{"product_id":"dope-girls-the-birth-of-the-british-drug-underground","title":"Dope Girls: The Birth Of The British Drug Underground","description":"This is a discussion of the transformation of drug use (especially morphine and cocaine, which was once commonly available in any chemist's shop) into a national menace. It revolves around the death of Billie Carleton, a West End musical actress, in 1918. Its cast of characters includes Brilliant Chang, a Chinese restaurant proprietor and Edgar Manning, a jazz drummer from Jamaica. They were eventually identified as the villains of the affair and invested with a highly charged sexual menace. Around them, in the streets off Shaftesbury Avenue, there swirled a raffish group of seedy and entitled hedonists. Britain was horrified and fascinated, and so the drug problem was born amid a gush of exotic tabloid detail.","brand":"Granta Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40903642808405,"sku":"9781862076181N","price":11.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2481\/5790\/files\/4ee230f0-5895-458a-aad5-3346fd0260ff.jpg?v=1727289063","url":"https:\/\/smeikalbooks.co.uk\/en-us\/products\/dope-girls-the-birth-of-the-british-drug-underground","provider":"smeikalbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}