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Essay On Cannabis And Drugs

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There are many affects that drugs and alcohol can have on the body, and on the life of a person. Thousands of jobs, homes, and families are lost annually through the addictions of drugs and alcohol. Children grow up without parents, spouses are forced to raise their children as single parents, and grandparents become legal guardians for a second time, due to the effects of substance abuse and dependence. Exactly how addiction is defined and diagnosed is an on-going issue and one that will be discussed in this paper. While there are eleven different categories that substances are arranged, this paper will be focusing specifically on alcohol and cannabis. An estimated 126 million Americans over the age of 12 reported being …show more content…

This has made the drug much more potent and easy to grow. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, over 17 million people in America had used marijuana in 1992 (as quoted in Smith & Stevens, 2009, p.64). The affects that drugs and alcohol can have on the human body, as well as the addictions they create, have been discussed in presidential debates, the topic of many scholarly journals and books, and continue to affect the lives of millions of people worldwide. Meldelson & Mello (1985) wrote that the most conclusive way to define addiction is that it prevails when drug or alcohol use is directly affiliated with “impairment of health and social functioning is a useful general thesis” (as cited in Smith & Stevens, 2009, p. 138). Addiction can also be defined as “the lack of choice the user has over the drug use” Once the individual needs the alcohol or drug to feel normal, and not as a way to feel pleasure, they can be considered dependant on that particular substance (Smith & Stevens, 2009). According to the American Psychiatric Association (2000), in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual, Text Revision (DSM-IV- TR) a substance is referred to as a medication or drug of abuse that is used in an abusive way, and in a manner incoherent with medical treatment. Dependence or addiction is translated as where tolerance is increased, withdrawal symptoms occur based on each individual substance, the substance is taken in larger amounts, or

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