The Moral Consequences Of Drug Abuce Vs. Addiction

In the slightly recent years, drug addiction has been classified as a disease rather than just a physical addiction that was thought in the past. There are two ways that people look at drug use, and that is addiction vs. dependence. “Addiction is a primary condition manifesting as uncontrollable cravings, inability to control drug use, compulsive drug use, and use despite doing harm to oneself or others.” (O’Brien 2016). What addiction means is that one has an uncontrollable craving towards a specific item, whether it is drugs, tobacco, or caffeine. These strong cravings are common among all types of addiction which can be traced back to their altered brain biology, which is why the medical world has adapted it as being a disease. Dependence …show more content…
Those people count on someone else to help them if this situation arises, but does one have a moral obligation to help those who are addicted to drugs? Some say yes we do. Some ways that people choose to help those who are addicted may be through the judicial system, in which you are court ordered to get help. Other ways are when family members send you to a rehabilitation center, and the last one, which we will hit on multiple times throughout this paper, is through the use of Narcan. Everyone should have a second chance in life because we are only human, and those chances at life should be unlimited. In the medical world there is an obligation to help a patient who is going through pain, and if there is someone else going through pain, even though it may be a different type of pain, the same type of obligation should carry over. No one should have to suffer despite what they have done in the past or present, it is inhuman and unjust. Others have a different view on if society has an obligation to help those who are addicted to drugs. Not many were forced to put a needle filled with a highly addictive drug into their body. If they were forced to do this, say because of being captured and turned into a prostitute for example, and then they were saved, they probably would want to get …show more content…
Naloxone, also known as Narcan, is an opiate antidote. It is given to people who have overdosed on an opiate drug. When someone overdoses, their breathing slows down and sometime even stops, which means that oxygen is not getting to the brain. This may cause brain damage in as little as a few minutes because oxygen is not being driven into the brain. Narcan works by knocking out the opioid of choice from the receptors in the brain. These opioids of choice may include heroin or any type of pain pill. In a matter of minutes, typically five, the overdose is essentially reversed and in about 90 minutes the symptoms of the overdose are eliminated. When Narcan first came out, one use of the opiate antidote was enough to reverse the overdoses brought on by regular heroin and pain pills. Since then, heroin has become the drug of choice over pain pills. With this change of choice came an “upgrade” in the heroin market. Heroin started to be cut with fetnal, a pharmaceutical drug that is said to be one thousand times more potent than regular heroin. Once this hit the streets, overdoses became a common theme among drug users which meant first responders used Narcan more. When this spike happened, first responders started to notice that the amount of Narcan it took to reverse the overdose of someone who used heroin cut with fetnal was much