Speeding Toward Babylon: Subcultural Drug Use in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, 1960-1980
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation examines the history of subcultural drug use in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, from 1960 to 1980. The primary method of investigation was oral interviewing, backed up with statistical analysis, NGO and government studies, and art, including music, novels, poetry, and comics produced in the era. Through this work, I have attempted to create a ground-up, “people’s history” of drug use in these three cities at this time.\n\nSubcultural drug use became a recognized phenomenon in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with subculturalists like “jazz cats” and rock n rollers using drugs as varied as heroin, cannabis, and amphetamine. Following the “British Invasion” of 1964, subcultural drug use exploded and became much more common, especially under the banner of the “hippies,” a subculture so large it became a “counterculture.” Though there was plenty of darkness surrounding the hippies, the movement was overall an idealistic one, focused on peace, love, and having a good time. This reflected, and reflected upon, wider society, which saw massive economic expansion and a grand liberalization of society generally. With the economic downturn of the 1970s, the introduction of hard drugs, and the “death of the sixties dream,” the counterculture morphed into something more dystopian, finally reaching its apotheosis with punk. \n\nThe history of drug using subcultures in the 1960s and 1970s provides insights into several fields of Canadian history, beyond drug and subcultural studies. It reflects particularly on (1) the postwar growth of the Canadian economy and population; (2) the rise of the liberal welfare state and reaction to it; (3) the development of the teenager and extension of adolescence; (4) the spread of greater cultural tolerance, the politics around that tolerance, and reaction to it; and (5) the spread of communications, transportation, and pharmaceutical science and technology. This study analyses the conflicts and contradictions of a time and place where millions of youth had more opportunity than ever before, while at the same time being classed as the largest law-breaking cohort in modern history.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".