I've just finished reading an interesting book I thought I'd recommend. Called Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason, by Jessica Warner, the subtitle, in a mock 18th C style is Consisting of a Tragicomedy in three acts in which High and Low are brought together much to their Mutual Discomfort. Complete with Stories, some witty and some not, conducive to medidation on Recent Events. It's a look at the Gin Craze of the first half of the 18th Century, the first modern "drug epidemic", and the reactions of the ruling classes to it. You've probably seen Hogarth's famous propaganda prints Gin Lane and Beer Street, produced as the craze was coming to an end. At the end of the book Ms. Warner relates the reactions to gin consumption by the lower orders in the 1700s to the reactions to current drug epidemics, such as crack, a great read.