What is the future of the drugs?

Answer 1

Which drugs?

Answer 2

Hi Cherry. The future for pharmaceuticals is not good. It seems like every week the FDA is posting warnings about the dangers of APPROVED DRUGS. More and more drugs are getting pulled off the market because of dangerous side-effects.

The basic paradigm of drug therapy is collapsing. I do not know of even one condition that has scientific evidence that it is caused by a drug deficiency. Since no condition is CAUSED by a drug deficiency, using drugs to treat a condition is most likely not going to fix the CAUSE of the problem.

21st century healthcare will increasingly focus on the underlying biochemical dysfunctions and work to find and fix the causes of those dysfunctions.

Best wishes.

Answer 3

In the 20th century, nothing seemed more variable than society's perception of mind-altering chemicals. Ninety years ago, the scientific consensus on heroin -- developed by the same company that brought us aspirin -- said it was a safe substance, and there was little chance of anyone forming an addiction to it. Care packages sent to World War I soldiers at the front included (perfectly legal) doses of cocaine and morphine. Tobacco was recommended by doctors as a digestive aid as late as the 1950s. I need hardly mention, and could hardly chronicle, the mass chemical binge known as the '60s and '70s. Ecstasy started life as an aid to therapy. Marijuana has been, alternately, a medical savior and a murderous menace.

But there are signs that our attitude to drugs will start to settle down and come to some sort of consensus in the 21st century. Amazingly, in all that time, there's never been a single scientific study that ranked all drugs according to the amount of long-term harm they cause human beings, based on the testimony of medical experts, free of hype, politics and preconceptions. That changed last week, when such a study appeared in the Lancet, the UK's leading medical journal, courtesy of researchers at Bristol University. It wasn't entirely scientific, as the panel behind the drug harm rankings did contain a smattering of legal experts who have only encountered drug abuse anecdotally, in the criminal justice system. But that just makes the study's results all the more surprising.


Top of the list were our old friends heroin and cocaine -- no surprise there. Nor is anyone likely to raise an stink at the fact that barbituates (which killed Marilyn Monroe and Jimi Hendrix) and methadone are the third and fourth worst drugs. The first surprise, for many of us, is the fifth most harmful drug for human beings: alcohol. It's a step ahead of ketamine, so if someone offers you a drink or a shot of horse tranquilizer, you should probably take the latter. Tobacco comes in at number 8. Marijuana, LSD and Ecstasy don't even make the top ten. (San Francisco to Bristol University: Well, duh.)

Naturally, none of this is going to have much of an immediate impact, at least in the US. Drug policy is too deeply entrenched, too politicized. (In the UK, where the debate isn't quite so hysterical, the Lancet article has been welcomed by a couple of committees currently reviewing national drug policy.) But this is medical science, and the human body isn't going to change much. Sooner or later, in this generation or the next, the science will filter down into politics.

And then what? Will lawmakers simply shift their priorities around, banning only the ten worst drugs, say? Will bartenders of 2060 happily sell you a tab of acid, but throw you out if you try to order a whiskey sour? Perhaps we can make all alcohol prescription-based: you'll need a doctor's note at the wine store.

In all seriousness, though, we're unlikely to go through the nightmare of prohibition again, not in any form. The alcohol industry and culture is way too entrenched. There is, for those of us who can just stick to a beer or two, little harm in having a beer or two. More likely, I think, is that alcohol will become the high-water mark of what society tolerates. Opiates and coke wreck the lives and brains of just about anyone who chooses to use them regularly; they will remain illegal, and the war on those drugs, if it is simply on those drugs, will have enormous public support

Answer 4

What do you mean by "the drugs" ?
Are you talking about :
A.) Pharmaceutical, Medicinal use -or-
B.) Illegal drugs

Answer 5

less side effects more it ll survive in the market ..it also depends on ppl's spending capacity and cost effectiveness ..