What is a drug you may ask? Well a drug is “any chemical substance other than food or water that affects the mind or body (A. Goldstein, 1994) (Social Problems, 235). There are three different views or categories on how drugs can be defined or put under which is drug use, drug abuse and drug addiction. First, drug use which is the use of any …show more content…
Well drug abuse is defined as “The use of any illegal substance or the use of a legal substance (such as a prescription drug) in a way that violates accepted medical practice (Abadinsky, 1989)” (Social problems, 238). So basically the difference between drug abuse and drug use is the laws that prohibit the use and the social patterns that humans go through in their everyday life. One other way to show the difference between abuse and use of a drug is to look at how it affects the person. If a person is uses a drug they will complete their tasks normally through the day. If a person experiences physical, mental or every day harm from a drug then it is considered abuse. Any drug either illegal or legal can be used or abused. The other term is drug addiction, which means to have “a physical or psychological craving for a drug” (Social Problems, 238). Some of the signs of drug addictions are withdrawals. Some examples of withdrawals are, for example for cocaine and opium, you have symptoms like nausea, fever, twitching, chills, diarrhea, cramps, aches, vomiting, and pain. So the main difference of three are that drug use is to take any type of drug but drug abuse is when you violate by taken to much of the drug which can lead to drug addiction which means you have to have …show more content…
For example people in the south from places like Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia grew a plant called coca, which is used to make cocaine, the farmers would chew it to get a spike of adrenaline or a lift to help them continue working on the farm. This lead to whites in the 19th century who were afraid that African-Americans would get a hold of the plant and commit violence among them. Another cultural drug, happened to be by the Chinese, since the 1850s smoked opium when they had immigrated to California. Another drug is alcohol which was very popular by southerners, who to them was a tradition of making “moonshine”. In the United States marijuana sky rocketed in 1970, everyone wanted to make it legal, by 1980 it declined but, sky rocket it again up till 2013. Now this year people In the USA spend 100 billions of dollars on illegal drugs like cocaine, hashish, heroine, and