Drug Abuse and It's Effects
...rugs are used for the purpose of intoxication practically everywhere. Pharmacologists, who study the effects of drugs, classify psychoactive drugs according to what they do to those who take them. Stimulants are drugs that speed up signals passing through the nervous system, stimulants produce alertness and arousal and, excitability, and inhibit fatigue and sleep, when used in higher doses. They include amphetamines, cocaine, caffeine, and nicotine. Depressants slow down, or depress signals passing through the central nervous system when given in higher doses which produces drowsiness and sleep. Depressants include sedatives, such as barbiturates, methaqualone, alcohol, and tranquilizer, such as valium. One distinct kind of depressants are those which dull the mind’s perception of pain and in medicine are used as painkillers, or analgesics. These drugs are called narcotics. They include heroin, morphine, opium, and codeine. In addition to their painkilling properties, these depressants also produce a stronger effect and are intensely dependency-producing. Some drugs cannot be placed neatly in this stimulant-depressant spectrum. Hallucinogens include LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin. Such drugs produce unusual mental states, such as psychedelic visions. Marijuana is generally regarded as not belonging to any of these categories but as drug type unto itself. During the 19th century there were virtually no controls on the importation, sale, purchase, possession, or use of psychoactive drugs at the federal level and very few at the state level. Dangerous substances such as opium, cocaine, and morphine were basic ingredients in patent medicines that could be purchased by anyone for any reason, without a prescription. These nostrums were used to cure headaches, toothaches, depression, nervousness, alcoholism, and menstrual cramps, practically every human ailment. Most people who have taken illegal drugs have done so on an experimental basis. They typically try the drug once to a dozen times and then cease using it. Of all illegal drugs, marijuana is the one users are most likely to continue using. Discontinuation rates are very high for drugs such as methaqualone, sedatives, barbiturates, heroin, and LSD. Even most regular users of illegal drugs are moderate in their use. The typical regular marijuana smoker is an occasional user. Still, a sizable minority does use the drug frequently, to the point of abuse. In 1966 about 5% of all high school seniors used marijuana daily or nearly daily ( 20 or more times in 30 days). A pattern of episodic, regular use characterizes nearly all drug use for the purpose of recreation. This does not deny the problem of the heavy, chronic abuser of these drugs. As a result of the readily availability of addicting drugs, and as a result of their heavy use for medical problems, many individuals became addicted to the narcotics contained in these patent medicines. In fact, in 1900, there were more narcotics addicts, proportionate to the population, than there are today. At that time, most of the users who became addicts were medical addicts. Very few abusers took drugs for “recreational” purposes. In 1914, in an effort to curb the indiscriminate use of narcotics, the federal government passed the Harrison Act, making it illegal to obtain a narcotic drug without a prescription. During the 1920s the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that maintaining addicts on narcotic drugs, even by prescription, was in violation of the Harrison this period for dispensing narcotics, and some 3,000 actually served prison sentences. Consequently, doctors all but abandoned the treatment of addicts for nearly half a century in the United States. The 1980s witnessed the development of a new form of an old drug (crack), the widespread use of a drug that was not previously taken on a recreational basis (“Ecstasy,” or MDMA), and the resurgence of a drug that was widely abused in the 1960s but then fell into disuse for a time (methamphetamine, or “ice”). Crack is a smokable derivative of cocaine that began to be used on a widespread basis starting in 1985; heavily abused in the inner cities in the late 1980s, it has since fallen off in use. Chemically related to amphetamines, MDMA was developed early in the 20th century as an appetite suppressant; it is not easily classified, although most observers regard it as a hallucinogen. In the 1980s it had a brief vogue among college students, intellectuals, and psychiatric patients seeking spiritual and therapeutic insight. Its use has declined into the 1990s. From the 1920s until the 1960s treatment for drug abuse in the Unite...