Assignment information:

Write 2500 words in response to the question. You will be graded on the quality of writing and secondary research as well as the structure and organization of your responses and the credibility of your argument.

I would like you to explain the changing rhetoric of drug use during the nineteenth century – draw on Jacques Derrida if you are able to offer a theoretical foundation to your argument. It is important to understand that drug use has not always been understood as a negative behaviour trait, indeed there is a long history of it being understood as a component of the creative imagination. Read de Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater (the first work to describe this process) and use this to inform a study of contemporary culture and its relationship to drug use and the creative imagination.

Grading Criteria (What constitutes a good assignment?):

• Structure and organization
• Writing quality: correctness, quality, concision
• Quality of research
• Analytical skills

Research question:

Using examples from the course and popular culture explain the relationship between drug use and the creative imagination.

• History of drug use in Britain by the British Medical Association

Important dates

• 1916 – Army Council Order & Defence of the Realm Act restricted cocaine sales
• 1920 & 1923 – The first Dangerous Drugs Act imposed stricter controls and prison sentences
• 1926 – The Rolleston Report advised prescriptions to addicts only
• 1928 – Dangerous Drugs Act updated to include cannabis
• 1967 – Dangerous Drugs Act updated to restrict heroin prescriptions and include treatment and rehabilitation on the NHS

• The Rhetoric of Drugs
• The Boundary between Prescription and Recreational Drugs as Socially Constructed
• A Case Study of Opium and its Use in Britain
• ‘The Opium Wars’ (1839-42) (1856-60) (Opium as import: Turkey, Persia and Egypt and export: Bengal (under British control) to China (where it was illegal)).
• Changing image of opium (now used in marketing Yves Saint Laurent)
• The 1868 Pharmacy Act: First legal control of the supply of opium/ Creation of an opium discourse
• Relationship between artists and drugs over the years.
• Modern day examples Bob marley, Lana del rey, Miley Cyrus, Queen.

Please provide MLA citations.