Many governments do not criminalize the possession of a limited quantity of certain drugs for personal use, while still prohibiting their sale or manufacture, or possession in large quantities. Some laws set a specific volume of a particular drug, above which is considered ipso jure to be evidence of trafficking or sale of the drug. Drug prohibition is responsible for enriching "organised criminal networks", according to some critics, [1] and the hypothesis that the prohibition of drugs generates violence is consistent with research done over long time-series and cross-country facts.
Some Islamic countries prohibit the use of alcohol see list of countries with alcohol prohibition. Many governments levy a sin tax on alcohol and tobacco products, and restrict alcohol and tobacco from being sold or gifted to a minor. Other common restrictions include bans on outdoor drinking and indoor smoking. In the early 20th century, many countries had alcohol prohibition. Drugs , in the context of prohibition, are any of a number of psychoactive substances whose use a government or religious body seeks to control.
What constitutes a drug varies by century and belief system.
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What is a psychoactive substance is relatively well known to modern science. Almost without exception, these substances also have a medical use, in which case it is called a Pharmaceutical drug or just pharmaceutical. The use of medicine to save or extend life or to alleviate suffering is uncontroversial in most cultures.
Prohibition applies to certain conditions of possession or use. Recreational use refers to the use of substances primarily for their psychoactive effect outside of a clinical situation or doctor's care. In the twenty-first century, caffeine has pharmaceutical uses. Caffeine is used to treat bronchopulmonary dysplasia. In most cultures, caffeine in the form of coffee or tea is unregulated. A government's interest to control a drug may be based on its perceived negative effects on its users, or it may simply have a revenue interest.
Prohibition of drugs
Great Britain prohibited the possession of untaxed tea with the imposition of the Tea Act of In this case, as in many others, it is not substance that is prohibited, but the conditions under which it is possessed or consumed. Those conditions include matters of intent, which makes the enforcement of laws difficult.
In Colorado possession of "blenders, bowls, containers, spoons, and mixing devices" is illegal if there was intent to use them with drugs. Many drugs, beyond their pharmaceutical and recreational uses have industrial uses. Nitrous oxide , or laughing gas is a dental anaesthetic, also used to prepared whipped cream, fuel rocket engines, and enhance the performance of race cars. The cultivation, use, and trade of psychoactive and other drugs has occurred since ancient times. Concurrently, authorities have often restricted drug possession and trade for a variety of political and religious reasons.
In the 20th century, the United States led a major renewed surge in drug prohibition called the " War on Drugs ". Today's War on Drugs is particularly motivated by the desire to prevent drug use, which is perceived as detrimental to society. The prohibition on alcohol under Islamic Sharia law, which is usually attributed to passages in the Qur'an , dates back to the 7th century.
Although Islamic law is often interpreted as prohibiting all intoxicants not only alcohol , the ancient practice of hashish smoking has continued throughout the history of Islam , against varying degrees of resistance. A major campaign against hashish-eating Sufis was conducted in Egypt in the 11th and 12th centuries resulting among other things in the burning of fields of cannabis.
Though the prohibition of illegal drugs was established under Sharia law, particularly against the use of hashish as a recreational drug , classical jurists of medieval Islamic jurisprudence accepted the use of hashish for medicinal and therapeutic purposes , and agreed that its "medical use, even if it leads to mental derangement , should remain exempt [from punishment]". In the 14th century, the Islamic scholar Az-Zarkashi spoke of "the permissibility of its use for medical purposes if it is established that it is beneficial".
In the Ottoman Empire , Murad IV attempted to prohibit coffee drinking to Muslims as haraam , arguing that it was an intoxicant , but this ruling was overturned soon after his death in Bach 's Coffee Cantata , from the s, presents vigorous debate between a girl and her father over her desire to consume coffee.
Matters of Substance
The early association between coffeehouses and seditious political activities in England, led to the banning of such establishments in the midth century. A number of Asian rulers had similarly enacted early prohibitions, many of which were later forcefully overturned by Western colonial powers during the 18th and 19th centuries.
In , for example, King Ramathibodi I , of Ayutthaya Kingdom now Thailand , prohibited opium consumption and trade. The prohibition lasted nearly years until , when King Rama IV allowed Chinese migrants to consume opium. While the Konbaung Dynasty prohibited all intoxicants and stimulants during the reign of King Bodawpaya — As the British colonized parts of Burma from they overturned local prohibitions and established opium monopolies selling Indian produced opium. Between and , imports of the drug increased fivefold. The drain of silver to India and widespread social problems that resulted from this consumption prompted the Chinese government to attempt to end the trade.
