Drug Dependence is a Condition - Essay Example

Drug Dependence is a Condition The use of drugs and other pharmaceuticals has been a part of human history since ancient times. Back in the times ofearlier civilizations, drugs were often used in the form of herbs, salves, and crushed powders. As technology and science emerged, scientists learned how to control the active ingredients in these drugs. Thus, drugs became more pure and more potent than their counterparts. Many effects of these drugs were unknown and often had bad side effects. As a result, many substances are concerned illicit and have been outlawed by many countries.

This promotes the sale and use of these illicit substances underground, which has lead to an entire economy, which is based of the illegal sale of drugs. Different types of drugs have different mechanisms of action. Depending on the type of drug and the form in which it is administered can cause a wide range of variation of symptoms. Almost all drugs, however, interact with the dopaminergic reward system. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter which is often a pleasure producing chemical. Drugs can either act as agonists or antagonists on receptors, which impact the secretion of this rewarding chemical.

As a result, drug users use this in order to achieve the euphoria. Eventually, it takes more and more of the drug in order to achieve the same level of euphoria. This is the beginning of addiction. For drug users who have been using for years, this addiction becomes life essential to the point that it has altered their physiology and if they were to stop using, it would result in death. Thus this addiction moves from becoming a criminal intention to a medical condition. For example, methamphetamines are an extremely powerful drug, which can lead to the chemical addiction as mentioned above.

The withdrawal symptoms can have severe physiological symptoms as well as lead to death due to the lack of medication. This lead to the production of a medicine known as methadone, which is a pharmaceutical which can keep the side effects from methamphetamine occurring, but itself is addicting. In addition, the war on drugs has been occurring for many years, but illegal drugs still are being used and will still make their way onto the streets. As long as there are buyers and sellers, the drug trades and cartels will continue to exist as they find better and more covert ways of initiating their drug transactions.

The one way to defeat the war on drugs is through proper treatment of those effected and proper education. If this occurs, it destroys the targeted population of sellers. The National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study showed that quality of life increased and drug use decreased as a result of people receiving the proper medical and psychological support. In addition, the sale and use of drugs also often has comorbidity with other criminal activity such as gang activity, murder, etc. By structuring proper educational programs and rehabilitation programs, people will continue to get better and it will decrease the population that is susceptible to the use of these drugs.

Millions of dollars of drug money is exported to overseas to drug cartels that supply the drugs to users in many different countries. As long as the need for drugs exists, the relationship will continue. By rehabilitating, rather than punishing, you are curing drug addicts addiction to where they do not need the drug to function, therefore they have no use of these oversea producers and sellers. In order to end the war on drugs, rehabilitation and educational programs must be used in order to destroy the need to use drugs.