Drug abuse

Abstract

In the last decades, words like drugs, narcotics and addiction, normally associated with the activities of specific groups, have been in constant use and discussion. Epidemics have been making the headlines, and drug-abuse dramas have been depicted in bright colours. The man in the street has been led to believe that the world is drug-abuse oriented. Yet, if one were to uncover press sensationalism, he may as well be shocked by the reality of the drug abuse problem. About two million people in the world are dependent on heroin, according to the United Nations Organisation. A background report prepared for the United Nations Crime Conference which had opened on Monday 1st September, 1975, said that addicts consumed between twenty and thirty tons of illegally-produced heroin every year. Between five hundred thousand and one million people were dependent on opium. The study also found out that the majority of these were young men. The above stated facts are claimed to be in the illegal sphere. Yet drug-abuse, its overuse or its misuse in medication is also substantial.