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This effort was initially successful, with the destruction of all British opium stock in May China was defeated and the war ended with the Treaty of Nanking , which protected foreign opium traders from Chinese law. The first modern law in Europe for the regulating of drugs was the Pharmacy Act in the United Kingdom. There had been previous moves to establish the medical and pharmaceutical professions as separate, self-regulating bodies, but the General Medical Council , established in , unsuccessfully attempted to assert control over drug distribution. Poisons could only be sold if the purchaser was known to the seller or to an intermediary known to both, and drugs, including opium and all preparations of opium or of poppies , had to be sold in containers with the seller's name and address.
After the legislation passed, the death rate caused by opium immediately fell from 6. Deaths among children under five dropped from In the United States, the first drug law was passed in San Francisco in , banning the smoking of opium in opium dens. The reason cited was "many women and young girls, as well as young men of respectable family, were being induced to visit the Chinese opium-smoking dens, where they were ruined morally and otherwise. Though the laws affected the use and distribution of opium by Chinese immigrants, no action was taken against the producers of such products as laudanum , a tincture of opium and alcohol, commonly taken as a panacea by white Americans.
The distinction between its use by white Americans and Chinese immigrants was thus based on the form in which it was ingested: Chinese immigrants tended to smoke it, while it was often included in various kinds of generally liquid medicines often but not exclusively used by people of European descent. The laws targeted opium smoking, but not other methods of ingestion.
Britain also passed the All-India Opium Act of , which similarly formalized social distinctions, by limiting recreational opium sales to registered Indian opium-eaters and Chinese opium-smokers and prohibiting its sale to workers from Burma. Following passage of a regional law in , Australia's Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act addressed opium addiction among Aborigines , though it soon became a general vehicle for depriving them of basic rights by administrative regulation.
Opium sale was prohibited to the general population in , and smoking and possession was prohibited in Despite these laws, the late 19th century saw an increase in opiate consumption. This was due to the prescribing and dispensing of legal opiates by physicians and pharmacists to relieve painful menstruation. It is estimated that between , and , opiate addicts lived in the United States at the time, and a majority of these addicts were women.
Since Britain's victory over the Qing Empire in the First Opium War , British traders had sold large amounts of opium to the Chinese to balance their trade. Attitudes towards the morality of this business were slow to change, but in the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade was formed in England by Quakers led by the Rev. By the s, increasingly strident campaigns were waged by Protestant missionaries in China for its abolition.
Due to increasing pressure in the British parliament, the Liberal government under William Ewart Gladstone approved the appointment of a Royal Commission on Opium to India in After an extended inquiry the Royal Commission rejected the claims made by the anti-opiumists in regard to the harm wrought to India by this traffic and the issue was buried for another 15 years. The missionary organizations were outraged over the Royal Commission on Opium 's conclusions and set up the Anti-Opium League in China; the league gathered data from every Western-trained medical doctor in China and published Opinions of Over Physicians on the Use of Opium in China.
This was the first anti-drug campaign to be based on scientific principles, and it had a tremendous impact on the state of educated opinion in the West. In , Broomhall formed and became secretary of the Christian Union for the Severance of the British Empire with the Opium Traffic and editor of its periodical, National Righteousness. He lobbied the British Parliament to stop the opium trade. He and James Laidlaw Maxwell appealed to the London Missionary Conference of and the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of to condemn the continuation of the trade. As Broomhall lay dying, an article from The Times was read to him with the welcome news that an international agreement had been signed ensuring the end of the opium trade within two years.
In , a motion to 'declare the opium trade "morally indefensible" and remove Government support for it', initially unsuccessfully proposed by Arthur Pease in , was put before the House of Commons. This time the motion passed. The Chinese government banned opium soon afterwards.
These changing attitudes led to the founding of the International Opium Commission in This was the first international drug control treaty and it was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on January 23, The treaty became international law in when it was incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles. The role of the Commission was passed to the League of Nations , and all signatory nations agreed to prohibit the import, sale, distribution, export, and use of all narcotic drugs, except for medical and scientific purposes.
In the UK the Defence of the Realm Act , passed at the onset of the First World War , gave the government wide-ranging powers to requisition property and to criminalise specific activities.
A moral panic was whipped up by the press in over the alleged sale of drugs to the troops of the British Indian Army. With the temporary powers of DORA, the Army Council quickly banned the sale of all psychoactive drugs to troops, unless required for medical reasons.
