Consuming Pleasures traces the international and Australian history of licit and illicit drug use.

It examines why we consume and what we consume, as well as the way in which consumption is regulated in the era of global free trade.

It also looks at drug use from an Australian perspective, going back to our own opium-growing industry and the racist origins of our drug laws. In doing so it considers the paradox of contemporary white Australian identity- on the one hand an image of fit, sun-bronzed athletic types at home in the surf; on the other a nation of people whose per capita drug consumption often equals and more often than not surpasses that of most other nations.