Pros And Cons Of Nicotine

Psychoactive drugs are chemical substances that alters the function of the brain. It predominantly controls the central nervous systems and temporarily changes the organism’s consciousness, perception, mood and behaviour. Majority of psychoactive drugs are by law prohibited from use with the exceptions of the use in medical field. This is due to the consequences and harmful results that arises from the use of the drugs. However, there are very few psychoactive drugs that are permissible and are seen socially acceptable to use within our society. One of the very few licit drugs that will be focused on in this essay is nicotine. What makes nicotine socially acceptable and authorized as legal under the law? The topic of legalization of the drug

For individuals living with mental illnesses, for instance, schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, nicotine may help relieve their cognitive processes (“Nicotine may benefit”, 2006). A study was conducted with 25 randomly selected individuals with no mental disability and 25 individuals living with schizophrenia. This experiment revealed that smoking nicotine strengthened the ability to focus and their working memory for schizophrenic individuals yet not for the control group (“Nicotine may benefit”, 2006). After when all 50 participants attempted to quit smoking nicotine, only the individuals living with schizophrenia had impaired working memory (“Nicotine may benefit”, 2006). Another experiment reported to find that the harmful chemical components present in cigarettes that modifies “normal” individuals gene expression, helps those with schizophrenia to “normalize” their expression with certain genes (“Nicotine may benefit”, 2006). Although smoking nicotine for those living with schizophrenia can help enhance their quality of life, it does not cure their illness and can be the determinate other illnesses to develop due to harmful chemicals involved with smoking (“Nicotine may benefit”, 2006). Although it may be contrary to its use, nicotine can greatly help smoking individuals to slowly stop smoking (Berry, 2013). Nicotine is a highly addictive