The author would tell you that this book is completely objective and that it gives an entirely unbiased view of the drug heroin. But when the first five words on the back of the book are "Heroin was a terrible mistake." one can only laugh at his sentiment. The book discusses Heroin under five titles; Culture, World, History, Health, Money.
The First Chapter is Culture and the first heading is "Heroin is Headline News" and it's pretty clear that Mr.Ashton wrote this book for that very reason, to cash in on the media popularity of Heroin and to perpetuate its image as "the worlds most demonised drug".
The worst part of this book for me is the fact that it is so well presented, with plenty of nice little facts and statistics, that an unwary reader might well be lulled into a false sense of security. That the average "joe knows nothing about drugs" might believe that the author is indeed giving unbiased info on the drug, but with all its "first person" sob stories about 13yr olds addicted to drugs and parents who lost their kids to "the horrors of heroin", it is cleat that this just isn't the case!
Having said all this the book isn't an ENTIRE waste; it does give a good accurate history of heroin and stats about its use around the world and it has a shining moment in the chapter entitled health with this line: "Unlike many narcotics, the drug (heroin) is actually benign and there is little evidence to suggest that a lifetime of using pure dope would lead to anything more than a strong tolerance to the drug." But again this line goes against most of the rest of the info given in the book.
It is a well written and easy to read book, formatted in such a way that one can pick it up and read any random section and without feeling lost. The old saying goes "don't judge a book by its cover" and it really stands strong in this case because the cover of this book is brilliant in my opinion but the its all style and very little substance.
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