PSYC62H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Nucleus Accumbens, Addiction, Sehar
16 Feb 2016
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When it comes to drugs of abuse, there will be some body of legislation which lists what drugs are legal or illegal. It limits the availability of drugs that have a risk or abuse or harm. The two legislations in the states and canada are very similar and born out of each other, and they are all based on very similar formats and ideologies on how to structure the different control acts. The main organizing theme is schedules, which indicate where a drug sits relative to another, on a rank order. Those that are scheduled on one end may be considered the most harmful, and as you move away from that extreme, you get to drugs that have some medical value and some risk. Some of it does not make much sense, legislation is born out of political history and does not necessarily reflect how academics would treat drugs in terms of harmfulness.
