Drug abuse

[[File:4-milligrams-hydromorphone-iv.jpg|thumb|right|165px|Prescription narcotics are often abused through snorting or injecting them]] {{drugs}}'''Drug abuse''' refers to the systematic use of [[drug]]s for pleasure (rather than medical) reasons. 

==Disorder==
To be classified as as a disorder, it has to have most of the following characteristics:
#It results in physical, mental, and/or emotional harm to the abuser and/or the people in the abuser's life
#The user requires increasing dosages to achieve the same kind of "high"  
#Such a significant portion of the abuser's time is dedicated to thinking, using, and acquiring drugs that their life becomes impacted.

==Users not addicted==
A "chipper" (when it's not a machine for shredding [[Christmas]] trees {{wpl|Murder of Helle Crafts|or wives|)}} is a person who uses many different drugs while avoiding addiction to any specific one. Chippers may, for example, smoke pot on a daily basis, but use "harder" drugs less often enough that they don't become addicts.<ref>http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/chippers</ref> Chippers may be at risk of becoming addicts.

==Drugs subject to abuse==
Virtually every drug can be abused, though some are much more harmful than others, and some are relatively harmless but extremely addictive. Alcohol, amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, caffeine, nicotine, and opiates are by far the most widely used drugs.

The most popular recreational drugs are [[alcohol]], [[caffeine]], [[Tobacco smoking|tobacco]], [[marijuana]], [[heroin]], [[cocaine]], Ecstasy ([[MDMA]]), [[methamphetamine]], and [[crack cocaine]]. 

The Health Officers Council of British Columbia released a study in 2005 entitled [http://www.cfdp.ca/bchoc.pdf A Public Health Approach To Drug Control in Canada], which studied the effects of drugs on Canucks. Well, it is assumed everybody knows that all the French-loving arctic hippies do is smoke weed and act "commie".

==The war on drugs==
{{main|War on Drugs}}
One argument proposes that the War on Drugs (? to present) has increased rates of drug abuse, paralleling events during the 1920-1933 alcohol [[prohibition]] era in the United States.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://web.archive.org/web/20131229232307/http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html |title= Alcohol Prohibition Was A Failure |last= Thornton |first= Mark |date= 17 July 1991 |series= Cato Policy Analysis No. 157 |publisher= The Cato Institutea |access-date= 26 November 2019 |quote= Although consumption of alcohol fell at the beginning of Prohibition, it subsequently increased. [...] Prohibition, which failed to improve health and virtue in America, can afford some invaluable lessons. First, it can provide some perspective on the current crisis in drug prohibition--a 75-year effort that is increasingly viewed as a failure. [...] Prohibition did not achieve its goals. Instead, it added to the problems it was intended to solve and supplanted other ways of addressing problems. The only beneficiaries of Prohibition were bootleggers, crime bosses, and the forces of big government.}}</ref> Since usage is pushed into [[back alleys]], there are no checks on usage or on purity, and no restriction of sales. And since the demand for the product is ''not'' magically eradicated by legislation against it, people will continue buying and using it behind the government's back.{{fact|joke}}

Warring on drugs also becomes extremely expensive to maintain, with costs accruing from the cops policing the drugs, the court system, and the [[jail]]s to hold people for a crime that ultimately harms no one but themselves — assuming it even harms them. The cost per-day to keep someone in jail averages at '''USD $94.82'''<ref>https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/04/30/2018-09062/annual-determination-of-average-cost-of-incarceration#:~:text=The%20fee%20to%20cover%20the,per%20day)%20in%20FY%202017.</ref> — money that could probably be better spent in [[education]] and {{wpl|Drug rehabilitation|rehab}} (or just letting users live with a habit and not forcing people to degrade themselves because American society still considers the concept of [[sin]]-and-[[punishment]] reasonable and valid).

But it looks good for politicians and makes [[private prison]] systems lots of profit, so there isn't much of a hurry to end the war on drugs.

==References==
{{reflist}}

{{stub|Drugs}}

[[Category:Drugs]]
[[Category:Culture]]

Categories: Drugs, Culture