offer recommendations for the direction our current drug policies should take. Using Women includes such chapters as 'Sex, Drugs and Race in the Age of Dope'; 'Regulating Adolescents in the Postwar US'; 'Fifties Femininity'; and 'Regulating Maternal Instinct'.

Fleshes out the story that is dominated by data concerning the effect of drugs on the unborn, by listening to pregnant or recently delivered women who take addictive drugs. Drawing on interviews with 120 such women, two sociologists explore such issues as how they decide whether or not to terminate their pregnancy, what their parents and family members think about the situation, and what options are available to them if they choose to keep the baby but kick the habit. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In Women and Substance Abuse: Gender Transparency you’ll see what can be done to aid women in some of the world’s hardest hit substance abuse hubs, including Rio De Janeiro, Brazil; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and New Haven, Connecticut. Filled with timely research and practical solutions, this volume shows you what you can do to aid the tremendous and immediate need for specialized interventions in the lives of women. Women and Substance Abuse considers many of the variables in the lives of women who abuse drugs--race, choice of drug, HIV risk, and drug treatment history--and gives you line-by-line proof of the need for custom-tailored harm reduction strategies for addicted women who are and who aren’t engaged in drug treatment therapy. In addition, you’ll see why frequent cocaine use, current physical and sexual abuse, and concerns relating to children can alter the success of therapies and treatments. Overall, this unique volume will broaden your understanding of the subject by covering: gender differences in risk for gonorrhea infection risk factors for women who trade sex for drugs and money the role of physicians and prenatal care providers of substance abusing women how drug treatment programs can be more multifacted to include planning, prenatal care, and parenting skills prison-based therapeutic communities long-term residential treatment for women with children, pregnant women, and women without children For every unique woman with a drug problem, there is a unique treatment. Women and Substance Abuse turns away from the lost cause of blanket treatments and takes you into the world’s slums and inner-city ghettoes, where the faces of addiction are as diverse as the women who bear its debilitating burdens. You’ll see women’s drug addiction for what it is--a montage of suffering and pain that only individual and specialized care can cure.