There are many types and ways to abuse drugs. Opioids are a class of drugs that include the illegal drug heroin, synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, and pain relievers available legally by prescription, such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, morphine, and many others.
Prescription drugs are the third most commonly abused category of drugs, behind alcohol and marijuana and ahead of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. Some prescription drugs can become addictive, especially when used in a manner inconsistent with their labeling. Opiate painkillers are prescribed millions of times per year for legal purposes. Some opiate abusers continue using opiates following a legal prescription for a medical condition, while others seek out painkillers either for medical or psychiatric relief. As a result, abuse and addiction can progress very differently in different people.
Over-the-counter medicines are those that can be sold directly to people without a prescription. Misuse of an OTC medicine means taking medicine in a way or dose other than directed on the package. Taking medicine for the effect it causes. Or mixing OTC medicines together to create new products like a designer drug.
Dextromethorphan is an over-the-counter cough suppressant commonly found in cold medications. Dextromethorphan is often abused in high doses by adolescents to generate euphoria and visual and auditory hallucinations.
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Loperamide, which is sold under the brand name Imodium, is a well-known drug that is used to treat diarrhea, this is also over the counter. What most people may not know is that loperamide is actually an opioid. To get the desired results, people must take extremely high doses, sometimes in the quantity of hundreds of pills.
Pseudoephedrine is in a class of medications called nasal decongestants. Pseudoephedrine is sometimes abused, or used for non-medical purposes, because of its stimulant effects – it can give an excitable, hyperactive feeling and increase heart rate and blood pressure. This is also an over the counter drug.
Illicit drug use in the United States has been increasing. In 2013, an estimated 24.6 million Americans aged 12 or older—9.4 percent of the population—had used an illicit drug in the past month. This number is up from 8.3 percent in 2002. The increase mostly reflects a recent rise in use of marijuana, the most commonly used illicit drug.
Rising in popularity within the American counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, marijuana is now the most commonly abused illicit substance in the United States. The most common way the drug is used is when the dried leaves from the bushy plant are rolled into cigarettes or cigars and smoked. The result of smoking the cigarette is a relaxing, euphoric high that alters the smoker’s senses, memory, perception of time and motor skills.
According to Kant, we have a morally good will only if we choose to perform morally right actions because they are morally right (Kant 1785, 4: 393–4:397; Kant 1793, Bk I). On Kant’s view, anyone who does not have a morally good will has an evil will.
The opioid epidemic, over the counter medication abuse and now the start of legalizing recreational marijuana. I have seen heroin ruin many people’s lives. As story after story is told they all seem to have a lot in common, this would be prescription pain killers. The low moral standards of the physicians along with a need for greed from the drug companies have turned a population young and old into junkies. This was also seen in the tobacco industry years ago with nicotine.
Should the doctors be blamed for all of this turmoil? I don’t think all of the doctors should be blamed for this epidemic, they are trying to ease the pain of suffering patients. They have a moral obligation to help people in pain, and to stop passing out opioids all together would cause massive withdrawals with who knows what kind of affects in the population. But it is still unethical to create a population of addicts. The powers that be need to look back on this as a learning experience, a moral dilemma but instead they are looking at the potential gains of legalizing recreational marijuana and starting the process over.
I have to say ethics in a matter of speaking it is in the eye of the beholder, a drug dealers ethics are don’t rip people off; don’t pad your product, don’t lie about how much it weighs, don’t claim something is great when you actually don’t have a clue, if getting drugs up front, repay your debts in a timely fashion. But on the other hand, they do not think about the many lives they ruin, mothers, daughters, husbands and wives. Plus, the effects on the children and unborn children, is this ethical for the profit? Not in my eyes.
My niece also has two children which she drives around from house to house dropping off drugs in order to feed her own habit, in her mind is it ethical to run drugs to support her own habit for free? She is doing this to support her children and maybe will go out for ice cream after words that sounds like an ethical reason. Or if she does this she doesn’t have to steal, lie and cheat friends or family members that sounds ethical. And selling drugs she is ethical to her clients, she respects them, she is friendly, she doesn’t discriminate, anyone of race, color, age or religion can be a customer.