However, shifts in the public attitude towards drugs—they were beginning to be associated with prostitution , vice and immorality —led the government to pass further unprecedented laws, banning and criminalising the possession and dispensation of all narcotics, including opium and cocaine.
After the war, this legislation was maintained and strengthened with the passing of the Dangerous Drugs Act Home Office control was extended to include raw opium , morphine , cocaine , ecogonine and heroin. Hardening of Canadian attitudes toward Chinese opium users and fear of a spread of the drug into the white population led to the effective criminalization of opium for nonmedical use in Canada between and the mids. The Mao Zedong government nearly eradicated both consumption and production of opium during the s using social control and isolation.
Remaining opium production shifted south of the Chinese border into the Golden Triangle region. In , China was estimated to have four million regular drug users and one million registered drug addicts. In the USA, the Harrison Act was passed in , and required sellers of opiates and cocaine to get a license.
While originally intended to regulate the trade, it soon became a prohibitive law, eventually becoming legal precedent that any prescription for a narcotic given by a physician or pharmacist — even in the course of medical treatment for addiction — constituted conspiracy to violate the Harrison Act.
In , the Supreme Court ruled in Doremus that the Harrison Act was constitutional and in Webb that physicians could not prescribe narcotics solely for maintenance. United States , [32] the court upheld that it was a violation of the Harrison Act even if a physician provided prescription of a narcotic for an addict, and thus subject to criminal prosecution. Soon, however, licensing bodies did not issue licenses, effectively banning the drugs. The American judicial system did not initially accept drug prohibition. Prosecutors argued that possessing drugs was a tax violation, as no legal licenses to sell drugs were in existence; hence, a person possessing drugs must have purchased them from an unlicensed source.
After some wrangling, this was accepted as federal jurisdiction under the interstate commerce clause of the U. The prohibition of alcohol commenced in Finland in and in the United States in Because alcohol was the most popular recreational drug in these countries, reactions to its prohibition were far more negative than to the prohibition of other drugs, which were commonly associated with ethnic minorities, prostitution, and vice. Public pressure led to the repeal of alcohol prohibition in Finland in , and in the United States in Residents of many provinces of Canada also experienced alcohol prohibition for similar periods in the first half of the 20th century.
In response to rising drug use among young people and the counterculture movement, government efforts to enforce prohibition were strengthened in many countries from the s onward. Support at an international level for the prohibition of psychoactive drug use became a consistent feature of United States policy during both Republican and Democratic administrations, to such an extent that US support for foreign governments has often been contingent on their adherence to US drug policy.
A few developing countries where consumption of the prohibited substances has enjoyed longstanding cultural support, long resisted such outside pressure to pass legislation adhering to these conventions. Nepal only did so in Similar laws were introduced across the United States. California's broader ' three strikes and you're out ' policy adopted in was the first mandatory sentencing policy to gain widespread publicity and was subsequently adopted in most United States jurisdictions. This policy mandates life imprisonment for a third criminal conviction of any felony offense. Residential treatment is an option, usually reserved for the most severe and complex cases, but is not the only or even the first option for people who use meth.
Kids are less likely to use alcohol and other drugs, including meth, if their parents delay alcohol and drug use as long as possible, have clear rules about behaviour in general and supervise them closely, do not use alcohol or other drugs in front of them and communicate their values about drugs early. School-based drug education can be effective in preventing drug use, but not all programmes in schools reduce the likelihood of alcohol or drug use. One popular programme in the US that has been imported to some parts of Australia and New Zealand, for example, involves ex-users showing confronting images of the negative effects of meth and sharing personal stories of suicide attempts, mental health problems and deaths from meth.
It seems logical that this might dissuade young people from experimenting if they can see the dark side of drug use, but young people think about the world differently to adults, and research has shown that it actually normalises drug use and increases the risk that young people become interested in using meth. Families often suffer a great deal when a relative develops a problem with meth. Agree on boundaries and responses, and stick to these as much as possible.
It can help family members to get support from a therapist who specialises in alcohol or other drug problems in the family or from one of the many support groups available. When families are involved in an effective way, the person using drugs is more likely to engage in treatment and outcomes are better. They work on the premise that the person using is in denial about their drug use and how it affects others. They are designed to force the person to see those connections.
There is also no evidence that forcing people into treatment works to reduce drug use in the long run. It may even backfire, creating more resistance to treatment. As the saying goes: So if confrontation, scare campaigns and misinformation are not solutions, what should we do? Here are the most important things to focus on. Drug and alcohol responses can sometimes be counter-intuitive but if we stick with what we know what works rather than what we think might be helpful, we can effectively tackle the problem of meth use in the community.
