Impact of Drug Misuse on Parenting Capacity - Dissertation Example

People have used mind-altering drugs, from nicotine to heroin and beyond for thousands of years. These have been popular due to the fact they help people to concentrate, offer a diversion from their usual ways of feeling, and help people feel as if they fit in with those around them. Humans have always used psychoactive drugs for medicinal, social, religious, and nutritional purposes. Consumption of beer, wine, opium, marijuana, tobacco, coffee, betel, coca, kava, qat, hallucinogens, and many other drugs originated in prehistory (Durrant and Thakker, 2003).

At the dawn of the modern era the cross-cultural exchange of goods, including psychoactive substances, accelerated as Europeans ventured across the oceans. This indicates travel has increased the spread of drug abuse throughout the globe where there was a scope of cross-cultural exchange of habits. However, there is a small number of researches in this area, which indicates further research (Segev et al., 2005). The advent of non-narcotic addicting drugs loomed as a potential problem. Responding to incentives created in part by implementation of the control regime and wartime shortages, several pharmaceutical firms successfully developed narcotic analgesics without recourse to opium.

Demerol and methadone, two coal-tar-based morphine substitutes produced by German firms during the war, figured among the most successful creations (Edwards, 1980). As the 1950s drew to a close, a new problem came to light. Synthetically produced, non-narcotic substances such as barbiturates, tranquillizers, amphetamines, and certain hallucinogens entered into therapeutic use with increasing frequency (Austin, 1978). In less than a decade, the problem of drug abuse reached crisis proportions.

Unprepared for the onslaught, the control regime would be shaken to its core by the events of the 1960s.