Oh well in that case no wonder, to me I think private tuition is the way to go, but I learned all my history and economics looking through stuff on the internet, there's tons of resources if you know where to look, I've posted stuff up myself. I don't know what your teacher had planned giving you a book like that but making the legalisation and criminalisation of certain goods in an economy always drastically affects the price, since there are a hell of a lot of drugs either highly restricted or made illegal pharmaceutical companies make millions off essentially state sponsored trade.
He's a... strange teacher. I found out the sole reason he assigned the book over the summer (other than of course getting us to read). I brought it up to him that I had come across Aldous Huxley while doing some research on psychedelics (of course I didn't tell him specifically what I was trying to find...haha) and he told me that I had found the reason he assigned it. He just wanted to see if other students would look more into the book or author and get the wow factor as to why he assigned it.