Chapter 12 – Drug Use

Myths 

• Myth​: Marijuana is widely regarded as so dangerous that it is banned in virtually all states in the United States
  • Reality​: At least 16 states have already legalized the medical use of marijuana because it has proved effective for relieving pain and controlling nausea in seriously ill patients.
• Myth​: If people use marijuana they will inevitably end up using a harder drug such as heroin and cocaine.
  • Reality​: Marijuana is not the cause of drug escalation; the cause is more likely the marijuana user’s having friends who are already using the harder drug.
• Myth​: There is a lot of truth in the popular saying that “once a junkie, always a junkie.” If we get hooked on heroin, we won’t be able to kick the addiction.
  • Reality​: The addiction can go away if the cause of heroin use is removed, In the 1970’s, for example, most (over 90 percent) of the U.S soldiers who had been addicted to heroin while in Vietnam eventually overcame their addiction After returning home. The reason was that they no longer had the urge to use heroin, which had risen from extraordinarily stressful experience of the Vietnam War.
• Myth​: Given it’s tougher laws against drug use, the United States has a lower rate of drug use than do most other countries.
  • Reality​: The United States has the highest of drug use in the world, and U.S high school senior also have the highest rate among their peers in the industrial world.
• Myth​: Drug use is so pervasive that it invades every nook and cranny of society, enslaving all classes of Americans to the same extent.
  
  • Reality​: Most drug problems are largely confined to the lower classes, particularly to socially and economically oppressed minorities. Drug use and overdose among the non-poor, middle class, or affluent are generally far less common.
• Myth​: Drug use causes crime as indicated by the fact that many poor drug users are forced to rob or steal to get money for their next fix.
  
  • Reality: ​Drug use does not necessarily cause crime because most drug users with criminal record have started committing crimes before using drugs.
• Myth​: Most people who smoke cigarettes are not aware of the hazards of smoking.
  
  • Reality​: Most smokers are acutely aware of the hazards of smoking. In fact, they tend to greatly overrate the risk of smoking.

“​Drug Use in Perspective ​”

• Myth: ​Legal drugs like alcoholic beverages and tobacco cigarette are less dangerous than illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine, as legal drugs can cause less harm to our bodies. The reality is that legal drugs are more dangerous, they kill more people. The reason why is that legal drugs such as alcohol and cigarettes are more common than other drugs. The number of Americans who consume alcohol is 125 million and the number of Americans that smoke is 62 million. After that said, alcohol and cigarettes are most popular than illegal drugs.
• Myth: ​If a certain drug is illegal, it must be dangerous. The reality is that the legal prohibition of a drug does not necessarily mean that the drug are dangerous. For example, the drug Opium was legal two centuries ago with the effect of the cure for it all and today it is illegal with the effect of the cause for all ills. Legal prohibition depends on the temper of the time and place.
• Myth: ​People who use illegal drugs typically become addicted, compulsive, or heavy users. The reality is that most people who use illegal drugs do so only experimentally, occasionally, or moderately, without sliding down the slippery slope to compulsive and uncontrollable use. This means that the majority of illegal drug users know how control what they do.

Illegal Drugs: Their Effects and Users

• Most drugs can be differentiated into three categories according to their effects on the user’s central nervous system:
  • The first category includes stimulants also known as the uppers such as cocaine, crack caffeine, and nicotine. These drugs can stimulate the activity of the central nervous system, temporarily producing alertness and excitation as well as suppressing fatigue and sluggishness.
  • The second category consists of depressants also known as downers such as heroin, PCP, morphine, and aspirin. These drugs reduce the activity of the nervous system, so they can relax muscles, relieve anxiety, alleviate pain, create euphoria, or induce sleep.
  • The third category is composed of hallucinogens also known as psychedelics such as LSD and MDMA (Ecstasy). These drugs can affect the nervous system, altering the user’s perception of reality.
• All the previously mentioned illicit drugs belong in one of the three categories except marijuana. Marijuana is in a class by itself, because it can affect the user in the same way as each of the three types of drugs.

Five Factors

• 5 factors that can influence the effects of drugs are:
  • Dosage: the higher the dosage or among
  • Purity: the more potency in on the heroin or cocaine the easier is to get “high”
  • Drug mixing: a combination of drugs such cocaine and heroin has a synergistic or multiplier effect on the user.
  • Administration: intravenous injection, produces a stronger effect.
  • Habituation: a drug has a greater effect on occasional users than chronic users.

