Deciphering the Chemical Soup: Using Public Nuisance to Compel Chemical Testing

This chapter documents the early presence of organilleros in the streets of Spanish cities from the 1860s on and analyzes their impact on Madrid’s society during the ensuing decades. Considered an exotic amusement during the 1860s, organilleros came to be seen as sources of “noise” and social disorder soon after. Although the information available on organilleros makes it hard to describe their social background accurately, it is likely that some of them were rural immigrants who took up organ grinding intermittently when other sources of income failed. Their impact on the public sphere raised awareness about the effects of sound and prompted legal measures that could be considered as the first attempts to spread an “aural” hygiene in Madrid. For this reason, organilleros played a key role in the modernization of this city.

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The neoliberal governance of heroin and opioid users in Philadelphia city

Crime Media Culture An International Journal ◽

10.1177/1741659021991199 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 174165902199119

Author(s):

Philip R Kavanaugh ◽

Jennifer L Schally

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Harm Reduction ◽

Drug Users ◽

Policy Documents ◽

Media Portrayals ◽

Neoliberal Governance ◽

Public Nuisance ◽

Fiscal Austerity ◽

Opioid Users ◽

Governmental Response

Drawing on 147 news accounts and five policy documents on the heroin and opioid crisis in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania published between 2016 and 2018, our analysis highlights how media portrayals of opioid users as both tragic victims and public nuisance prompted a schizoid governmental response that draws on rhetorics of treatment and harm reduction to legitimate more punitive interventions. By describing how the state’s quasi-medical responsibilization strategy devolved to fold criminalization into its broader response, we argue the effort to wage a kinder/gentler war on overdose invests in familiar tropes of a recalcitrant drug user class that is a threat to public health. In doing so we provide a basis to critique how drug users are governed in this time of fiscal austerity, resource hoarding, and perpetual, continually evolving drug crises.

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