Drug Abuse

Drug abuse in one form or another has existed since history has been documented. People have used one type of drug or another for thousands of years. For example, wine was used at least from the time of the early Egyptians; narcotics from 4000 B.C.; and marijuana use has been dated to 2737 BC in China. It was not until the 19th century that the active substances in drugs were extracted. What followed was an onslaught of newly discovered drugs such as morphine, laudanum, and cocaine. These drugs were unregulated and prescribed freely by doctors for a wide variety of problems. They were also available through patent medicines which were sold by traveling salesmen, drugstores, and mail order catalogs. At the time of the American Civil War, the use of morphine was common. The wounded veterans would return home with their kits of morphine and hypodermic needles. It was estimated in the early 1900's there were 250,000 drug abusers in the United States alone.

The problems of drug abuse were not recognized at first but actually surfaced gradually. The first legal measures against drug dependence in the United States were in 1875. It was at this point that opium dens in San Francisco, California were outlawed. In 1906, the first national drug law was passed, the Pure Food and Drug Act. This law required accurate labeling of all patent medicines which contained opium and other drugs. Following the Pure Food and Drug Act was the Harrison Narcotic Act in 1914. This forbade the sale of opiates or cocaine except by licensed doctors and pharmacies. Eventually, heroin was banned in the United States and additional Supreme Court decisions made it illegal for doctors to prescribe any type of narcotic to addicted individuals. There were doctors who continued to prescribe "maintenance" doses to addicted individuals as part of a "treatment". They were arrested and put in jail. After that, all attempts at treatment for drug abusers were abandoned until the twentieth century. In 1919 the spirit of the temperance movement led to the prohibition of alcohol and was added to the Constitution as the Eighteenth Amendment; however it was repealed in 1933.

During the 1930's, many states made it a requirement that anti-drug education be taught in schools. However, fears that knowledge about drugs would cause the students to experiment ceased drug prevention education in most places. After the repeal of Prohibition, the Drug Enforcement Administration started a campaign to portray cannabis as a powerful and addicting drug. The idea behind this campaign was to prevent people from using marijuana because it can lead to the abuse of harder drugs.

Over time, the United State's general perception of the dangers of specific drugs has changed. Eventually, tobacco had a warning label on it informing the consumer about the danger or cancer and emphysema. A warning label was also placed on Alcohol regarding the dangers of fetal alcohol syndrome. Drug laws have tried to keep up with the ever changing opinions and real dangers of drug abuse. The Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 increased funding for drug treatment and drug rehabilitation; the 1988 act created the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Its director, often referred to as the drug czar, is responsible for coordinating national drug control policy.

These days, drug abuse is defined as the chronic or habitual use of any chemical substance to alter states of body or mind for other than medically warranted purposes. The definition of substance misuse continues to change because the term is subjective and infused with the political and moral values of the society or culture one lives in. An example of this is the drug caffeine. It is physically addicting but is not considered an abused drug because it does not generally trigger antisocial behavior in users.

Drug abuse is a problem which has an effect on people of all income levels, ages, and stations in life. Quite often the last person to see that there is a problem is the drug abuser them self. Every year, more and more people become drug addicts in their pursuit to get "high". In a 1992 study done by The Lewin Group for the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, findings showed that $97.7 billion was spent on drug abuse alone in the United States. In another study done by The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) findings showed that between 1988 and 1995, Americans spent $57.3 billion on illegal drugs. The break down of these findings is as follows: $38 billion on cocaine, $9.6 billion on heroin, $7 billion on marijuana, and $2.7 billion on other illegal drugs and on the misuse of legal drugs.

If you are concerned about yourself or someone you love having a problem with substance miss-use consider these questions. Does the drug user take larger amounts of the drug over longer periods of time than intended? Do they have a persistent desire or one or more unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control their substance use? Is a great deal of time spent in activities necessary to get the substance, taking the substance, or recovering from its effects? Do they continue to use despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent social, psychological, or physical problem that is caused or exacerbated by use of the substance? The content of these questions are representative of a drug abuser. For those who have a problem with drugs, there is help. Drug abuse is not a way of life, it is just a means of getting by.