• PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2005
• MA, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1997
• BA, Wesleyan University, 1993

• Bad Medicine: Race and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, 1932-1972
• U.S. History since the Civil War
• Drugs & Global Capitalism
• Health and Illness in American History
• Alcohol & Other Drugs in American History
• U.S. Historiography II (grad)

I am a historian of drugs whose research focuses on the legal kind—psychoactive pharmaceuticals. I explore the nature and trajectory of drug commerce, drug use, and drug policy in America. My work has appeared in numerous scholarly and medical journals, in popular media, and in three books: "White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America" (University of Chicago Press, 2020); "Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); and (with Helena Hansen and Jules Netherland), "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (University of California Press, 2023). I am also Director of UB's Drugs, Health, and Society program and Education Director of UB's Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions.

I am currently researching two new projects: a book-length history of addicted physicians in the U.S., and (with Steve Peraza) an oral history of harm reduction in western New York.

Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg, Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America (University of California Press, 2023)

David Herzberg, White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America (University of Chicago Press, 2020)

David Herzberg, Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009)

Nils Kessel, Joseph Gabriel, and David Herzberg, Dealing with Drugs: New Histories of Risk and Benefit (University of Rochester Press, forthcoming 2026)

Keith Wailoo and David Herzberg, Breaking the Habit: An Introduction to Addiction through Keywords and Images (under review at University of Chicago Press).

Lie, Hansen, Herzberg, Mold, Jauffret-Roustide, Dussauge, Roberts, Greene, and Campbell, “The harms of constructing addiction as a chronic, relapsing brain disease,” American Journal of Public Health 112(52), Supp 2, 2022, S104-S108.

David Herzberg, “Early U.S. drug regimes and medical and drug cultures,” Oxford University Press Companion to Drug History (Paul Gootenberg, ed.), 2022.

David Herzberg, “Between the Free Market and the Drug War,” in David Farber, ed., The War on Drugs: A History: Fifty Years, a Trillion Dollars, and Thirty Million Arrests (New York University Press, 2021)

Scott Podolsky, David Herzberg, and Jeremy Greene, “Preying on Prescribers (and Their Patients): Pharmaceutical Marketing, Iatrogenic Epidemics, and the Sackler Legacy,” New England Journal of Medicine, April 10, 2019, 1-3.

David Herzberg, “Entitled to Addiction? Race and pharmaceuticals in America’s first drug war,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 91 (Fall 2017): 586-623.

Nancy D. Campbell and David Herzberg, “Gender and critical drug studies: An invitation and an exhortation,” Introduction for co-edited dual special issues of Contemporary Drug Problems 44:4 (December 2017) and Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Fall 2017.

Jeremy Greene and David Herzberg, “Hidden in Plain Sight: The Popular Promotion of Prescription Drugs in the 20^th Century,” American Journal of Public Health (May 2010): 793-803.

David Herzberg, “‘The Pill You Love Can Turn On You’: Feminism, Tranquilizers, and the Valium Panic of the 1970s.” American Quarterly (March 2006): 79-103.

Exceptional Scholar- Sustained Achievement Award, University at Buffalo, 2024

Rachel Carson Prize, Society for the Social Studies of Science, for Whiteout, 2024

New Millennium Book Award, Society for Medical Anthropology, for Whiteout, 2024

Rorabaugh Prize, Alcohol and Drug History Society (for “a first or second monograph in the English language in the history of alcohol and drug studies”), for White Market Drugs, 2022

J. Worth Estes Article Prize from the American Association for the History of Medicine, 2018

National Institute of Health / National Library of Medicine, Grant for Scholarly Work in Biomedicine and Health (G13), 2015-2018.

Paper of the Year Award from the American Journal of Public Health, the official organ of the American Public Health Association, 2011.

Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, 1997-2001.

• Drugs, Health, and Society Program (UB), Director
  
• Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions (UB), Education Director
• Alcohol and Drug History Society
• American Institute for the History of Pharmacy
• American Association for the History of Medicine
• American Historical Association
• American Studies Association
• Organization of American Historians