Marijuana

• Marijuana is the most widely used illegal drug in the United States.
• Marijuana is derived from the Indian hemp plant called cannabis sativa. They considered it sacred and useful drug.
• The top of the plant produces a sticky resin containing a psychoactive substance. A small portion of this psychoactive resin flows downward and coats the lower part of the plant.
• What is typically sold and bought as marijuana (“grass,” “weed,” “pot,” or “dope”) in the United States comes from the entire plant. When only the top of the plant is harvested, the product is hashish, which is far more psychoactive potent than marijuana. Both marijuana and hashish can be eaten or drunk, but are commonly smoked in the form of cigarettes. The plant can grow all over the world, but the better grades come from the United States, Mexico, Jamaica and Thailand.
• The former head of the Bureau of Narcotics states: In the earliest stages of intoxication the willpower is destroyed and inhibitions and restraints are released; moral barricades are broken down and often debauchery and sexuality result. Where mental instability is inherent, behavior is generally violent. Later many researchers found that marijuana tends to inhibit rather than induce aggressive behavior.
• Smokers can experience short-term effects such as memory loss, anxiety, and increased heart rate.
• Chronic smokers can eventually develop cancer, respiratory diseases, and heart problems.
• If smoked in large doses for an extended period, marijuana can be physically addictive.
• If marijuana use is discontinued, the user will suffer withdrawal symptoms such as mild nausea, restlessness, and loss of appetite. But when use moderately, it can create euphoria, heighten sensitivity, improve perception, and increase appetite.
• Marijuana can be psychologically addictive, but only mildly so, because it is not as immensely pleasurable as cocaine or heroin.
• If used to the point of intoxication, marijuana can create problems in the same way as alcoholic beverages. It may impair intellectual judgment, short-term memory, and human psychomotor function.
• Marijuana can also be used for medical purposes, particularly for the benefit of the very ill, it includes people with AIDS and cancer.

Heroin

• Heroin is also known as p-dope
• Heroin is an analgesic, and most heroin come from opium poppies.
• Heroin can be smoked, sniffed through the nose, taken orally, or injected into the skin, muscle, or a vein.
• Moderate doses of heroin can help with anxiety and tension.
• Heroin can induce euphoria. The drug itself does not cause the euphoric feeling, the user must learn to achieve the sense of pleasure from heroin injection.
• Injection through the vein, or mainly lining, produces the quickest and most intense high.
• Once users try heroin several times they feel an extreme pleasure from the drug experience. This can easily lead to psychological dependence of the drug.
• According to an ethnographic study, which encouraged addicts to express their feelings, most heroin addicts seek something between withdrawal avoidance and euphoria. What they seek is “a temporary calm and serenity, feelings of normalcy, relaxation, and capability to provide them with a respite from the bleak harshness of their lives.
• Although heroin is addictive, most users do not become addicts. Heroin users gets less and less pleasure from the drug after their early experiences of euphoria.
• The withdrawal symptoms include profuse sweating, running nose, watering eyes, chills, cramps, nausea, and diarrhea.
• Heroin may be harmless when compared with other psychoactive drugs. As, long as the heroin addicts do not neglect other aspects of their lives, they can remain as healthy as the nonuser.
• Street junkies tend to suffer the consequences of narcotic laws. Heroin black market prices are high and this leads the user in committing burglaries, shoplifting, gambling, prostitution, and other possessive crimes.

Cocaine and Crack

• Also, known as “coke,” “snow,” and “toot,
• revived from the leaves of coca plants
• 90 percent of the coca plants in the world are grown on the mountains of Peru and Bolivia and it is their major exports but it processed into cocaine in Colombia.
• Before it became illegal it was used as medicines to cure some disorder and was ingredient in some drinks, such as Coca-Cola and some wines.
• This drug use to be symbol of wealth.
• Crack cocaine is much cheaper and is popular in working class and poor people.
• Cocain increases the heartbeat and raises blood pressure, self-confidence and energy.
• Cocain is extremely psychologically addictive but Crack is more addictive and it can lead to heart attack or death.

