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http://www.webmedcentral.com/images/Header_Logo.giftext/html2010-07-28T07:20:26+01:00http://www.webmedcentral.com/Dr. William J MaloneyThe Significance Of Illicit Drug Use To Dental Practice
http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/455
Dentists encounter a wide array of individuals presenting for various professional dental services in their dental practices on a daily basis.Regardless of the geographic location of the dental practice or the socio-economic status of the patients, each dental office encounters individuals who are using various illegal drugs.These drugs cause a wide array of issues- physical, psychological, economic, and legal- for the user.In addition, the use of these drugs costs the world’s economy billions of dollars each year in an attempt to curb their use while also costing the lives of many brave law enforcement officers in this seemingly never-ending struggle.The dentist must be aware of this drug use in their individual patients in order to: 1) avoid possible contraindications during dental treatment; 2) be aware of the many oral and craniofacial manifestations of such drug use; 3) be able to provide necessary dental treatment to combat the dental/oral ravages of drug use and 4) be able to refer such patients, if so desired by the patient, to the proper professionals for counseling.This paper will examine the dental/oral manifestations of four commonly used drugs- methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, and cannabis. It will make the dental practitioner aware of the many oral conditions which can be caused by the usage of certain illegal drugs. It will also review what precautions or changes to routine dental treatment might be necessary in such individuals.text/html2021-09-15T07:30:49+01:00http://www.webmedcentral.com/Dr. Deepak Gupta\"Dear substance! please leave me alone,\" humane plea falling on deaf ears of substance
http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/5740
Although we call it to be substance abuse when humans abuse substances, it may rather be the other way around where substances are abusing humans not unlike domestic abuse [1] whereby humans are victims and substances are perpetrators which human systems can only seize and burn while in the meantime human victims suffer physical, psychological, social, economic, spiritual and legal punishments. The bottom-line is again that there may be innately unforced or environmentally forced absence of freedom to quit among humans driving humans' victimization by substances which may be trying to survive in this natural world of selfish "immortal" gene [2] by initially growing as unwanted weeds out there in the ancient wild followed by humans domesticating them for humans' physical, psychological, social, economic and spiritual needs until the substances became greedy enough wanting to outlive humans that they mesmerized domesticating humans who could not control overproduction of these domesticated weeds and thus bringing down injurious harms upon the domesticated modern humanity [3]. Interestingly, our modern humanity refuses to learn from its troubled past and repetitively commits similar mistakes because existence of humanity is always in a state of war with existence of substances with both trying to overrule each other for continued persistence on the earth. Before it becomes confusing, most of the current substances abusing humans are organic and thus these substances' genes are trying to survive by overcoming humans' genes vying for humans' survival until they balance out for evolutionary stable strategy of co-existence. Interestingly, the co-existence of substances and humans may have to keep a check on their growing numbers with substances inadvertently acting as population stabilizing strategy in natural selection of humans while humans inadvertently acting on morally and legally stable strategy to maintain substances at manageable levels. This analogy become confusing when the substance abusing humans is inorganic. However, inorganic substances creating inorganic life [4] as a devilish adversary to humanity may not be futuristic after all when inorganic myths and ideas may have outlived ancient humanity and their genes via the perceived ghosts called minds in the speaking and writing machines called humans [5]. If substances cannot listen and follow a path of self-destruction for themselves because of their innate need to exist and persist, humans may have to listen to their own innate need to exist and persist so that humans do not follow the path of self-destruction [6]. However, as all existence is chained one way or another [7], humans are dependent on others to co-exist or maybe outlive others (humans or substances). Therefore, the best way of preventing humans from treading on self-destructive pathways will be fact-finding and fact-sharing with those on self-destructive pathways because facts are always better [8] whereby facts being never complete can always change thus preventing humans from clinging to facts as compared to so-called truths which become irrefutable despite facts stating otherwise thus leading humans to cling onto them even when such truths pose the risk of self-destruction sometimes even in the immediate future. The fact is that there is no discernible purpose of life except the invented purpose of life and those on self-destructive pathways may have been having difficulty in inventing the purpose of life because they have realized and thence gotten stuck in the factually absent purpose of life. Therefore, once they relearn to invent purpose of life, they can understand why humanity abhors self-destruction despite unflinchingly destructing everything else. In the fight for survival between the selfish genes of substance vs. the selfish genes of humans, humans may have to understand that substances do not want to kill the human hosts which are allowing the existence, persistence and even proliferation of substances' genes until the prolific genes of substances become so abundant that human mortality become so rampant forcing the humanity overall to initiate measures for containing, limiting and restricting the boundless proliferation of substances to eventually ensure balanced co-existence of humans' genes and substances' genes.
