Most discussions
of drugs or the "drug problem" center around chemicals
that society today defines as dangerous, destructive, or downright
evil.
It's a fairly
well-defined chemical "club," comprised of such old-school
street-drug standbys as heroin, cocaine, and PCP -- although
newcomers (GHB, Rohypnol, ecstasy, and "Special K")
are endlessly promoted for membership by the media.
Although they qualify for membership in the problem-drug "club,"
too, most of us probably wouldn't mention aspirin, tobacco, alcohol,
or such pharmaceuticals as Prozac® and Viagra® much in
the conversation.
That's interesting, because they all carry a level of risk to
the individual and society when used improperly -- or, in the
case of tobacco, at least, when used at all.
A basic tenet of pharmacology is that any "drug" (in
the broadest sense of that term) can be used improperly. Any
chemical can be dangerous when taken by the wrong person, in
the wrong dose, or at the wrong time or place.
Example: One of the drugs mentioned has been used and abused
for more than a century, yet its mechanism of action is still
poorly understood.
Research shows that it produces severe tissue damage and causes
birth defects in animals. Even moderately-high doses can be fatal
to adults and results in hundreds of injuries and deaths each
year. Overdoses are a common cause of fatal drug poisoning in
children.
Users can become dependent on the drug, which is known to doctors
by a suspiciously psychedelic-sounding name: acetylsalicylic
acid.
Its common household name is aspirin.
What's our point? Well, it's not to convince you that aspirin
is "bad" or that other drugs are "good,"
or to suggest that it's okay to take heroin or dangerous to use
aspirin.
We only want to show that, by focusing on certain actions and
ignoring others, any chemical can be made to look good or bad,
calamity or cure-all.
To make sense of the endlessly-expanding (but often-bewildering)
body of knowledge about mind- and mood-altering chemicals, we
need to try -- at least as well as we can -- to view drugs and
the "drug problem" in their broader social and cultural
contexts, free from as much hype and hysteria as possible. That
means we'll be leaving aside -- at least for the time being --
debating points about which drugs are "good," which
are "bad," and whether drug use/abuse is moral or immoral.
That doesn't mean that we think such questions are "good"
or "bad," either. It's just that they often get in
the way of a deeper understanding of the seemingly-endless fascination
that psychoactive substances have held for human beings since
human beings have been human beings.
In this booklet, we hope to help this process along by outlining
the actions and effects of drugs of abuse to place their potential
for risk in a rational and appropriate perspective.
We'll also discuss recent shifts in substance use and availability
and review what those changes mean -- both to substance users
and to those who mean to help or hinder them.
But we'll start with another basic: clarifying the concepts and
terms used in discussing the drug problem. And we'll begin with
a definition of the words on the cover of this booklet: "drugs"
and "abuse."
