rug Abuse and Drug Addiction continues to become a public health crisis of major proportions. Although the term "addict "conjures up images of heroin-crazed ghetto dwellers and skid-row winos, the fact is people from all walks of life are susceptible to the lure of mind and mood-altering drugs. This is as true for both legal drugs such as alcohol and prescription pharmaceuticals as it is for illegal drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

Because it is legal and its use is deeply ingrained in our customs and rituals, alcohol is the drug most widely abused in America. It is estimated that there are between 10 and 13 million alcoholics and problem drinkers in the United States alone.In the 1980s, cocaine emerged as the major illicit drug of abuse. According to surveys, the number of users in the United States increased by more than one-third between 1982 and 1985, from 4.2 million to 5.8 million.

Although one result of the increase in cocaine use was a decline in the heroin addiction rate, the statistics on the abuse of heroin, a highly addictive narcotic, remain alarmingly high. According to the 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, which may actually underestimate illicit opiate (heroin) use, an estimated 2.4 million people had used heroin at some time in their lives, and nearly 130,000 of them reported using it within the month preceding the survey. The survey report estimates that there were 81,000 new heroin users in 1997. A large proportion of these recent new users were smoking, snorting, or sniffing heroin, and most (87 percent) were under age 26.

To be sure, the medical Community had witnessed addiction to alcohol, morphine, and opium among patients prior to the 20th century. Addiction to morphine goes back to the Civil War, when it was used as a painkiller in the treatment of wounded soldiers. During the 19th century, opium and its chief active ingredient morphine were sold openly in grocery and general stores. Is it any wonder that many people became victim to chemical dependency on these narcotics, after all they were as available then as aspirin is today? A turn of the 19th century advertisement for Bayer pharmaceuticals below, promotes Heroin as a cough suppressant.