| dc.description.abstract | The concept of “drug” has been defined as any chemical substance which affect living organism. Such a substance may be used to fight infections and illness or minimize pain, fatigue, anxiety or at times to achieve certain level of euphoria. WHO (1952) defined “drugs” as any substances that when taken into a living body produce reactions or modify its psychological and physiological functioning? The excessive use of psychoactive drugs, such as alcohol, pain medications or illegal drugs which leads to social, physical or emotional harm is known as drug abuse. On the other hand, “drug abuse” has been defined as any use of drugs for nonmedical purposes almost always for altering consciousness. Drug abuse denotes substances that change the mental or physical state of a person and that may be used repeatedly for that effect leading to abnormality However, experience shows that drug abuse has been looked at in the medical and non-medical perspectives which is the main concern of this study. For the medical drugs, using them without prescription of the medical personnel or using them contrary to the prescriptions of the medical personnel is considered as abusing the medical drugs. For example, some people use symptoms of diseases as a means of buying and using different drugs or for quicker recovery as some think, they use drugs not as prescribed by the doctors, i.e. use drugs for four times instead of three times or three times instead of two times per day. For the non-medical or illicit drugs, they include heroin, cocaine, cannabis, opium etc. When these are used it is said that drugs are abused because their uses are not for the purposes of treating, preventing and diagnosing diseases. Also alcoholism from the medical point of view indicates a disease caused by chronic, excessive drinking resulting to dependence on alcohol. Physiological definition of alcoholism classifies it as a drug addiction recognizable by the occurrence of a withdrawal syndrome when the drinking is stopped. In summary alcohol and other drug abuses, affect the quality of the people’s lives and affect people in both developed and developing countries. Alcoholism and drug abuse are a growing problem in Uganda affecting people at different levels and groups including street children, prostitutes, the youth, men and women. Ironically drug abuse is no longer a problem confined to the slums and street children in the urban centers but also in schools, prisons and the rural areas. In this view, drug abuse affects almost everybody in the society but the most vulnerable group are the youths which is the main concern of this study. | en_US |
