Post 4: Drugs

Drugs, drugs, drugs. An interesting discussion is going on in many countries around the world related to, for example, decriminalization of marijuana.

It's difficult capture all my knowledge about drugs in a single paragraph, but something very important is how we define a drug. A drug is a substance which has a pshysiological effect when it's introduced into the body. This mean that alcohol, cigarrettes, marijuana, including coffe and medicines are drugs. Let's not forget there are many m
ore drugs, but these are the most popular. From this clarification, we can divided the world of drugs in two: legal and illegal drugs. Usually, the legallity is related to the usefulness of the drug. This isn't true at all. For example, marijuana is useful in many cases of chronic pain, epilepsy and others. At least, all drugs are dangerous. The dangerousness of the drug isn't related to legallity. For example, alcohol is legal but causes a lot of damage to the liver.

We hear many times the typical comment: "drugs are bad". But, what drugs do they talk about? They talk generally of illegal drugs. This comment hides a sad reallity: the legal drugs are not considered as drugs due to its use is normalized in our society. For example, a popular drug like coffee is used to stay awake almost everyday ignoring that its excessive use causes alterations in the cardiovascular system.  Other popular legal drugs are alcohol, medicines, syrups with codeine and cigarrettes.

Regarding to marijuana, I think that the ignorance about its use influence their criminalization in the past century. Like alcohol or cigarrettes, marijuana had negative effects (greater probability of psychotic attack, somnolence, among others), recreational effects (euphoria, feling of disconnection with the world) and positive effects (reduce pain, reduction of epileptic attacks, among others). With a good education about its use, I think it's advisable to decriminalize it.

I think it's a caricature to talk about legalyze all drugs.

This is all for now, goodbye!