Prior to beginning work on this discussion, read the required chapters from the

Question

Prior to beginning work on this discussion, read the required chapters from the text and review the required articles for this week. Humans have engaged in psychoactive drug use, sometimes in formal (ceremonial) settings and sometimes recreationally, since before recorded history. It has only been in the last century or so that abuse and addiction have become large-scale problems. Using the literature and your own insights into these issues, formulate an argument as to why the problem has reached its current scale. In your discussion, evaluate the employment of psychoactive drugs from the aspects of a risk-benefits analysis and ethical considerations such as the risk of addiction versus the cost of punitive action. Also explain purely pharmacological issues such as pharmacokinetics and routes of drug administration and dose. If needed, include factors such as supply, cultural attitudes to drug use, and the context of drug use.

Explanation / Answer

One of the most important issues the entire world faces today is substance abuse. People get into drug abuse for various reasons, such as physical, psychological and emotional reasons. People normally start drugs as a recreational thing but later become addict just like smoking and alcohol. This has also introduced drug mafias and violence into the world which challenges border agencies with their new techniques through which they smuggle drugs into a country. They also pull more youngsters into their trap thus making them addicts to keep their market alive.

Although distant tribes used drugs as a recreational element, modern world used them for medicinal purposes such as anesthesia, pain killer etc. People who used drugs for pleasure were treated like outcasts and they were not treated like other people in the society. This caused both the selling and using of drugs to go into secret. This only increased the number of people using drugs. This is more in the individualized and individual cultures as the laws permit and accept individual freedom whereas in collective cultures, using drugs is considered to be socially unacceptable. There are also religious reasons that prevent people from using drugs which consider drug use as unethical. Today, almost all the medicines use at least a small amount of drugs in them and the medical world accepts it.

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