Humans have experimented with narcotic and hallucinogenic plants since before recorded history, discovering their properties as they tested plants for edibility or were attracted by the odors of some leaves when these were burned. Ancient cultures used narcotic plants to relieve pain or to heighten pleasure; they used hallucinogenic plants to induce trance-like states during religious ceremonies. …
The federal strategy to reduce illicit drug use is based on the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, Title II (PL 91-513)—commonly called the Controlled Substances Act. This act establishes the criteria for "scheduling," or categorizing, all substances regulated under existing federal law. (See Table 2.1.)…
Before people begin to use a drug more or less regularly, they have to use it for the first time. The government's drug experts call first use of a drug its "incidence" of use or the event of "initiation." The government's chief drug survey, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (formerly called the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, conducted annually by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the U.S. Depart…
Drug use during pregnancy places both mother and infant at risk for serious health problems. A child may become addicted to heroin in its mother's womb—provided the child is born at all (fetal death is a possibility). Cocaine use by the pregnant mother carries similar risks to the fetus and may kill the mother too. LSD use may lead to birth defects. PCP users may have smaller-than-normal babies who later turn out to have poor muscle control. Learning disabilities are associated wit…
The United States justice system has been affected since the early 1900s by attempts to eradicate various drugs. The first legislation aimed at drugs was the Harrison Act of 1914, which outlawed opiates and cocaine. Following that act, laws were passed or amended at intervals, but the war on drugs began in earnest in the early 1970s after Congress passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Ac…
While the accuracy of the above statement is deba-table, there's no question that many policy makers see drugs as a major threat to our national well-being and accordingly propose strong measures to combat that perceived threat. Figure 6.1 and Figure 6.2 present contrasting maps of the perceived drug threat in the 1990s and in the new century. …
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the federal government's approach to combating drug production and trade beyond our borders—the subject of this chapter—has come to merge with the war on terror. The principal agency charged with this effort is the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (which abbreviates its name as INL). The INL is a part of the U.S. Department of State. The case for the convergence b…
Though not all experts agree on a single definition of drug addiction, the 2000 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV Text Revision, or DSM-IV-TR (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2000), is the most widely used reference for diagnosing and treating mental illness and substance-related disorders. In the current DSM, the nation's psychiatrists draw a distinction between "substance abuse" on the one hand and "substance dependence…
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was first detected in 1981 and has been claiming lives since then all over the world. The virus causes an infectious disease that, if left untreated, rapidly develops into acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). People often use the abbreviations HIV and AIDS interchangeably, but there is a definite progression. HIV infection comes first and AIDS is the last stage of the disease. A small percentage of those testing positive for HIV remain unaffected by t…
The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), a part of the White House, issued a report in 2004 on the economic costs of drug abuse, The Economic Costs of Drug Abuse in the United States: 1992-2002 (http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/economic_costs/economic_costs.pdf). The report included such costs as those to the health care system; the cost of crime associated w…
Drug abuse existed long before the Nixon administration declared a "war on drugs" in the 1970s. More than thirty years later this "war" continues with no end in sight. Not surprisingly, the war on drugs, and/or the national policy under which it has been fought by administrations of both major parties, have many critics. One major alternative to the "war" …