From politically-motivated criminalization to the debates surrounding harm reduction, the impact of drugs extends far beyond the pharmaceutical. A new master’s degree program debuting at UB this fall engages the humanities and the social sciences in the study of the effects of drugs in our collective bloodstream.
The new 30-credit-hour Master of Arts in Drugs, Health, and Society will bring together the science and politics of drugs. Students will explore topics like addiction, the decriminalization of marijuana, the opioid crisis, and how psychedelics are used in medical settings.
The program will prepare students to work in fields ranging from addiction treatment to criminal justice. Students will choose whether to concentrate on the science or politics of drugs, but will learn about both.
The program is, in part, a response to the nationwide opioid epidemic that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths over the last two decades. Erie County had 272 opioid overdose-related deaths in 2021, according to a report from the New York State Department of Health.
“I’m advocating for a humanistic, social and political approach to drugs,” David Herzberg, the creator of the program and a history professor at UB, said. “I found that I was being brought in too late to the conversation surrounding substances, so I created a program to harness individuals with the expertise on the social and political dimension of substances along with the science.”
Drawing on his extensive knowledge of drug and substance history in the U.S., Herzberg created the program because he found that other drug addiction programs focused almost exclusively on the science of drug addiction at the expense of policy solutions and history.
Herzberg hopes this program will lead to changes in UB policy, specifically UB’s punitive approach to substance use. He says that those policies, which focus on individuals instead of drug companies and systems, don’t treat or effectively prevent drug addiction.
“This is a kind of policy that hasn’t had a lot of success over the past thousand years,” Herzberg said. “You can do a lot to make sure that people who use drugs and counter drugs are safer for them. You don’t do this by having the weight of your regulation, the weight of your policing, the weight of your surveillance targeting the individual user.”
Herzberg also hopes to add a certificate in drug counseling to the program. This would allow for an immediate impact and get people on the front lines of the opioid crisis in Western New York and across the country.
Dr. Joshua Lynch, a professor of emergency medicine at UB who specializes in addiction medicine, applauded the new program for bringing together every dimension of addiction. He hopes the program will spawn larger, regional change by connecting students with professionals and agencies around Western New York.
“You need the policy or legislative angles to really make a dent in the opioid epidemic,” Lynch said. “You can’t ignore any of the dimensions.”
Applications for the first semester of the new program are due April 1, 2024.
Sarah Owusu is the assistant news editor and can be reached at sarah.owusu@ubspectrum.com
Sarah Owusu is an assistant news editor at The Spectrum. In her free time she enjoys reading, baking, music and talking politics (yes, shockingly). She'll also be her own hairdresser when she needs a change.
