Categories of
Psychoactive Drugs
Psychoactive Drugs
Alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, and chocolate are all examples of drugs that fall into this category. These drugs are used in normal acceptable interpersonal interactions among people.
What are Social Drugs?
These substances act on the CNS by increasing alertness, excitation, euphoria, pulse rate, and blood pressure. Insomnia and loss of appetite are common outcomes. The user initially experiences pleasant effects, such as a sense of increased energy and state of euphoria, or "high." Examples include: MDA, MDMA, meth, cocaine.
What are Stimulants?
This Act marked the first legitimate effort by the U.S. Federal government to regulate and control the production, importation, sale, purchase, and distribution of addicting substances (narcotics). Aimed to ban the non-medical use of opiates and cocaine.
What is the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914?
These are the specific cultural expectations for how to behave in a given situation. Laws are examples of these.
What are Norms?
The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse. The drug or other substance has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the U.S. or a currently accepted medical use with severe restrictions. Abuse of the drug or other substance may lead to severe psychological or physical dependence.
What is a Schedule II controlled substance?
Doctors must sign off/provide documentation in order for their patients to obtain these types of medication.
What are Prescription Drugs?
These drugs are developed by people who seek to circumvent the illegality of a drug by modifying the drug into a new compound. Such drugs are created as structural analogs of substances already scheduled and legally prohibited under the Controlled Substances Act. Examples include: MDMA, Spice, K2
What are Designer Drugs/Synthetic Drugs?
From the 1800's to the early 1900's, sales of uncontrolled medicines flourished and became widespread in the U.S. These medicines had secret ingredients.
What are Patent Medicines?
These are the shared ideas held collectively by people within a given culture about what is true.
What are Beliefs?
Cocaine and Fentanyl are examples of this schedule level in part because they have recognized medical utility.
What is a Schedule II controlled substance?
These drugs are readily available at pharmacies and various stores around the city. These forms of medication do not require any forms or documents from a doctor. Examples include: cough medicine, laxatives, cold medicine, etc.
What are Over The Counter (OTC) Drugs?
These drugs reduce CNS activity. These drugs are taken for a variety of reasons (e.g. stress relief, inducing sleep). Examples include: alcohol, barbiturates, benzodiazepines - Valium, and methaqualone - Quaalude.
What are Central Nervous System (CNS) Depressants?
This Act required manufacturers to indicate the amounts of 11 dangerous products (including alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and morphine) on each product label.
What is the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906?
This is behavior that violates a social norm. Using an illicit drug is an example of behaving in this way.
What is Deviance?
The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse. The drug or other substance has NO currently accepted medical use in treatment in the U.S. There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.
What is a Schedule I controlled substance?
Using these drugs is not aloud in the eyes of the state. Many of these drugs have no medical utility in the eyes of the medical community. It is against the law to use these drugs. Examples include: LSD, MDMA, heroin, cocaine, cannabis.
What are illicit drugs?
These drugs reduce CNS activity. These drugs are highly addictive and dull the body to pain. These drugs are illegal and a primary focus of the DEA. Examples include: heroin, opium, morphine, codeine, cocaine.
What are Narcotics?
This Act largely determines the ways in which law enforcement agencies deal with substance abuse. This Act divided substances with abuse potential into categories based on the degree of their abuse potential and their clinical usefulness. The classifications - referred to as Schedules - range from I - V.
What is the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970?
These are mechanisms of social control that are designed to enforce norms. Punishments - incarceration, fines, death penalty in some countries.
What are Social Sanctions?
The drug or other substance has less potential for abuse than the drugs or other substances in Schedules I and II. The drug or other substance has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the U.S.
What is a Schedule III controlled substance?
These drugs are intended and bottled for a particular patient but end up being consumed by an alternative individual without the approval of a doctor. These drugs are often administered legally with a doctor's approval, but find their way into alternative marketplaces and into the hands of a someone not approved by a doctor.
What is the Non-medical Use of Prescription Drugs?
These drugs have the ability to induce intense alterations of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. These drugs can amplify states of mind and induce a reality that is reported to be qualitatively different from what could be understood as ordinary consciousness. Examples: LSD, DMT, PCP, ketamine, psilocybin mushrooms.
What are Psychedelic Drugs?
This Act required companies to file applications with the government for all new drugs showing the drugs were safe (not-effective, just safe) for use as described. Safe tolerances were set for unavoidable poisonous substances and companies could now decide whether to label a drug prescription or non-prescription.
What is the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938?
These are sets of symbols and rules that provide a complex communication system.
What is Language?
Marijuana, Peyote, and heroin are all examples of this schedule level in part because they do NOT have recognized medical utility.
What is a Schedule I controlled substance?