In this worksheet, students will be challenged to look more deeply at the issue of drugs and to what extent they may be helpful or harmful.
Key stage: KS 2
Curriculum topic: Animals, including Humans
Curriculum subtopic: Healthy Bodies: Lifestyle
Difficulty level: 
It's funny how some words can change their meaning over time. If you've looked at the activity called "Do diet and exercise matter?", you'll know that "diet" means something different these days. It's the same with "drugs" - so often you'll hear about someone being arrested for "using drugs".
So, are all drugs bad? As you go through this activity we'll try to answer that question and, hopefully, find out about beneficial drugs as well as harmful ones.
So - let's see what's good and what's bad.
Drinks like beer, wine, lager, cider and gin all contain a particular liquid drug that can have harmful effects upon the human body.
What is this liquid drug called that's in all these drinks?
It's a sad fact that the liquid drug alcohol, can dramatically change a person's behaviour and may result in dependency- meaning they have to drink it regularly to function.
What word do we use when people have this compelling need for something? Write your answer in the box.
If someone finds they have to drink a lot of these sorts of drinks, apart from the problem of it taking over their lives, what other sorts of harm can this drug do to our bodies?
Tick as many in this list as you agree with.
Another drug, called nicotine, is found in tobacco and people smoke this in cigarettes and pipes in order to get the drug into their bodies.
Smoking harms the body because of all the chemicals in the tobacco smoke, rather than the nicotine itself.
Here is a list of possible harmful effects from smoking - tick all the ones you think it might cause.
One drug abuse problem that especially affects children is often called "glue sniffing", although it includes a wide range of products including lighter fuel and paint remover. It causes brain damage and some young people have died from trying it.
The problem comes from the liquid in these products that evaporates and is inhaled.
Complete this sentence:
One of the particular problems with any sort of drug abuse, as we've seen, is the dependency factor - people's lives can end up being controlled by the drug.
Bearing in mind that anything can be harmful if taken regularly in quantity, match up the drugs in the following list to show whether you consider them harmful or beneficial (good for us in the right quantity).
The truth is, when you're ill and you visit the doctor or pharmacist, you may be prescribed a drug to make you feel better. We need to learn to be able to tell beneficial, medicinal drugs from unregulated street drugs, bearing in mind that even good things can harm us if we have too much of them.
Pick one of the following products that you might be given to help with a headache.
Many of our useful drugs come from natural sources. Here are some examples:
Codeine from poppies
Aspirin from willow
'Sudafed' from herbs
Quinine from tree bark
What do these sources of the different drugs have in common?
Complete this sentence:
When penicillin (an antibiotic) was developed in the last century, it was thought of as a 'wonder drug' because it was found to be able to cure all sorts of bacterial diseases and infections that had often killed people in the past.
Today, scientists are worried that antibiotics, like penicillin, have been used too much, often for the wrong ailments.
Which one of the following problems should antibiotics, like penicillin, not be prescribed for?
Because antibiotics have been over-used in the past, there are now an increasing number of bacterial infections which they can no longer be used to treat, as the bacteria are no longer killed by the drug (like penicillin) as they become resistant, or 'used' antibiotics.
What word do we use when a harmful organism is no longer killed by a substance because it's become 'used' to it.
Drinks like beer, wine, lager, cider and gin all contain a particular liquid drug that can have harmful effects upon the human body.
What is this liquid drug called that's in all these drinks?
It's a sad fact that the liquid drug alcohol, can dramatically change a person's behaviour and may result in dependency- meaning they have to drink it regularly to function.
What word do we use when people have this compelling need for something? Write your answer in the box.
If someone finds they have to drink a lot of these sorts of drinks, apart from the problem of it taking over their lives, what other sorts of harm can this drug do to our bodies?
Tick as many in this list as you agree with.
Another drug, called nicotine, is found in tobacco and people smoke this in cigarettes and pipes in order to get the drug into their bodies.
Smoking harms the body because of all the chemicals in the tobacco smoke, rather than the nicotine itself.
Here is a list of possible harmful effects from smoking - tick all the ones you think it might cause.
One drug abuse problem that especially affects children is often called "glue sniffing", although it includes a wide range of products including lighter fuel and paint remover. It causes brain damage and some young people have died from trying it.
The problem comes from the liquid in these products that evaporates and is inhaled.
Complete this sentence:
One of the particular problems with any sort of drug abuse, as we've seen, is the dependency factor - people's lives can end up being controlled by the drug.
Bearing in mind that anything can be harmful if taken regularly in quantity, match up the drugs in the following list to show whether you consider them harmful or beneficial (good for us in the right quantity).
The truth is, when you're ill and you visit the doctor or pharmacist, you may be prescribed a drug to make you feel better. We need to learn to be able to tell beneficial, medicinal drugs from unregulated street drugs, bearing in mind that even good things can harm us if we have too much of them.
Pick one of the following products that you might be given to help with a headache.
Many of our useful drugs come from natural sources. Here are some examples:
Codeine from poppies
Aspirin from willow
'Sudafed' from herbs
Quinine from tree bark
What do these sources of the different drugs have in common?
Complete this sentence:
When penicillin (an antibiotic) was developed in the last century, it was thought of as a 'wonder drug' because it was found to be able to cure all sorts of bacterial diseases and infections that had often killed people in the past.
Today, scientists are worried that antibiotics, like penicillin, have been used too much, often for the wrong ailments.
Which one of the following problems should antibiotics, like penicillin, not be prescribed for?
Because antibiotics have been over-used in the past, there are now an increasing number of bacterial infections which they can no longer be used to treat, as the bacteria are no longer killed by the drug (like penicillin) as they become resistant, or 'used' antibiotics.
What word do we use when a harmful organism is no longer killed by a substance because it's become 'used' to it.
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