A Primer on Drugs
These six major concepts about alcohol and other drug use are appropriate for all children. Adapt the information as needed for your students.
Legal and Illegal Drugs
Drugs are chemical substances that affect body systems and can change behavior. Drugs that are legal for adult use include:
Other legal drugs include chemicals that are found in over-the-counter and prescription medicines. Illegal drugs include cocaine, marijuana, heroin, LSD, PCP, and crack (a form of cocaine). Drugs are helpful or harmful depending on their use. For example, car crashes are often caused by alcohol, a legal drug for adults, and many cancers are caused by smoking (also legal for adults). Note that both these drugs are illegal for minors.
Positive and Negative Consequences of Drugs
If given or prescribed by a physician and used correctly, a drug may have very positive effects on an illness or in controlling pain or managing symptoms. Even prescribed drugs, however, may be misused and may have life-threatening consequences if used inappropriately. For example, many people are allergic to penicillin and may die if administered this drug.
Physicians prescribe medicines for particular people and very specific problems. If the person is seeing more than one physician for medicines, the physicians should be in contact with each other, because medicines may interact in ways that are harmful. Many pharmacists offer advice and cautions about drug interactions for their clients.
Nature of Drug Effects
Drugs are powerful and at times, unpredictable. Some drugs slow people down and some speed people up. A drug that affected someone one way last year may affect her or him differently this year. Effects of any drug depend on people's age, weight, gender, medical history, and the setting where the drug is used. Sometimes people take two or more drugs at the same time. The effects of this may be an unexpected tripling or quadrupling of the power of the drugs involved.
Reasons People Take Drugs
People take drugs to feel better, to feel different, to help them cope, to socialize, etc. Some people try drugs because they are curious as to what it will feel like. This is why some young people sniff gasoline, airplane glue, etc. Others want to impress their friends with how daring they are. Others simply do not feel there are any non-drug alternatives to feeling good. One of the goals in drug education at all ages is to get people "hooked on life highs" as opposed to drug highs.
Tolerance, Dependence and Addiction
Children must realize that it is much easier not to start taking drugs than it is to stop. After a while, it may take more of a certain drug to produce the same effect (tolerance). With certain drugs, the body begins to physically crave more (addiction) and/or the people taking them believe they need the drug (dependence). When people are addicted or dependent upon a drug, they go through very uncomfortable, sometimes painful, periods when the drug is not available to them (withdrawal).
Drug Dealers
Children often ask why dangerous drugs are allowed if they get people addicted or dependent. Explain that some people have chosen to sell these drugs to make money and these people do not care if the drugs hurt the person or their family. This is why it is important to tell a trusted adult if you see or hear of someone trying to sell drugs to somebody.
Over-the-counter Medications
Both over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription (Rx) medications are used for the prevention, diagnosis or treatment of discomfort or disease. Unlike Rx drugs, OTC medicines are usually used to treat self-limiting conditions-that is, problems that will eventually go away on their own. Therefore, OTC drugs are focused more on controlling symptoms of various ailments, such as aches, pain and colds.
Rx drugs, on the other hand, are usually prescribed for conditions that will not clear up on their own, such as serious infections. Like OTC medicines, however, many RX drugs are for symptomatic relief of chronic conditions such as pain. Due to public demand, in the last ten years, many Rx cough and cold medicines, pain relievers and ointments and creams have been reclassified as OTC drugs.
At present, there are more than 300, 000 OTC products on the market, and more are being added every day. The phenomenal growth in the OTC market can be attributed to genuine developments in pharmacology, as well as to the public's growing insistence on having a "pill for every ill."
Even though they are not as potent as Rx medicines, OTC drugs nevertheless have powerful main effects and often serious side-effects. Both OTC and Rx drugs must be taken properly. The labels must be examined thoroughly and carefully followed.
The very real side effects of OTC drugs, coupled with the reality of their use for many conditions that will ultimately clear up on their own, has prompted many health professionals to encourage the public to consider non-drug alternatives to OTC medicines whenever possible.
Categories of OTC Medications
The following list includes six major categories of OTC medications. It provides some common types of analgesics (pain relievers) and cough and cold medications. It also lists side-effects of some medications.
Types of Drug Use
In the past, people would say that legal drugs were good, illegal drugs were bad, and prescription drugs were helpful. However, we know that penicillin, a lifesaving drug, has also been responsible for more than 200,000 deaths due to allergic reactions.
In a discussion of drugs, "good" or "bad" are not appropriate designations. Drugs may be helpful or harmful, depending on how they are used.
People often take aspirin for a headache. Aspirin has several main effects, including
However, like all drugs, aspirin has side-effects (about thirty), things that happen because drugs affect many body systems. For example, aspirin causes the stomach lining to bleed just a little bit of blood. A person with arthritis who is taking twenty aspirin a day has to be careful about anemia and ulcers.
This is the essential paradox of drug use-many drugs have the potential to help or to harm. Therefore, there are three main categories of drug use-use, misuse or abuse.
Drug Use refers to taking a drug correctly for a legitimate medical reason.
Examples:
Drug Misuse refers to taking a legal drug inappropriately.
Examples:
Drug Abuse refers to taking a legal or illegal drug in a way that damages some aspect of the user's life (mental, physical, social relationships, occupational performance).
Examples:
Safe Use of OTC and Prescription Medicines
When giving or taking any medicine, the following precautions should be observed.
