High Risk Drugs
High risk drugs pose a significant danger to public health and safety due to multiple factors:
- Effects on physical health, neurobiology and biopsychological health
- Addictive qualities
- Risks for overdose and severe withdrawal
- Availability
- Criminality inherent to organized crime/drug trafficking
Opioids
Also known as narcotics, opioids are both natural (opiate; derived from opium) and synthetic, and are primarily used to treat pain due to injury, surgery or other diseases (cancer, chronic pain, etc.) by licensed medical professionals with the authority to give prescriptions. Illegal opioids include illicit drugs such as heroine, misuse of prescription medicine or illegally produced and imported substances - usually internationally through organized crime, smuggling and drug trafficking.
Opioids bind to neural receptors and release dopamine which causes feelings of euphoria, reduced pain signaling and slowed respiration. The main risk from opioid overdose comes from too many receptors responsible for respiration being suppressed, and can quickly lead to unconsciousness death from lack of oxygen or completely stopping a person's breathing.
Naloxone (Narcan®) is used to treat overdose by temporarily binding to neuroreceptors in place of the opioid and reversing the effects, but immediate higher-order medical care is necessary until the body can metabolize the remaining opioid in the blood.
Common legal and illegal opioids include:
- Hydrocodone (Vicodin®)
- Oxycodone (Oxycontin, Percocet®)
- Oxymorphone (Opana®)
- Morphine (Kadian®, Avinza®)
- Codeine
- Heroine
- Fentanyl and Carfentanil
- Hydromorphone
- Tapentadol
- Methadone (used to treat opioid withdrawal)
Stimulants
The two most common illegal stimulants are methamphetamine and cocaine, but prescription amphetamines (Adder-all® and Dexedrine®) and methylphenidate (Concerta® and Ritalin®) are also abused. Cocaine and methamphetamine have a powerful affect on dopamine release in the brain, with the effect of meth being more intense and lasting far longer. Illicit drugs are also more likely to contain dangerous contaminants and impurities, which pose serious health risks such as open sores/skin lesions, damage to soft membranes and dental tissues, and increased risk of aneurysm/stroke.
Synthetic
Although some of the chemical compounds developed have existed for decades, synthetic drugs, often referred to as "designer drugs" or their street names, are rapidly growing in popularity globally because of their ability to be lab produced, increased potency lowering the need for trafficking large amounts for higher profits, and their cheap nature leading to replacing or cutting/lacing into other illicit substance like marijuana, meth and cocaine. Many people interpret terms like "lab-produced" and their innocuous or nebulous street names to mean that synthetic drugs are safer, but this couldn't be further from the truth. The variety of synthetic drugs is incredibly wide, and their risks are far more extreme than plant-based substances.
- Extreme potency (dozens or hundreds of times more potent than plant-based substances)
- Very low thresholds for toxicity and overdose
- Lacing and cutting drastically increase recreational drug use risks
- Typically not detected on standard clinical labs (hard to identify and treat)
- Mimic effects of other high risk drugs, but interventions like Narcan MAY NOT WORK
- Withdrawal symptoms can be some of the most intense and incredibly painful
- Even more extreme biopsychological effects; possibly long-term or life-long
Because of the reduced cost coupled with the ease of manufacture, distribution and potency of lab-produced synthetic drugs, organized crime on the international, national and regional scales have only increased their prevalence.
