This review traces the literatures in cultural anthropology and neighboring disciplines that are focused on addiction as an object of knowledge and intervention, and as grounds for self-identification, sociality, and action. Highlighting the production of disease categories, the staging of therapeutic interventions, and the ongoing work of governance, this work examines addiction as a key site for the analysis of contemporary life. It likewise showcases a general movement toward accounts of addiction that foreground complexity, contingency, and multiplicity.

Recent years have seen the emergence of a 'global mental health' agenda, focused on providing evidence-based interventions for mental illnesses in low- and middle-income countries. Anthropologists and cultural psychiatrists have engaged in vigorous debates about the appropriateness of this agenda. In this article, we reflect on these debates, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the management of substance use disorders in China, Russia, and the United States. We argue that the logic of 'treatment gaps,' which guides much research and intervention under the rubric of global mental health, partially obscures the complex assemblages of institutions, therapeutics, knowledges, and actors framing and managing addiction (as well as other mental health issues) in any particular setting.

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Marijuana continues to be legalized throughout the world. In the United States, a unique approach to legalization is taking hold that focuses on the creation of commercial marijuana markets. This article examines the everyday realities of this approach to legalization through a focus on one of marijuana’s most legally significant attributes: its smell. In the context of prohibition, the smell of marijuana was a key tool of criminal law enforcement. In the context of legalization, its significance has expanded to include nuisance laws governing the presence of unwanted odors and commercial laws that facilitate economic activity in the marijuana market. By focusing on the sense of smell in the context of marijuana legalization, this article shows the implications of the market-based approach for drug policy reform. More broadly, this focus highlights the importance of the senses to sociolegal change and the ongoing construction of legality in the context of capitalism.

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