Meth and Roofies

• Meth (methamphetamine) has, since 1995, risen but it used to be a popular drug in the past. Hitler and Kennedy was a meth addict.
• Today meth is cheap and easily available.
• Its poor man’s cocaine and popular among white 18- to 34-year-old working-class.
• The high from the meth lasts four or five times longer than that cocaine.
• It suppresses appetite, boost self-confidence and energy but depression and intense paranoia will be set in.
• Unlike meth, roofies is a depressant drug. It is related to Valium but is ten times stronger.
• Users like to combine the drug with alcohol for a quick high.
• Roofies make some users aggressive and fearless and it also known as “the date-rape drug.
• It can cause blackouts with a total loss of memory

Ecstasy

• Ecstasy, known properly as MDMA.  An amphetamine derivative.
• Popular with high school and college students.
• Ecstasy is a psychedelic and makes the user feel happier and they feel their mind gets clearer, and their memory improves.
• Ecstasy is nicknamed the “hug drug.
• It was used by some therapists by the late 1970s; In 1985, the law made the Ecstasy illegal.
• It can cause brain damage.
• Two major problems: 1. Ecstasy made in illegal labs and can be lethal 2. dehydration

Social Dimensions of Drug Use

• Drug use is not an individual behavior, it is social behavior
• The use of illegal drugs is quite common in the United States
• The United States as a whole has the highest rate of drug use in the world,
• the rate of drug use steadily declined from 1980 to 1992, and since 1992 the rate has remained about the same
• Users of marijuana far outnumber users of any other drug

Drugs and AIDS

• injection of an illegal drug can spread HIV
• Most drug users with AIDS are addicted to heroin
• IV drug users with AIDS make up less than 10 percent of all AIDS cases in Holland, Sweden, and Canada. this figure is over 30 percent in the United States
• higher in some U.S. cities: 40 percent in New York City and 65 percent in Newark.
• AIDS among gays had a sharp drop and the reason is the practice of safe sex
• IV drug users refuse to practice safe needle use because they must shoot up right away and addict’s lifestyle is risk taking and is related to social background.

Drugs and Crime

• People who use illegal drugs generally commit more crime than those who do not
• According to drug enslavement theory, drug users are forced into a life of crime because they cannot afford expensive drug
• According to general deviance syndrome theory, most drug users with a criminal record have committed crime before using drugs.
• Drug use increase the frequency of criminal activity.

Drugs and Socioeconomic Status

• Socioeconomic status related to the type of illicit drug being used. 
• he higher the status, the more likely the use of marijuana.
• Lower-status: Heroin
• Cocaine associated with rich people but not anymore because is cheaper now.
• Crack is the poor person’s drug
• meth and roofies, mainly used by working-class and young people and some working-class women to lose weight.
• Ecstasy is associated with high school and college students and young professionals.
• Most people who use drugs tend to use more than one type.

Social Profile of Illegal Drug Users

• Illegal drug users have a few notable characteristics that can set them apart from normal people:
• Men are more likely to use than women.
  • Men are already more likely to commit deviant acts.
  • They are only slightly more likely to use drugs.
  • They however use more often, and are more likely to become addicts.
• Users tend to be aged 18-25.
  • The most common range here is 18-19.
  • Younger people are freer of parental control and responsibilities.
  • Likewise, your chances of becoming addicted go up if you’re unemployed, unmarried, and/or childless.
• Drug users learn to use from parents and peers .
  • Meth users will share with relatives. (unlikely with other drugs).
  • Children are more likely to see parents using legal drugs, and learning to use those.
  • After that, they turn to use illegal drugs.
• Young users will be less likely to be tied to school, church, and the home.
  • Drug users are more likely to cut classes or drop out of school.
  • They will often skip church services.
  • They will also not attend many recreational activities.

What Causes Illegal Drug Use?

• There are many theories that can explain drug use from the positivist perspective. Most can be divided into three main types:

• Biological theories: Addiction comes from biological factors, such as inherited tolerance
• Psychological theories: Addiction comes from personality traits, such as low self esteem
• Sociological theories: Addiction comes from social forces, like peer pressure
• There is little data to support the first group, however the last two have a bit more evidence.

Economic Deprivation Theory

• In 1993, after 40 years of research, Elliott Currie concluded that addiction correlated with social deprivation, economic marginality, and cultural breakdown. He noted reasons someone in poverty may turn to drugs in response to their status:
• They wish to obtain status from using.        
  • There are few opportunities for legitimate status.
  • So drug cultures begin to form, and offer esteem that way
• They want to cope with their situation.
  • Drugs can help distract from daily problems
• Drugs can provide structure or purpose to the individual taking them.
  • Stable jobs or families are unavailable.
  • The drugs offer an escape from the resulting monotony.
• Drugs are seemingly readily available
  • It’s simply very easy for a poor person to find drugs.
• Drugs can help those in poverty meet a few human needs. Unfortunately, this doesn’t explain drug use among the well-off.

