David Herzberg
David Herzberg is Professor of History at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). He researches the history of drugs and drug policy in America with a focus on pharmaceuticals. His work has appeared in numerous scholarly and medical journals, in popular media, and in two books: White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America (University of Chicago, 2020) and Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac (Johns Hopkins, 2010). He is also co-editor of Social History of Alcohol and Drugs: An Interdisciplinary Journal, the journal of the Alcohol and Drug History Society.
More info at https://www.davidherzberg.com/
Other Books
- White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America (Chicago, 2020)
The story of how U.S. drug policy encouraged mass sale of potentially addictive pharmaceuticals to largely white consumers for over 100 years, amidst an ongoing "war" against "drugs." Winner of The Rorabaugh Prize from the Alcohol and Drug History Society.
- Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac (Johns Hopkins, 2010)
This book examines the race, gender, and commercial politics behind the rise and fall of blockbuster psychiatric medicines like Valium and Prozac in the second half of the 20th century.
Selected Public Writings
- “The opioid crisis isn’t just the Sacklers’ fault—and making Purdue Pharma pay isn’t enough on its own to fix the pharmaceutical industry’s deeper problems.” The Conversation. (July 26, 2021).
- Review of Sam Quinones, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth (Bloomsbury, 2021). Washington Post. (Nov. 26, 2021)
- Review of Michael Pollan, This Is Your Brain on Plants (Penguin, 2021). Washington Post. (July 23, 2021)
- “The company that makes OxyContin could become a ‘public trust’—what would that mean?” The Conversation. (Dec. 4, 2019); reprinted in Salon, The National Interest, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, and other places.
- “How race made the opioid crisis,” by Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg. Boston Review (April 9, 2019).
- “While government cracked down on illegal drugs, Big Pharma hooked millions on opioids: The racist roots of the opioid crisis,” by David Herzberg and Matt Pembleton. Washington Post, Oct. 30, 2017.
Selected Scholarly Articles and Book Chapters
- Anne Kveim Lie, Helena Hansen, David Herzberg, Alex Mold, Marie Jauffret-Roustide, Isa Dussauge, Samuel K. Roberts, Jeremy Greene, and Nancy Campbell, "The harms of constructing addiction as a chronic, relapsing brain disease," American Journal of Public Health 112(52), Supp 2, 2022, S104-S108.
- David Herzberg, "Early U.S. drug regimes and medical and drug cultures," Oxford University Press Companion to Drug History (Paul Gootenberg, ed.), 2022.
- David Herzberg, "Between the Free Market and the Drug War," in David Farber, ed., The War on Drugs: A History: Fifty Years, a Trillion Dollars, and Thirty Million Arrests (New York University Press, 2021).
- Danielle Fine, David Herzberg, and Sarah Wakeman, "Societal Biases, Institutional Discrimination, and Trends in Opioid Use in the USA," Journal of General Internal Medicine 36 (2021), 797-801.
- David Herzberg, Dorian Deshauer, and Matt Savelli, “Psychopharmaceuticals” in Mat Savelli, James Gillett, and Gavin J. Andrews, Eds., An Introduction to Mental Health and Illness: Critical Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2020).
- David Herzberg, "Entitled to Addiction? Race and pharmaceuticals in America’s first drug war," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 91 (Fall 2017): 586-623. *Winner, J. Worth Estes Prize, American Association for the History of Medicine.
- Nancy D. Campbell and David Herzberg, "Gender and critical drug studies: An invitation and an exhortation," Introduction for co-edited dual special issues of Contemporary Drug Problems 44:4 (December 2017) and Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Fall 2017.
- David Herzbergg, "Pills” in Rethinking Therapeutic Culture, eds. Timothy Aubrey and Trysh Travis (University of Chicago Press, 2015).
- David Herzberg, "Busted for Blockbusters: ‘Scrip Mills’ and Prescribing Power in the 1970s," in Jeremy Greene and Elizabeth Segal Watkins, eds., Prescribed: Writing, Filling, Using, and Abusing the Prescription in Modern America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), link to description.
- David Herzberg, "Blockbusters and Controlled Substances: Miltown, Quaalude, and Consumer Demand for Drugs in Postwar America," Cambridge Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological Sciences 42(4), December 2011: 415-26.
- Jeremy Greene and David Herzberg, "Hidden in Plain Sight: The Popular Promotion of Prescription Drugs in the 20th Century," American Journal of Public Health (May 2010): 793-803.
- David Herzberg, "‘The Pill You Love Can Turn On You’: Feminism, Tranquilizers, and the Valium Panic of the 1970s."American Quarterly (March 2006): 79-103. *Featured article, JSTOR Daily, Jan. 30, 2022,
In the Press
- Buffalo News. (May 21, 2023). “UB’s role in meeting the need for addictions workers”
- The Microdose. (May 8, 2023). “Prozac Lessons: 5 Questions for drug historian David Herzberg”
- Associated Press. (April 24, 2023). “Dying patients protest looming telehealth crackdown”
- CBS News. (March 21, 2023). “End of Covid emergency will usher in changes across the US health system”
- Associated Press. (Feb. 25, 2023). “Feds seek to limit telehealth prescriptions for some drugs.”
- New York Times. (Dec. 11, 2022). "It’s not just about pot. Our entire drug policy needs an overhaul.”
- Chicago Daily Herald. (Oct. 28, 2022). “Spooked by reports of candy-colored fentanyl? There’s no reason to worry, experts say.”
- USA Today. (Oct. 26, 2022). “Rainbow fentanyl passed out on Halloween? Why experts say that’s ‘absolutely ridiculous.'”
- The Washington Examiner. (July 13, 2022). “Is America’s immigration crisis causing the fentanyl epidemic?”
- Newsweek. (July 8, 2022). “Mass Shootings and SSRI Meds Claims—What We Do Know, What We Don’t”
- New York Post. (Nov. 2, 2021). “Fentanyls seizures at border double over the past 12 months.”
- Washington Examiner. (Nov. 2, 2021). “Record fentanyl seizures at border contributed to soaring overdose deaths in US”
- Washington Post. (Nov. 26, 2021). Review of Sam Quinones, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth (Bloomsbury, 2021)
- Washington Post (July 23, 2021). Review of Michael Pollan, This Is Your Brain on Plants (Penguin, 2021)
- Law360. (May 21, 2021). “Drugmakers Throw Purdue Under Bus In Opioid Trial Gamble,"
- Reuters. (April 21, 2021). “First witness in Calif. opioid trial chastises drug cos for taking facts out of context."
- STAT News. (Dec. 11, 2020). “A historian was cited to support making Purdue a public benefit company. He actually thinks it’s a bad idea."
- ABC News. (Nov. 5, 2020). “Advocates see growing support for drug policy reforms in state elections results.”