China's Drug Practices and Policies: Regulating Controlled Substances in a Global Context

The authors (of the U. of Nevada and Oklahoma State U.) analyze the use and regulation of narcotics in China from the Imperial era to the present. They use a comparative and historical approach in order to analyze how changing political, economic, and social conditions have affected the nature of drug use and its regulation. They also evaluate existing functionalist and conflict theories of law and society in terms of their ability to explain the observed patterns of drug use and regulation. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Hong Lu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has written extensively on international and comparative criminology and law. She is the co-author of Punishment: A Comparative Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2004) . Terance D. Miethe is a Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. With Hong Lu, he co-authored Punishment; his other books include China's Death Penalty: History, Law, and Contemporary Practices (Taylor & Francis, 2007). Bin Liang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa. He is the author of The Changing Chinese Legal System, 1978-Present: Centralization of Power and Rationalization of the Legal System (Routledge, 2007).