Recreational Drugs Moral Medicine

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Recreational drugs Debates questioning the legality of recreational drugs has been resurfacing due to the increasing number of consumers and their concern on the legitimacy of the moral and ethical principles that ban pharmaceuticals designed for pleasure. This social debate has been discarded by law regulators and political ethicists since the beginning of 20th century but increasing conception supporting drugs as personal choice rather than bane of society imply that these standards might be inapplicable to our modern society. Practice of using drugs has been existent and recognized throughout history. Evidence indicating the consumption of substances can be found nearly as old as humanity. Pre-Columbian Mexicans were known for using tobacco as well as hallucinogens such as toxic mushrooms in religious ceremonies while traces of coca was found inside Egyptian mummies dating more than 2000 years. Beer and wine can be dated back as long as the invention of agriculture. In China and Iran Opium cafes(or caves) were a popular past time for the general population as well as socialites. It is not difficult to assume that drug use have been found universally throughout the course of humanity and that laws prohibiting personal choice of using drugs has commenced only recently. Yet most of these substances were harvested from nature without any refinement or extraction of a certain compound. In addition most users did not recognize the impact on their body and the potential risks associated with abuse of these substances. Therefore it is difficult to parallel ancient practices of mind alteration to modern day's recreational use of drugs. Then what constitutes a recreational drug? And how does our constitution define it? According to the medical dictionary, recreational drugs include “any substance with pharmacologic effects that is taken voluntarily for personal

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