This is an important step towards treating drug use a Gaps in access to addiction treatment have prompted 30 organisations to issue an open letter to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern Worried about meth contamination? Should you test for meth resudue, and what if a test comes up positive? And what does it mean for your in Concerns were raised about a West Auckland school using a MethHelp booklet in the classroom.
Those that are not patented or with expired patents are called generic drugs since they can be produced by other companies without restrictions or licenses from the patent holder. Pharmaceutical drugs are usually categorised into drug classes. A group of drugs will share a similar chemical structure , or have the same mechanism of action , the same related mode of action or target the same illness or related illnesses. This groups drugs according to their solubility and permeability or absorption properties. Some religions, particularly ethnic religions are based completely on the use of certain drugs, known as entheogens , which are mostly hallucinogens ,— psychedelics , dissociatives , or deliriants.
Some drugs used as entheogens include kava which can act as a stimulant , a sedative , a euphoriant and an anesthetic. The roots of the kava plant are used to produce a drink which is consumed throughout the cultures of the Pacific Ocean. Some shamans from different cultures use entheogens, defined as "generating the divine within" [20] to achieve religious ecstasy. Mazatec shamans have a long and continuous tradition of religious use of Salvia divinorum a psychoactive plant.
Its use is to facilitate visionary states of consciousness during spiritual healing sessions. Silene undulata is regarded by the Xhosa people as a sacred plant and used as an entheogen. Its root is traditionally used to induce vivid and according to the Xhosa, prophetic lucid dreams during the initiation process of shamans , classifying it a naturally occurring oneirogen similar to the more well-known dream herb Calea ternifolia.
Peyote a small spineless cactus has been a major source of psychedelic mescaline and has probably been used by Native Americans for at least five thousand years. The entheogenic use of cannabis has also been widely practised [26] for centuries. Psychedelic mushrooms psilocybin mushrooms , commonly called magic mushrooms or shrooms have also long been used as entheogens. Nootropics , also commonly referred to as "smart drugs", are drugs that are claimed to improve human cognitive abilities.
Nootropics are used to improve memory, concentration, thought, mood, learning, and many other things. Some nootropics are now beginning to be used to treat certain diseases such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease. They are also commonly used to regain brain function lost during aging. Other drugs known as designer drugs are produced. An early example of what today would be labelled a 'designer drug' was LSD , which was synthesised from ergot.
Since the late s there has been the identification of many of these synthesised drugs. In Japan and the United Kingdom this has spurred the addition of many designer drugs into a newer class of controlled substances known as a temporary class drug. Synthetic cannabinoids have been produced for a longer period of time and are used in the designer drug synthetic cannabis. Recreational drug use is the use of a drug legal, controlled, or illegal with the primary intention of altering the state of consciousness through alteration of the central nervous system in order to create positive emotions and feelings.
The hallucinogen LSD is a psychoactive drug commonly used as a recreational drug. Some national laws prohibit the use of different recreational drugs; and medicinal drugs that have the potential for recreational use are often heavily regulated. However, there are many recreational drugs that are legal in many jurisdictions and widely culturally accepted. Cannabis is the most commonly consumed controlled recreational drug in the world as of It can be used in the leaf form of marijuana grass , or in the resin form of hashish. Marijuana is a more mild form of cannabis than hashish.
There may be an age restriction on the consumption and purchase of legal recreational drugs. Some recreational drugs that are legal and accepted in many places include alcohol , tobacco , betel nut , and caffeine products, and in some areas of the world the legal use of drugs such as khat is common.
There are a number of legal intoxicants commonly called legal highs that are used recreationally. The most widely used of these is alcohol. All drugs, can be administered via a number of routes , and many can be administered by more than one.
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There are numerous governmental offices in many countries that deal with the control and oversee of drug manufacture and use, and the implementation of various drug laws. The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is an international treaty brought about in to prohibit the use of narcotics save for those used in medical research and treatment. In , a second treaty the Convention on Psychotropic Substances had to be introduced to deal with newer recreational psychoactive and psychedelic drugs. The legal status of Salvia divinorum varies in many countries and even in states within the United States.
Where it is legislated against the degree of prohibition also varies. The Food and Drug Administration FDA in the United States is a federal agency responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the regulation and supervision of food safety , tobacco products , dietary supplements , prescription and over-the-counter medications , vaccines , biopharmaceuticals , blood transfusions , medical devices , electromagnetic radiation emitting devices, cosmetics , animal foods [35] and veterinary drugs. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other uses, see Drug disambiguation.