Drugs Act 1970 Research Paper

Abstract
Humans have for centuries tried to alter their state of consciousness using various ways. These ways include dancing, chanting, holding their breath, and various plants or drugs. Drugs were not a concern of the people or of the government until the Chinese railroad workers were smoking opium in the United States. This began to raise concern and led to laws being passed to regulate drugs. However, those laws were replaced with a stricter version called the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. This act called for more enforcement of drugs in the United States. Within this act was the controlled substance act which allowed the government to not only control drugs but also allowed them to be classified. While this
This act also created the first class of prescription drugs in 1919 (Spillane). These records of the sale of cocaine and opiates in turn helped make them illegal in the future. In 1937 a similar law was enacted on marijuana called the Marijuana Tax Act which made recreational use of marijuana illegal (Griffin). These acts were more focused on gaining revenue and keeping track of sales rather than controlling the substance. The first act to do so was the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. This Act was a part of the Controlled Drug Abuse and Prevention Act. The overall purpose of this Act was to regulate the use of licit and illicit substances and to apply U.S. requirements to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961 and eventually to the Convention of Psychotropic Drugs of 1971. Due to this the U.S. had to have a list of requirements and restrictions to ensure that drugs are only used for medical or scientific purposes (Sabet 2012). The Controlled Substance Act (CSA) gave authority to the federal government to control narcotics and it created an outline for drugs to be controlled depending on their abuse potential,
There are five different schedules that a drug could potentially be classified as. When a drug is being placed into a schedule several things are considered. The first thing that is considered is how likely is it that this drug will be abused. It is important to know what abuse is defined as in this situation because there are many definitions of abuse. For instance, when talking about alcohol abuse, abuse is defined as the use of alcohol in excess either on individual occasion or a regular practice. This makes sense because the term abuse brings up thoughts of overuse. However, when it comes to the controlled substance act, abuse is considered as any use of a drug that is not for medical or scientific purposes. Meaning that even if you were using a drug every once and a while for recreational purposes, it is abuse. Using this definition technically you could abuse a drug even if you used it only once for non-medical or scientific reasons. Next, all scientific evidence about the drug including the possible effects it could have on the body is collected. Then, the history and pattern of abuse are considered. When considering the abuse pattern, it is important to know the scope, duration of abuse and the significance. This is necessary because knowing how widespread the abuse is will help determine how serious the abuse is. After this has been considered it is