The Effects of Drugs on Society: Health Problems

Introduction

In the past few years, there has been a major increase of buying and using drugs. Drugs can be used as a stress reliever, a way to escape from reality, and a few other uses. There are some major costs that affect the person as well as the people in that person’s life. One major cost would be health because just like cigarettes, drugs can have a major impact on your body. Drugs can affect organs such as the heart, lungs, liver, stomach, and kidneys. Another major cost is money. Buying drugs can affect your home, transportation, necessities, and hygiene. The U.S has spent billions of dollars on drugs. Drugs can have positive effect on you too. For example, say that you go to the doctor and they prescribe you a drug, you would be able to use the drug freely without being prosecuted. Drugs can also have a negative effect on your brain which can affect your emotions and mind performance. Different drugs such as cocaine, “angel dust”, marijuana, heroin, meth, ecstasy and other substances can do different things to you depending on the drug and the amount taken. Sometimes these drugs can make people do terrible things like kill people, kill themselves, rob someone, and physically abuse their boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, mother, father, or any other person in their life. So the effects of drugs on society are discussed in this essay.

Drugs in history

Drugs have been around us for hundreds of years all around the world. Benjamin Rush was the first person to believe that alcohol caused the person to be drunk, not the person themselves. Drug abuse has plagued the American continent since the 1800s, when morphine, heroin and cocaine were hailed for their amazing curative properties. One of the oldest drugs is marijuana. Marijuana became a cheaper alternative to use that to buy alcohol after the alcohol price was raised. In the 1930s, studies began to emerge that linked marijuana use by lower class communities to crime and violence, leading to the eventual banning of marijuana in 1937. After the banning people continued to use marijuana even after the penalties got worse. Another old drug is amphetamine. This was originally used to help the nervous system, raise blood pressure, and enlarge nasal passages. Amphetamines were widely distributed to soldiers during World War II to combat fatigue and improve endurance and mood, and were prescribed by doctors after the war to help fight depression. Soon this became an over the counter remedy called Benzedrine. Not long after that, a black market emerged and soon amphetamine turned into a smoke-able one called methamphetamine. LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) is a drug that makes you hallucinate/trip. LSD first emerged on the American scene during the 1950s, when the U.S. military and CIA researched the use of LSD as a “truth drug” that could be used to make prisoners talk. This led the psychiatric community to become interested in LSD for its possible therapeutic capabilities for depressed, psychotic and epileptic patients. Eventually, LSD got banned in 1966 and a blackmarket emerged that sold these substances. Opium is the oldest drug to be used. It originates from an opium poppy plant that dates back as far as 3400 BC. The Sumerians called it Hul Gil (the joy plant). Soon the plant got passed to different countries who taught more countries who demanded more growth of it. Today, it is grown in small pots on small parts of the world and it sold to whoever wants it. The US congress bans it in 1905. The Thai army with support from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) launches its operation to destroy thousands of acres of opium poppies from the fields of the Golden Triangle region.

Effects of drugs on society: health issues

Drugs have a lot of healthcare issues. These drugs have a major effect on the mind. When the drugs are taken, most affect the mind and make you hallucinate, trip, relaxed, angry, sad, and lots of other emotions. How long it will affect the mind will depends on two things: type of drug and how it is taken. IVs are the quickest way for drugs to enter your bloodstream. After you inject the drug, your body will almost instantly react and tell the brain you have drugs in your body. The next to fastest way would be inhalation. So, that would be crack cocaine, tramadol, valium, Xanaxes, and other drugs. This will happens one of two ways; it goes through your nasal passages to your brain, or it goes to your lungs and soon goes to the brain. The slowest way is ingestion. This way slowly eases the drug into effect. Eating the drug will dissolve and go through the digestion process and eventually goes to the bloodstream and goes to the brain. Taking drugs also affect taking care of yourself and anyone else in the household. This can affect things such as food, shelter (paying bills), education, hygiene, and several others. As you start taking the drug, you start getting addicted. Once you get addicted you start to want bigger amounts because your body gets used to the amount you take before. After that things become more and more expensive. Soon, you forget to eat, feed your family, pay the bills, and all you worry about is not dying and getting more drugs to get high. After a while, your partner may breakup with you, you might get your kids taken away, you might get your electric and water shut off, or you could get kicked out your home. Taking drugs is very risky as each time you increase the amount you take, you could add too much one day and overdose. Overdosing is extremely dangerous as you could end up in a coma, you could overdose and have no one to find you, or you can die.