Cognitive Association Theory

• Alfred Lindesmith theorized in 1968 about how one became addicted. He suggested that it was only possible to become addicted to drugs if the user experiences withdrawal distress. Hypothetically then, somebody that never notices a withdrawal would not become addicted. He found some evidence:
  • Not all recipients became addicted to morphine after surgery
  • The ones that didn’t were not told their nausea was caused by withdrawal
  • The doctors instead told them it was a part of the process of recovery
  • So the patients pushed through it instead of requesting for more morphine.
  • The mentally impaired, small children and animals did not suffer from addiction.
  • They cannot understand withdrawal
  • The theory explains how people of average intelligence can be hooked. It is also possible we want to eliminate stress immediately

Social-Psychological Theory

• There are various sociological and psychological factors that may lead to drug use. The sociological tend to focus on how society operates

Societal factors:

• Peers, such as family and friends may influence each other
• Legal drugs are widespread in society.
  • Tobacco and alcohol are widely advertised.
  • Pharmacies will push their products on doctors.
  • The public will demand these medicines for pains.
  • All of this makes legal drug users more open to trying illegal ones.
• Lack of attachment
• Having friends that use
• Being a member of a drug-using subculture
• Easy access to drugs

Psychological factors:

• Low self-esteem
• Powerlessness
• Being rebellious
• Receptivity to risk taking
• Expecting the drug to increase status
• It’s worth noting that subjects with a personal problem will go to one specific drug to help with it. An aggressive person may turn to meth to mellow out. Depressed individuals may turn to cocaine. Weaker individuals may take steroids.

The War on Drugs

• The war on drugs attempts to combat drug use by using two main strategies:
  • Punitive: using law enforcement to stop the flow of drugs and to punish dealers and users.
    • This has been given a budget of $8.3 billion.
    • Incarceration of addicts has skyrocketed as a result.
  • Supportive: Using education and treatment to reduce demand and to help addicts.
    • This has been focused on considerably less, with a budget of $4.6 billion

Historical Pattern

• The war on drugs turned out to be a war on powerless groups, particularly minorities.
• There’s been preventive measures to battle drug use in the past,
• An example of this was in 1875, in San Francisco. The first opium dens were introduced by Chinese coolies who were imported to work on a railroad construction crew.
• They soon became a threat because of the white labor market, due to this anti opium laws were established. These laws were based more on racial hatred and related economic concern than of facts on drugs.
• Another example is in 1900, many state laws and municipals were enacted against the use of cocaine.
• These laws were anti-black laws.
• Blacks widely used the drugs, but white fearfully believed that a cocaine high could spur blacks to violence against whites, and sexual assault would be committed by blacks toward white women
• These laws were in placed to control blacks and keep them in their so called “place”.
• The Marihuana Tax Act in 1937, was aimed toward Migrant Mexican workers who were working in the west and southwest who were known to smoke marijuana. There were strong prejudices against Mexicans implementing that they would commit murder, and rape.
• Since the 1960’s, drug use has stopped being associated exclusively with poor minorities. Because of the large numbers of conventional middle class whites using drugs, particularly marijuana.

Punitive Strategy: Law Enforcement

• As we can see in the pattern the poor minorities are more likely to be affected in some way by drug use and being often arrested or imprisoned.
• African Americans, often receive longer sentence than white offenders. The majority of blacks, are convicted because of crack cocaine offenses in federal court.
• Discrimination against minorities such as African Americans and Hispanics; worsen their drug problems by siphoning off government funds that can be used toward education and treatment programs. Because of this these two groups have the highest rates of drug addiction and other severe problems in U.S Society
• Our government has gone to great lengths to eradicate narcotic plants in other poor countries. We spent millions of U.S dollars for the destructions of plants and we made threats to cut of U.S Aid but many countries fail to reduce drug production.
• Because of this the (DEA) the drug enforcement agency and other law enforcement agencies have often seized a lot of drugs crossing illegally into the U.S.

Debate Over Legalizing Drugs

• The failure of the law enforcements approach has led to call for legalization of drugs.
• Because of the crime it generates, including homicides current drugs like during Prohibition did more harm than good.
• Milton Friedman 1989 argued that “Addicts are driven to associate with criminals to get the drugs and become criminal themselves to finance the habit. “
• There were cases here drugs laws encouraged official corruption because of huge profits.
• By legalizing it gave more an advantage for the government to take away obscene profits from drug traffickers, end police corruption, and reduce crime drastically.
• Legalization can produce profits for programs and others could be recovered. It also can reduce drug use and addiction.
• The other view of legalization is the fear that drug addiction will skyrocket.
• As William Bennett (1989) a former nation drug policy director, “After the repeal of Prohibition, consumption of alcohol soared by 350 percent “
• According to Sociologist Elliot Currie”, Crime is rooted through the problem of poverty, racism and inequality. He proposes that the government eradicate the cause of the problem by providing employment to all, increasing the minimum wage, expanding Job Corps, increasing health care for the poor, offering paid family leave, providing affordable housing and reducing social inequality.
• A third approach to was a middle ground between all our criminalization and legalization. An example of this would be legalizing to adults and criminalizing to sale a small amount to a minor.

