Drug Abuse In America

Drug abuse has a huge range of definitions related to taking a psychoactive drug or performance enhancing drug for a non-therapeutic or non-medical effect. All of these definitions imply a negative judgement of the drug use in question. Some of the drugs most often linked with this term include alcohol, amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, methaqualone, and opium alkaloids. Use of these drugs may lead to criminal penalty in addition to possible physical, social, and psychological harm, both strongly depending on local jurisdiction. Other definitions of drug abuse fall into four main categories: public health definitions, mass communication and vernacular usage, medical definitions, and definitions.

The Tackling Drug Addiction proposal aims to amplify the access of uninsured drug-dependent citizens to inclusive services that respond to their individual needs. To attain this object, the Program is helping Baltimore City to develop a sustainable, high-quality action system that uses research-based clinical practices and that benefit from interagency coordination. The initiative also seeks to display to policymakers and the general public that sound treatment practices and policies will save lives, reduces crime, rebuild families and communities, and use public funds wisely.

The success of this approach may have national meaning as the public seeks alternatives to the nation's ineffective “war on drugs." Current U.S. drug policy emphasizes crop abolition, banning and domestic law enforcement over action and avoidance, although research indicates that treatment is between seven and twenty-three times more cost-effective than its policy alternatives. Despite increased prohibition, drugs have become stronger, cheaper and more easily obtainable and more Americans are in prison for drug related convictions than ever. Additional, civil rights are eroded by drug laws permitting asset penalty without due process and by sentencing inequities.

Drug addiction is one of the most common diseases in the United States. It is predictable that over nine million Americans need drug treatment, making addiction more common than coronary heart disease and stroke and as prevalent as cancer. Addiction exacts an enormous burden on the nation, costing an estimated $69 billion in lost productivity, $12 billion in health care costs and $10 billion in spending on child welfare systems. There are more than 9,000 drug-induced deaths each year; and 25% of the nation's AIDS cases result from injection drug use. Further, drug related arrests have significantly contributed to the doubling of the nation's incarceration rate since 1985.

Drug use in the United States is extensive. The National Household Study conventionally estimated that 14 million citizens over the age of 12 were current drug users in 1997. The first choice to use drugs is voluntary; as addiction develops, though, continued drug use becomes largely involuntary. Indeed, addictive drugs induce persistent changes in the brain that partially explain both the compulsive nature of drug use and the risk of relapse.

Genetic, individual and environmental factors play a role in the development of many illnesses, including addiction. As addiction runs in families, scientists are currently working to discover its precise genetic mechanism. Individual factors, such as the presence of depression or other psychiatric illness, may increase a person's vulnerability to addiction. Social factors, including environmental stress and drug availability, also play a role. Finally, addictive drugs produce powerful physical and emotional changes that contribute to compulsive drug taking.

• Felicia Byrnes
• 02/04/2009, 4:59 AM
• 0 Comments