• Question: why are drugs bad for you but you use medisine to get you better but they are drugs can you explain that??? to me

    Asked by nicenadia to Alessandro, Angela, Claudia, Marina, Phil on 12 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Phillip Wilkinson

      Phillip Wilkinson answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      You’re, right medicine and illegal drugs are just drugs and often have a lot in common chemically.

      With medicine though, the quantities that are used are very small and very carefully checked. They will also cross check your medical history to see if you have a reaction to the drugs they are giving you. To get to this point though the drugs themselves will have been through rigorous testing so that we can be sure there are no side effects. A drug is likely to be chemically tested and on animals before being tested on a small number of people.

      With illegal drugs, there’s no way to know what is actually inside it or how much is safe to take. Most of the time people will take too much anyway to experience the ‘high’. Also, because it is not as controlled it is very easy to become addicted to these drugs. So that the chemical structure of the brain changes so that we become dependent on it!

    • Photo: Claudia Krehl

      Claudia Krehl answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      Another problem is that anybody who buys drugs doesn’t really know what is in it. When you go to your doctor you know that the medicine you get has been tested many times and the effects are clear. But buying illegal drugs means you don’t know where the drugs come from and what how they have been altered. But even medicine can have really bad side effects, but your doctors will know about those and prescribe things that are appropriate for your condition and situation.

      One thing you might find interesting though it that you can get medical marijuana. It is used with cancer patients to relief the pain from chemo therapy. So drugs may actually have a positive effect when used carefully and in a controlled manner.

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