‘Drugs’, much like ‘religion’, evade a precise definition. There are standard, dictionary definitions of the term ‘drug’, either a substance (other than food) that influences motor, sensory, cognitive, or other bodily processes, or a substance that is used in the treatment, cure, prevention, or diagnosis of disease. Drugs are generally understood to be either psychoactive…
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On 1st January 2017, I quit drinking. Which is 16 months ago now. Some months before then, I had consciously been cutting down on my alcohol consumption, as I wasn’t enjoying getting drunk that much anymore – and the hangovers had become severe. I couldn’t stand the feeling of being poisoned and that horrible, dirty,…
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Children and young people in the UK (those aged 5-16) are taught about drugs in the non-compulsory subject known as personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE). However, even though the subject is non-compulsory, the new National Curriculum does recommend that all schools teach PSHE and states that it is “an important and necessary part of…
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John Stuart Mill in On Liberty argued that individuals should have the personal liberty to harm themselves, so long as their actions did not harm others. He was all for the free availability of harmful substances, such as alcohol and other drugs, but urged for the “labelling the drug with some word of expressive of…
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A minimum pricing for alcohol would mean that a restriction would be set in place preventing alcohol from being sold below a baseline price. The baseline price would be in reference to each unit of alcohol, as opposed to a general baseline of, say £1, for all types of alcoholic beverages. So, if the minimum…
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