This textbook is a health course for primary-grade pupils. It covers the effects of alcohol, tobacco, and opium on health, as required by law in many states and territories.

Colonial accounts depict how the alcohol trade destabilized Indian communities in colonial British America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Despite the social costs of alcohol use within Indian communities, liquor remained a staple of Indian-colonist trade, perhaps because it facilitated the conquest of eastern North America. (LP)

The history of Aboriginal production and use of alcohol prior to white contact reveals that alcohol use originated in Central America and rapidly diffused to northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. However, Aboriginal alcohol use was generally controlled and supervised during ceremonies, and only after white contact did alcohol use…