The Politics of Heroin

Much of the vilification of drugs and drug users, including hostility toward heroin and the specter of the "dope fiend," started out as lurid media fodder, Metzger says, created to excite ordinary fears and respond to ordinary resentments.

In his first true crime memoir, undercover operator Norm Boucher recounts eight months spent infiltrating Vancouver's heroin scene, a world of paranoia, ripoffs, and violence. It is 1983 and the War on Drugs is intensifying. From his barroom observer's seat, Boucher candidly reveals the lives of heroin addicts who spend each day looking for their next hit. Their dangerous subculture, centred around three gritty hotels on the Granville Strip, becomes Boucher's domain as he attempts both to gain acceptance in a world far removed from his own and to keep himself safe.