In: Nursing
A drug is any chemical or any substance except food which can affect the structure and functioning of the body when taken inside. There are legal and illegal drugs. The Prohibition of illegal drugs created an awareness in the population that it can harm themselves. But the use of psychotropic drugs like alcohol, nicotine – smoking, caffeine, chocolates can also leads to addiction and serious health problems. The problems caused by them are not widely addressed or considered like the illegal drugs.
The commonly accepted use of alcohol and tobacco imposes serious harm on the population than the illegal drugs.
Tobacco and alcohol use is very common even among school-aged children. The Public must be made aware of the ill effects of these commonly used items to reduce its resultant morbidity. Tobacco and alcohol use kills about 435,000 and 85,000 Americans per annum respectively. (Mokdad, Marks, Stroup, & Gerberding, 2004). Meanwhile the combined morbidity of all illegal drugs kills around 17,000 Americans annually (Mokdad et al., 2004),
The individual effects of the psychotropic are also varied. That also creates public confusion. The effect of alcohol and tobacco use is different in different people. So people may use these substances by comparing themselves with the people utilizing these drugs without much ill effects.
Public awareness programs are mainly targeting to reduce the illegal drug use, and they are not giving much importance to the psychotropic drug effects. The widespread social acceptance and social culture of using alcohol, nicotine – smoking, caffeine etc, contribute to the problem.