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This book analyses common perceptions about drink-spiking, a pervasive fear for many and sometimes a troubling reality. Ideas about spiked drinks have shaped the way we think about drugs, alcohol, criminal law, risk, nightspots, and socializing for over one hundred and fifty years, since the rise of modern anaesthesia and synthetic ´pharma-ubiquity´. The book offers a wide-ranging look at the constantly shifting cultural and gender politics of ´psycho-chemical treachery´.
It provides rich case histories, assesses evolving scientific knowledge, and analyses the influence of social forces as disparate as Temperance and the acid enthusiasts of the 1960s. Drawing on interdisciplinary research, the book will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of criminal law, forensic science, public health, and social movements.

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Introduction.- Chapter One. Chloral and its Sisters: Synthetic Genesis and Parallel Demon.- Chapter 2. Good Girls, Hyenas, and Cheap Novel Fiends: The Scourge of Chloral at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.- Chapter 3. Baby, It´s Cold War Outside: An Era of Pharma-Ubiquity.- Chapter 4. A ´New´Problem Appears in the 1990s: The Birth of the Contemporary Date-Rape Drugs Scare.- Chapter 5. Who and Where are the Druggers?<.- Chapter 6. What Do We Know (and Not Know) About Predatory Drugging?.- Chapter 7. Drugs, Drinking, College, and Warding Off Blame.- Chapter 8. Conclusion.

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"Drink Spiking and Predatory Drugging is an extremely well-researched, readable and provocative book. ... this book will appeal to a wide range of academic audiences, as well as to non-academics interested in learning more about drug laws and crime stories. Above all else, readers will gain both sociological and historical insight into drug scares and the crime stories that have fuelled public fears and, ultimately, helped shape drug policy for well over a century." (Karen G. Weiss, Medical History, 2017)

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Pamela Donovan is a US sociologist and criminologist. She holds PhD in Sociology from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA. She has taught courses in social theory, criminology, victimology, and social problems. Her previous works include No Way of Knowing: Crime, Urban Legends, and the Internet (2004).

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