Effects of Drugs
Abuse
The
effects of substance abuse can be felt on many levels: on
the individual, on friends and family, and on society.
On the Individual
People
who use drugs experience a wide array of physical
effects other than those expected. The excitement of a cocaine
high, for instance, is followed by a crash: a period of anxiety,
fatigue, depression, and an acute desire for more cocaine to
alleviate the feelings of the crash. Marijuana and alcohol
interfere with motor control and are factors in many automobile
accidents. Users of marijuana and hallucinogenic drugs may
experience flashbacks, unwanted recurrences of the drug's
effects weeks or months after use. Sudden abstinence from
certain drugs results in withdrawal symptoms. For example,
heroin withdrawal can cause vomiting, muscle cramps,
convulsions, and delirium. With the continued use of a
physically addictive drug, tolerance develops; i.e., constantly
increasing amounts of the drug are needed to duplicate the
initial effect. Sharing hypodermic needles used to inject some
drugs dramatically increases the risk of contracting AIDS and
some types of hepatitis. In addition, increased sexual activity
among drug users, both in prostitution and from the
disinheriting effect of some drugs, also puts them at a higher
risk of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Because
the purity and dosage of illegal drugs are uncontrolled, drug
overdose is a constant risk. There are over 10,000 deaths
directly attributable to drug use in the United States every year;
the substances most frequently involved are cocaine, heroin,
and morphine, often combined with alcohol or other drugs.
Many drug users engage in criminal activity, such as burglary
and prostitution, to raise the money to buy drugs, and some
drugs,
especially alcohol, are associated with violent behavior.
Effects on the Family
The
user's preoccupation with the substance, plus its effects
on mood and performance, can lead to marital problems and
poor work performance or dismissal. Drug use can disrupt
family life and create destructive patterns of codependency,
that is, the spouse or whole family, out of love or fear of
consequences, inadvertently enables the user to continue
using drugs by covering up, supplying money, or denying there
is a problem. Pregnant drug users, because of the drugs
themselves or poor self-care in general, bear a much higher
rate of low birth-weight babies than the average. Many drugs
(e.g., crack and heroin) cross the placental barrier, resulting in
addicted babies who go through withdrawal soon after birth,
and fetal alcohol syndrome can affect children of mothers who
consume alcohol during pregnancy. Pregnant women who
acquire the AIDS virus through intravenous drug use pass the
virus
to their infant.
Effects on Society
Drug
abuse affects society in many ways. In the workplace it is
costly
in terms of lost work time and inefficiency. Drug users
are
more likely than nonusers to have occupational accidents,
endangering themselves and those around them. Over half of
the highway deaths in the United States involve alcohol.
Drug-related crime can disrupt neighborhoods due to violence
among
drug dealers, threats to residents, and the crimes of
the addicts themselves. In some neighborhoods, younger
children are recruited as lookouts and helpers because of the
lighter sentences given to juvenile offenders, and guns have
become commonplace among children and adolescents. The
great majority of homeless people have either a drug or
alcohol problem or a mental illness-many have all three. The federal government
budgeted $17.9 billion on drug control
in 1999 for interdiction, prosecution, international law
enforcement, prisons, treatment, prevention, and related
items. In 1998, drug-related health care costs in the United
States came to more than $9.9 billion.