After understanding the instinct of substances' genes to survive, the so-called self-destructive humans must understand why the other humans who are apparently not so self-destructive want them to contain their self-destruction say in terms of substance abuse. Self-destructive humans' innate instincts may have their own incentive to keep self-destructive humans chained to substances in attempts to balance their innate conscious or unconscious emotions, feelings, behaviors and beliefs [5]. Self-destructive humans' kin may have their own incentive to keep self-destructive humans under control so as to avoid destruction physically, psychologically, socially, economically, legally, and spiritually percolating into kin. Similarly, self-destructive humans' society may have their own incentive to keep self-destructive humans under control so as to avoid socioeconomic and legal costs to the society. Finally, humanity may have its own incentive to keep self-destructive humans under control so as to avoid the extinction of humanity from the face of the earth.
To explore further, we delved into the minds of 130 college students (>95% aged 18-29 years and >52% being female) in the United States whose responses were bought [9] from SurveyMonkey as targeted audiences and those audiences responded to the following questions:
What is your view about NICOTINE use advertisements?
(Nicotine: Smoking, Vaping, Chewing, and Other Forms)
They should be PROHIBITED as nicotine use is harmful
They should be REGULATED as nicotine use is widespread
They should be PROMOTED as nicotine use is beneficial
What is your view about ALCOHOL use advertisements?
(Alcohol: All Alcoholic Beverages Including Beer)
They should be PROHIBITED as alcohol use is harmful
They should be REGULATED as alcohol use is widespread
They should be PROMOTED as alcohol use is beneficial
What is your view about CANNABIS use advertisements?
(Cannabis: Marijuana and Related Products, Prescription Or Recreational)
They should be PROHIBITED as cannabis use is harmful
They should be REGULATED as cannabis use is widespread
They should be PROMOTED as cannabis use is beneficial
What is your view about MEDICATION use advertisements?
(Medication: Prescription Opioids, Prescription Stimulants Like Methamphetamine, Prescription Sedatives Like Benzodiazepines, Or Prescription Club Drugs Like Ketamine)
They should be PROHIBITED as medication use is harmful
They should be REGULATED as medication use is widespread
They should be PROMOTED as medication use is beneficial
In your view, why do some people NEVER use any of the following substance?
(Nicotine/Alcohol/Cannabis/Opioids/Stimulants Like Cocaine/Sedatives Like Benzodiazepines/Club Drugs Like Dissociators/Hallucinogens/Inhalants)
In your view, why do some people START using any of the following substance?
(Nicotine/Alcohol/Cannabis/Opioids/Stimulants Like Cocaine/Sedatives Like Benzodiazepines/Club Drugs Like Dissociators/Hallucinogens/Inhalants)
In your view, why do some people CONTINUE using any of the following substance?
(Nicotine/Alcohol/Cannabis/Opioids/Stimulants Like Cocaine/Sedatives Like Benzodiazepines/Club Drugs Like Dissociators/Hallucinogens/Inhalants)
In your view, why do some people QUIT using any of the following substance?
(Nicotine/Alcohol/Cannabis/Opioids/Stimulants Like Cocaine/Sedatives Like Benzodiazepines/Club Drugs Like Dissociators/Hallucinogens/Inhalants)
As envisaged earlier [10], it was interesting to see that most chose regulations of nicotine, alcohol, cannabis and medication use advertisements (51%, 78%, 68% and 75% respectively) rather than prohibitions of nicotine, alcohol, cannabis and medication use advertisements (45%, 18%, 18% and 14% respectively). Moreover, quite a few recognized beneficial nicotine, alcohol, cannabis and medication use and thus promoted their advertisements (4%, 4%, 13% and 12% respectively). Although 26% expressly stated fear of addiction/dependence preventing people from ever using any substance, 60% expressly stated addiction/dependence forcing people to continue using any substance. Interestingly, 2% expressly stated adventure of substance use being addicting in itself leading people to start using any substance while only 11% expressly stated addiction/dependence as the reason for people quitting the use of any substance.
Essentially, substances have innate need to proliferate their genes and it may be in the best interests of humans to see through destructive substances inducing addiction among humans as an attempt by substances’ genes to outlive humans’ genes. Hereafter, humans may have to learn to create layers of separation between themselves and substances by filling families/friends and constructive substances/activities in as those layers of separation [11]. However, while filling these layers of separation, humans may have to remember that evolutionarily humans are more likely selected to be copiers rather than to be innovators [12]. Therefore, just like any other behavior [13], addictive behaviors of humans to substances may be contagious [14-16] to their families/friends unless and until families/friends see through destructive substances’ addiction and help self-destructive kin to see themselves through their addiction to substances.