My suspicion is that the use of drugs will become more and more widespread. Like Smoking and drinking were the norm say 80 years ago.
Bio hacking is all the rage now. It won't be too long before unscrupulous fringe folk are supplying drugs to allow you to work longer, concentrate longer, sleep less, jump higher etc.
Actually we can go right back to Victorian England to find a growing popularity in the use of the, then still legal, drugs by even the "respectable" members of society. It was a very important turning point in the taking of drugs both in terms of plurality and potency. It was not just alcohol that was taken in quantity, but also opium cannabis, coca, and mescal. Once the hypodermic needle was invented in the 1840s, morphine and heroin also was added to the list of widely taken drugs.
Both Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens did quite a bit to encourage the taking of drugs, and Thomas De Quincey, in his work ‘Confessions of an English Opium Eater’, even stated in positive terms "that a philosopher who takes opium will experience a phantasmagoria of dreams" !!
So our current plague of drug taking is not new, but is still no less very disturbing. 
Quite true but my question would be one of scale. I suspect that modern day drug taking is a far larger number of people than back in Victorian times. What do you think?
On a recent thread we had the number of daily doses of Cocaine in London at 1.5 million if I remember correctly
Obviously the population is far larger now than in Victorian England, so the numbers now are not comparable, especially as the actual numbers of people taking drugs back in the 1800's is unknown.
However, what is known is that a very high proportion of Victorians, across the classes, took drugs, especially Opium. The reason for that is simple; there was a lack of medicines available for the treatment of even simple ailments, like toothache, bad colds,flue,stomach disorders, etc, etc, that we now take for granted can be treated by medication across a chemists counter. The vast majority of the population could not afford to pay doctors fees either, so they resorted to 'illegal' drugs to reduce their pains. Even the rich though enjoyed smoking the likes of opium, and taking them in tablet form. As I understand, there were sugar coated opium tablets for the poor, silver coated ones for the reasonably rich, and gold covered ones for the very rich!
Apart from the taking of a growing list of drugs for pain control, and recurational use for the rich, after the great early days of Victorian industrial growth, the depression of the 1880's vastly added to the numbers taking illegal drugs to take them to another place mentally. That latter fact can also be applied to so many drug takers in 2019 who just want to escape to that "other place", away from reality. That is why as a society we must do more to pursuad potential young drug takers away from that awful path. Now though we could discuss that for hours, and with our politicians being otherwise engaged at the moment/for the foreseeable future, I cannot envisage positive answers anytime soon!
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Topic: Fentanyl (Read 1877 times)