Health effects of drugs[change | change source]

Drugs can have many different effects on a person's health. Some drugs such as tobacco (a plant that contains a drug called nicotine) and alcohol directly cause hundreds of thousands of people to die every year. Other drugs such as cannabis or psilocybin mushrooms (sometimes called "magic mushrooms") cause no deaths. However even if a drug doesn't cause any deaths directly, there are other health effects to be aware of. Someone who has taken a drug and is experiencing its effects is said to be "intoxicated". People who are intoxicated may do things they otherwise would not do, and they may be unable to safely drive or operate machinery. If an intoxicated person does drive a car/vehicle or operate machinery it may cause accidents, depending on how much of the drug they have had and how affected they are.

Overdosing is when a person takes too much of a drug at once and it becomes very dangerous for their health - they might even die. Some drugs (such as heroin, alcohol and aspirin) are easy to overdose on, while others are nearly impossible to overdose on (LSD, cannabis). Many drugs can cause long term health effects separate from just their short term effects, for instance smoking tobacco can cause cancer, and abusing alcohol can cause liver damage.

Many drugs are used as medicine to help make sick people better. For instance opiates (like morphine, heroin and codeine) are analgesics (pain killers). Nitrous oxide and ketamine are used as anaesthetics to put people and animals to sleep during a surgical operation. Amphetamines can even be legally prescribed by a doctor for attention disorders in some countries, such as the United States.

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