Dan Malleck, PhD

Professor, Health Sciences

Dan Malleck

Office: STH 307
905 688 5550 x5108
dmalleck@brocku.ca

Dan Malleck is an internationally recognized expert in drug and alcohol regulation and prohibition. He has spoken to audiences in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Asia about the challenges of regulating substances that are considered socially problematic, including cannabis, liquor, opiates, and cocaine.

He is a professor in the Department of Health Sciences and the director of Brock’s Centre for Canadian Studies in the Faculty of Humanities. A medical historian specializing in drug and alcohol regulation and policy, he has published books and articles on that topic including Try to Control Yourself: The regulation of public drinking in post-prohibition Ontario (UBC Press 2012) which won the Canadian Historical Association’s 2013 Clio Prize for Ontario history; When Good Drugs go Bad: Opium, medicine, and the origins of Canada’s drug laws (UBC Press, 2015); and Liquor and the Liberal State: Drink and order before prohibition (UBC Press, 2022). He is the co-editor, with Cheryl Warsh, of Consuming Modernity: Gendered behaviour and consumerism before the baby boom (UBC Press, 2013) and Pleasure and Panic: New Essays on the history of alcohol and drugs (UBC Press 2022) and editor of the four-volume primary source collection Drugs, Alcohol, and Addiction in the Long Nineteenth Century (Routledge, 2020). He was the  editor of the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs for over a decade and has served academia in various roles locally, nationally, and internationally.

He contributes to the current discussions on cannabis legalization, the opioid crisis, and liquor laws, using historically-grounded analysis to provide insight into current issues and in this capacity has appeared on CBC radio and television, as well as regional media across Canada and in the United Kingdom. He is currently researching the professionalization of pharmacy in Canada. As a cultural historian he is interested in hearing from students who would like to understand cultures of substance use (not merely abuse), rather than reducing consumption to neurochemistry, pharmacology, or biology.

-drug and alcohol policy and history
-the history of pharmacy
-medical history

Dan Malleck, “Liquor and the Liberal State: Drink and Order before prohibition” (UBC Press 2022); ed with Cheryl Warsh

Dan Malleck, “Pleasure and Panic: New Essays on the History of Alcohol and Drugs” (UBC Press 2022).

Dan Malleck, “The problem with the problem of alcohol in Canada’s history. A reflection and call to action” Intersections Vol. 3. (Fall, 2020): 11-12

Dan Malleck, “The Dishwater Menace: Healthy Drinking Spaces and the Public Good in Post-Prohibition Ontario,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/ Bulletin canadien d’histoire de la medicine 34, 2 (Fall 2017): 444-64

Dan Malleck, ed. Drugs Alcohol and Addiction in the Long Nineteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2020).

Dan Malleck, When Good Drugs Go Bad: Opium, Medicine, and the Origins of Canada’s Drug Laws (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015).

Cheryl Warsh and Dan Malleck, eds., Consuming Modernity: Gendered Behaviour and Consumerism Before the Baby Boom (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013).

Dan Malleck, Try to Control Yourself: The regulation of public drinking in post-prohibition Ontario, 1927-1944 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012).

Dan Malleck, “Filthy glasses and healthy spaces:  Public drinking, public health, and bureaucratic territorialism in post-prohibition Ontario,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/ Bulletin canadien d’histoire de la medicine (forthcoming).

Dan Malleck , “Stick handling sobriety: Public drinking and morally healthy sport in Ontario, 1934-1944,” Journal of Canadian Studies. Vol 49 No 3 (Fall 2015): 144-69.

Dan Malleck , “Liquor Regulation, Drinking and the Private Clubs of Ontario, 1934-44,” Canadian Historical Review Vol 93 (Dec 2012): 555-82.

Dan Malleck, “Niagara wine and the regulatory environment: 1850s-1944” in The World of Niagara Wine, ed. Michael Ripmeester, Phillip Gordon Mackintosh, and Christopher Fullerton (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013).

  • Introduction to the History of Medicine
  • Issues in Canadian Health Policy
  • Critical Health