There are two parts which may be helpful in framing an answer. The first part lies in simple continuum with what appears to be a common human urge to alter awareness, compounded and made lethal by contemporary chemistry. All cultures own techniques for altering consciousness for a variety of motives, from the spiritually transcendent to the equally universal, but less distinguished impulse to get "off the hook" - the temporary relief of everyday stress. Whether one employs fasting, dance, prayer, meditation, song, or the ingestion of psychoactive substances: cannabis, hashish, nicotine, yage, peyote, ayahuasca, alcohol, opium, epena, caffeine, or countless others, the act is as universal as disparaging the substances other cultures choose for their own pleasures. In North America use of caffeine, nicotine and alcohol is ubiquitous; yet we harbor the view that the universal use of the the coca leaf by Bolivian Indians is somehow a more sinister order of activity.

Whether an act as......

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Title: Drugs And Society
Approximate Word Count: 2247
Approximate Pages: 9 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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