Supportive Strategy: Prevention and Treatment

• The supportive strategy to preventing drug use via education and treatment for addicts and their addiction nonetheless exist.
• Drug Prevention: This most popular drug prevention project known as DARE, involved police officers teaching a drug education class at local schools. The aim of this program was to prevent drug use, but it wasn’t as successful in achieving its goal according to Researchers. Although it did enhance children’s self-esteem, polish their social skills and improve their attitudes toward police.
• Dare doesn’t work for children who are already risk of using drugs. Who are these children? They are children with the following experiences:
• Family History of Alcoholism
• Family history of criminality
• Poor parental child-rearing practices, such as lax supervision and constant criticism
• Parental Drug use or permissive attitudes toward drugs
• Early antisocial behavior in school, especially aggressiveness
• Alienation and low commitment to getting to education
• Academic Failure in middle to late elementary school education
• Socializing with friends who take drugs (Levine 1986)
• Drug education alone cannot work for children with these problems unless the family, school, community, and the society also work together to deal with the impact of these issues on children
• Drug Treatment: There is three kind treatments for drug addicts that exist
• First: Detoxification involves of a non-narcotic chemical or required rest to bring the patient into drug free state . It cannot cure addiction because the craving for drug remains, but it makes the patient more amenable to psychotherapy or other treatment programs for designed to cure addiction.
• Second: Psychological therapy, including aversion therapy, personal therapy, and group therapy. Aversion therapy involves making patients associate their drug choice with some unpleasant experience,
• Third: Therapeutic community involves drug addicts living together like members of a family. Cut off from outside contacts, including family and friends, these addicts support each other, helping each other live a drug-free life.
• Many studies suggest that any treatment can work better if the patients are employed and can earn a good income, receive adequate support from others such as family and friends, or free from a drug-abuse subculture. (Abadinsky,1993).

Abusing Prescription Drugs, Particularly Oxycontin

• There’s number of reasons why there’s been an increase of prescription drug-use abuse.
• One reason is implying the drug is easily available, thanks to share increases in prescriptions written by doctors as well as the drugs being sold online without prescription.
• There other reason is the mistaken assumption that it is relatively safe to take because there are legal.
• Oxycontin has fueled from the medical establishment because the aggressive way doctors started treating pain in the 1990’s. This caused pharmaceutical companies to produce may different pain killing qualities in large quantities.. Then along with marketing campaigns on these drugs. Through pressure through doctors, they encourage doctors to use this.
• The problem with this doctor didn’t know how to distinguish if their clients were in pain or not. Sometimes they would over prescribed, and sometimes their clients lied about the pain.
• Oxycontin is the highest number one brand of abused drugs, the users ages range from 12 and older by those who do not obtain it legally is just about 600,000.

Smoking Cigarettes

• In 1964, that when the U.S Surgeon General first announced the conclusion of a scientific study that smoking is causally related to lung cancer. Since then there has been many reports on the dangers of smoking.
• In the past government has even forced the tobacco industry to pay more than 500 billion over 25 years for health care cost, an enormous sum in view of the tobacco industry makes more than that a year.
• 27 % of the U.S population individuals over the age of 12 smoke regularly.

 White teenagers are more likely than black teenagers to smoke

• Among adults, African Americans smoke the most and Asians are the lowest percentage to smoke.
• Even though there are terrible hazards of smoking, many cannot smoke because of addiction
• The benefits of smoking outweigh the cost, the benefits like releasing tension, feeling relaxed, enjoying quiet companionship or lively conversation and believing that smoking rather than eating help keep weight down.

A Global Perspective on Smoking

• Since the 196o’s smoking has increased in developing countries such as Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as Eastern Europe.
• The reason of this is the lack of laws required for warning smokers of the hazards of smoking, and restricting advertising and promotions. Also, prohibiting in workplaces or public places.
• In both developed and developing countries men are more likely than women to smoke. The ratio of male to female in developing countries is much greater in developed countries.
• The most common factor in youthful smoking is peer pressure, easy access to cigarettes and relatively low prices.