“Although addiction is the result of voluntary drug use, addiction is no longer voluntary behavior, it’s uncontrollable behavior.” —Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse “Drug addicts and...
The goal of reducing drug abuse has shaped some of the U.S. government's most uncompromising policies. From the strict surveillance of the U.S.- Mexican border to national antidrug advertising campaigns, federal efforts to reduce drug abuse have...
IN LOS ANGELES a twenty-something fashion photographer goes to the Room, a back-alley bar with no sign over its entrance. Around midnight a man walks in and hands the photographer a packet of heroin in exchange for a hundred dollars. The photographer...
Drug abuse has been a major social problem in the United States for almost a century and we are now in the second decade of a continuing war on drugs. Drug abuse is a health and criminal justice problem that also has implications for nearly every facet...
Hearing the word epidemic, one often thinks first of the flu, measles, the ACQUIRED IMMUNODEFICIENCY SYNDROME (AIDS), or some other contagious disease spreading through a community. In epidemics with person-to-person spread of infection and disease,...
Throughout most of recorded history, excessive use of ALCOHOL was viewed as a willful act leading to intoxication and other sinful behaviors. The Bible warns against drunkenness; Islam bans alcohol use entirely. Since the early nineteenth century, the...
One major debate in the area of families and drug use continues to be whether dysfunctional family life creates drug addiction or whether drug addiction produces dysfunctional families. In other words, are ALCOHOLISM and other drug addictions diseases...
American adolescents increased their use of most illicit substances throughout the 1990s after a significant drop in the previous decade, and in 1999 Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey responded to the recent Monitoring the Future study by saying drug use...
Drinking, smoking, and the use of psychotropic drugs have a variety of consequences for those who partake of them, for their families and associates, and for society at large. A number of these consequences are negative. Smokers die young from heart or...
Drugs that are used and abused by humans for nonmedical purposes can be grouped into several major categories. The drugs in each category have similar effects on the user, even though they may differ in the way they produce those effects. The major...
Does gender have an influence on whether abuse of a drug causes complications? Because many early studies of substance abuse were only of male subjects, this question long went unanswered. Later researchers, prompted by the concerns raised by the...
What makes a person abuse drugs? Some people never use drugs, even if drugs are easy for them to obtain. Others use drugs occasionally or regularly for years but never become dependent. And some people become addicted and unable to function without...
Have you ever questioned which came first: the chicken or the egg? That age-old question is much like the dilemma experts grapple with: Do problems in family life lead to drug addiction, or does drug addiction lead to problems in families?...
The World Health Organization (WHO) originated from a proposal at the first United Nations (U.N.) conference held in San Francisco in 1945 that "a specialized agency be created to deal with all matters related to health." This proposal...
AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome: AIDS is a life-threatening disease that results from severe damage to part of the body's cellular immune system—the defense system against opportunistic infections and some cancers. The...
The term personality refers to those relatively enduring aspects of attitudes, feelings, responses, and behaviors that permit us to recognize a particular person whom we have known over time. It is, in a way, a fingerprint of an individual's...
When two or more drugs are taken at the same time complex interactions may occur. Drugs can interact to change biological functions within the body through PHARMACOKINETIC or PHARMACODYNAMIC mechanisms or through their combined toxic effects. Changes...
Each year, thousands of individuals of all ages visit hospital emergency departments due to medical problems stemming from drug abuse. Sometimes they die as a result of these problems. Efforts to keep track of these visits give scientists a clue as to...
This family of studies is designed to provide comprehensive information on continuing and new questions about the effectiveness of the drug-abuse treatment that is available in a variety of publicly funded and private programs. These data update and...
AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is a life-threatening disease that results from severe damage to part of the body's immune system. This system serves as a defense against infections and some cancers. AIDS is caused by infection with...
One of the most popular stereotypes about drug use is that it is more prevalent among the poor. In fact, a lack of money—in itself—does not seem to be associated with drug use. Empirical research has found, however, that in the United...
The relationship between cults and drug use is complex and contradictory. Traditionally, cults are groups that diverge from major religions or that form new philosophical/religious systems, often around a charismatic leader. Consequently, at any given...
Many injectable drugs are used for medical purposes. Some of these prescription drugs are used illegally, as are a variety of street drugs. Illegal and abused injectable drugs can include nearly any drug that can be produced in a liquid form. The user...
In Italy, the impact of illicit drug use was first felt on a broad scale during the mid-1960s. The patterns in Italy were similar to those seen in other European countries. They seemed to be associated with the contestation by young people of existing...
A behavior pattern characterized by such behaviors as stealing, violence, running away from home, and truancy occurs in about 10 percent of children under 16 years of age. Within the framework of the DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL of Mental...
Does gender have an in-fluence on whether a drug has complications? There is limited research available to answer this question, for many studies include men only. In general, women drink less often and in smaller amounts than men do, and they suffer...
Do the poor use drugs more frequently than other economic groups? While many people would answer "yes" to that question, research indicates that a lack of money alone does not increase the chances that a person will use drugs. The...
Substance abuse and dependence on substances continue to be major health problems in the United States. The abuse of alcohol and drugs costs the nation billions of dollars in health-care costs and reduced or lost productivity each year. Since the...
Coping is the capacity to surmount negative emotional states, including ANXIETY, DEPRESSION, anger, loneliness, and alienation. These aversive states are induced by internal psychological conflict or by external STRESS. Effectiveness in appraising and...
The Drug Abuse Reporting Program began in 1969 as a comprehensive data system that included intake and during-treatment information on individuals entering drug treatment programs funded by the U.S. government. Over time, it was the basis for carrying...
The use of drugs by the American military in Vietnam was not a recognizable problem during the early stages of the war. However, as the conflict dragged on, drug use among the troops became symptomatic of the larger problems facing the United States...
In a time when the use of many drugs is illegal in the United States and the public is inundated with information on such drug use, it is probably surprising that this set of circumstances is a historically recent phenomenon. Throughout most of the...
This term refers to the common observation that individuals who are considered drug abusers often abuse more than one type of drug. Almost all drug abusers smoke NICOTINE cigarettes and a large proportion consume alcoholic beverages, but many of them...
Concern about drug use in the U.S. workforce has focused on the most common illicit drugs—COCAINE and MARIJUANA—although also common is the nonmedical use of TRANQUILIZERS, SEDATIVES, and STIMULANTS. In 1990, about 7 percent of employed...
A maladaptive pattern of substance use characterized by significant adverse consequences related to the repeated use of the substance (for instance, ALCOHOL, NICOTINE, COCAINE, HEROIN, CANNABIS). The term is difficult to define precisely because the...
Elderly people are the fastest-growing segment of the world population, and they consume about 25 percent of all the medicines prescribed. Because aging causes changes in various systems of the body, the ability to handle medication is different in the...
Drug abuse has a wide range of definitions related to taking a psychoactive drug or performance enhancing drug for a non-therapeutic or non-medical effect. Some of the most commonly abused drugs include alcohol, amphetamines, barbiturates,...
