Drug Users,addicts, Junkies - What Comes to Your Mind

Drug users,addicts,junkies. Just imagine these words .What comes to your mind or how do you feel when you hear these words ? Is there a feeling of compassion,love,empathy or do you see them as social evils that need to be dealt with criminally ?

To have an informed opinion on the question asked above one must first understand what are drugs,what is there effect ,why are they prohibited,why do people use them and what have we done to deal with drugs and drug users.

Drugs are essentially substances which alleviate pain,suffering and give a feeling of security and euphoria .They have medicinal value for those who are addicted to it. Imagine you have some recurring medical condition and you feel immense pain .You take a medicine and you feel fine .But what if you were told that using the medicine was prohibited and if you were to be found in possession of the medicine there will be criminal consequences .Shocking isn’t it?But this is how we treat drug users ,we criminalize a health problem which requires them to use drugs compulsively . One might now argue that the drug users have brought this medical condition upon themselves and therefore criminalizing is justified.Maybe it is true as is- those with heart conditions have brought upon themselves by not exercising and eating excessive fats,those with cancer have brought upon themselves by smoking and those with liver conditions have brought upon themselves by drinking alcohol.We feel compassion for people with these conditions even though they might have brought upon themselves the medical conditions .Yet we criminalize only drug users .Now one might say that drugs are illegal and excessive fats,cigarettes and alcohol are not and therefore criminalizing the use is justified .Do you know that until 1903 Coco-Cola contained significant amounts of cocaine ,cocaine was also used in toothache drops given to children,in US the opiods were consumed by middle aged women to alleviate pain.So why were some substances made illegal?You’d think it has to be science,health or the relative risk of drugs that they were made illegal.Wrong! According to studies alcohol,tobacco and drugs cause about equal number of deaths per year .Such studies cannot be relied upon completely however one cannot argue that alcohol and tobacco don’t cause significant number of deaths every year .Yet they are legal and other substances are not .The whole campaign for legalizing marijuana is based upon this anomaly .Science and health have little to do with why some substances were first prohibited .In the US opiods were prohibited when Chinese immigrants doing manual labor were found smoking opiods ,cocaine was prohibited when blacks started using it ,marijuana was prohibited when Mexicans