Organs take on a lot of the effects of drug taking. Drugs can affect organs such as the lungs, heart, kidneys and liver. Drugs affect the lungs by smoking them. These smoke-able drugs may include pot, marijuana, PCP, heroin, ketamine, prescription opioids, DXM, GHB, and tobacco. These things start to turn your lungs black and cause diseases like bronchitis. Chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and lung cancer. This can potentially worsen to slowing or air and/or air blockage, or worsen asthma symptoms. The heart is also majorly affected. Stimulants may be the most dangerous class of drugs for our hearts. Cocaine, specifically, is considered by the American Heart Association to be the “perfect heart-attack drug”. According to the AHA, “even so-called recreational cocaine users may have higher blood pressure, stiffer arteries and thicker heart muscle walls than non-users — all of which can cause a heart attack. The kidney also get affected by drug taking. Kidneys can be negatively affected by 6 things: exposure to toxins, aging, diabetes, hypertension, kidney stones, and persistent kidney infections. Some of these drugs that affect the kidneys are heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, alcohol, tobacco, and painkillers. Some drugs, once they get to the kidneys, breakdown the cell membranes and basically stat to eat your kidneys. Finally, drugs can affect your liver. The liver is responsible for filtering out unhealthy substances so only the good stuff goes to the bloodstream. When you take drugs, you make your liver work overtime to get all the poison out your body which can be very challenging for one of the smallest organs in your body.

Conclusion

Drugs have been around since 3400 BC and still exist today. Since 3400 BC to 2019 drugs have been around for approximately 5,419 years, that is approximately 1,977,935 days! Between 1915 and 1938, more than 5,000 physicians were convicted and fined or jailed. Millions of people have gotten addicted to drugs, gone to rehab, gotten caught, overdosed, died from overdose, died from body malfunctions, lost everything, and lots more. Drugs have more power than we think and can be stopped, but people choose to keep them in their lives. They cause more harm to than they do good. Some people can do drugs to help their body, but only if it is prescribed by their doctor. People say it helps them cope with their problems and it clears their mind and makes them relaxed. They may be true, but all they are doing is delaying their problems and causing more problems. Drugs affect the person doing the drugs, their family’s life, their friend’s life, and the environment around them. If drugs were people, they would be very bad people because all they would want to do is destroy. Some people go all their lives without touching a single drug. Some go their whole life only knowing drugs. Some people go about their life doing drugs for a little bit and then stop. People have their own opinions and will continue to live their lives thinking whatever they want.

Works Cited

1. Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. (2006). Substance abuse treatment for persons with co-occurring disorders. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
2. Drug Enforcement Administration. (2019). Drugs of abuse: a DEA resource guide. US Department of Justice.
3. Green, L. W., Kreuter, M. W., Deeds, S. G., & Partridge, K. B. (1980). Health education planning: A diagnostic approach. Mayfield.
4. National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2021). Commonly abused drugs. National Institutes of Health.
5. National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2021). DrugFacts: Understanding drug use and addiction. National Institutes of Health.
6. Pinto, F. A., & Pinto, M. A. (2019). Health risks of addiction to illicit drugs. Advances in preventive medicine, 2019.
7. Reuter, P., & Pollack, H. A. (2006). Drug war heresies: Learning from other vices, times, and places. Cambridge University Press.
8. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2019). Key substance use and mental health indicators in the United States: Results from the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. US Department of Health and Human Services.
9. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. (2010). Addiction medicine: Closing the gap between science and practice. Columbia University.
10. World Health Organization. (2019). Substance abuse: Key facts. WHO.