Treatment Of Cocaine Abuse

Features

Description

Cocaine has been a socio-medical problem for centuries. In the United States, the first cocaine epidemic occurred between the 1880s and the 1920s. In the 1960s shortages of heroin as well as government programs to stop the smuggling of marijuana may have stimulated the use of cocaine as a substitute.

With the development of crack, cocaine became available at a price that made it accessible to virtually anyone. Today, the long-term effects of crack are just beginning to be felt, especially among children born of users. Treatment of cocaine abuse has traditionally been non-pharmacological, although beginning with the 1980s, various drugs have been used to decrease cocaine craving.

This bibliography contains more than 600 references, spanning a century of research and writing. Source publications, all of which are annotated, include books, articles, conference proceedings, dissertations, and government publications. The material is organized within four subject-oriented chapters, and alphabetically within each chapter.

Author and subject indexes provide additional access. In addition, Miletich includes appendixes on common names for cocaine, videocassettes about the drug, and a timeline. The work will be of value to researchers as well as social workers, psychologists, and others working in the substance abuse field.

Review: ?A comprehensive bibliography of interest to undergraduate and graduate students as well as to health and medical professionals. Covering the particularly timely topic of cocaine, it includes more than 600 entries with informative annotations. The preponderance of the citations are to journal articles, but also included are book chapters, dissertations, government publications, conference proceedings, and books.

Miletich's work is not so voluminous as Cocaine: An Annotated Bibliography, ed. by Carlton E. Turner and others (CH, Jul'89); and it is different in its four-chapter format and its inclusion of entries after 1987. And much has been written about cocaine in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The chapters are titled Women and Children, Specific Occupations, Treatment, and Definition, Identification, Diagnosis.

It is impressive in including more than 40 entries for a hot topic such as Crack Babies. An appendix listing current videos is useful for ordering up-to-date media for academic collections. The bibliography is detailed and well organized and an asset to undergraduate library collections.?-Choice