The Knockout:
Improving Teen Substance Abuse
Drug use is and has been for many years
a major factor in the everyday lives of people in our society.
The abuse of drugs, rather prescription or not, can have detrimental effects on
the human body and mind. This kind of substance
abuse has been seen in teens more and more every year.
The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) for Teens acknowledges in their 2002
Monitoring the Future Study, that “about 6.5 percent of 8th graders,
17.0 percent of 10th graders, and 22.9 percent of 12th
graders had used marijuana in the month before the survey”.
They then go on to state the fact that “Since 2007, annual, monthly, and daily
marijuana use increased among 10th and 12th graders while
daily use increased among 8th graders” (“Facts on”).
Today’s youth are not only experimenting with marijuana, but also things such
as cocaine, ecstasy, bath salts, and much more.
These substances pose serious threats to the long and healthy life that
adolescents should have to look forward to.
According to the NIDA for Teens, “About 9 percent of people who use marijuana
become dependent on it. The number increases to about one in six among those
who start using it at a young age, and to 25 to 50 percent among daily users” (“Facts
on”).
This data shows that young adults are at an extremely high risk of addiction. The
more popular that these drugs get in society, the higher this risk gets for
these teens. Teens today are under the illusion
that drugs are cool and that they will not have any effect on them.
This type of attitude is only a result of their ignorance to the true effects
of drug abuse. Many different approaches have
been taken as an attempt to stop this expediting rate of teens using drugs.
There have been things from school required drug and health awareness classes,
local community group programs, and even media broadcastings for drug awareness.
Unfortunately many of these things have not given a good enough solution to the
problem that we are facing today.
Adolescent drug abuse is an apparent issue in our society, but by members of
both the family and the community getting involved in the healthy development
of our youth, there can be a great deal of change for the better.
Before our society can fully understand
why adolescent drug use is such a huge problem every single where we turn, the
serious causes and effects of drug abuse in teens must be understood.
Young people have been exposed to drugs for a number of years now and have become
a lot more dependent on them over time.
In the article “The Natural History of Adolescent Drug Use”, it is analyzed
that “the drug epidemic in the United States began in the late 1960s and is
still with us” (Robins 656). Drugs can be easily accessed in a ginormous
country such as the United States of America.
As long as teens have the funds to purchase these drugs, they are pretty much
sure to find someone who is willing to sell to them.
Also with such easy access, drugs are being exposed to people at younger and
younger ages as the years go by. The majority of
people who develop an addiction to a substance of some sort would have
developed this as an adolescent and carried on with this problem throughout the
rest of their lives. In Lloyd Johnston’s
book Monitoring the future: National results
on adolescent drug use: Overview of key findings, he states that “Today,
nearly half (47%) have tried an illicit drug by the time they finish high
school” (90). This
percentage is extremely high; therefore action should be taken to lower it. Children should not be able to get ahold to any
type of drug they would like, especially since they are all more than likely to
not have any knowledge over what they are being given and what the side effects
are to these substances.
There have been many programs
created within the recent years, such as D. A. R. E.
(Drug Abuse
Resistance Education), J. A. D. E. (Juvenile Alcohol and Drug
Education & Tobacco Education), and others. These programs have been
implemented in order to prevent adolescents from abusing drugs and other
substances. They attempt this by providing both mental and physical
support along with education over these substances to young adults and their parents/families. In “Preventing
Adolescent Drug Use: Long Term Results of A Junior High Program” authors
Phyllis L. Ellickson, Robert M. Bell, and Kimberly McGuigan open with the
statement that “Among the most promising programs are
those based on the social influence model, which emphasizes strategies for
identifying and resisting social pressures to use drugs” (6). Programs along the lines of these
have lent a helping hand in improving the statistics of adolescent drug abuse
in the United States within the recent years. Yet, although these programs have
been of great help for many young adults, there still seems to be an abundance
of our youth who are using drugs today.
There
are many factors that play a role in adolescent addiction to drugs.
Many of these factors consist of family interaction along with peer interaction
in their everyday social lives, and also the environment that these teens are being
raised up in. Eva Y. Deykin, Janice C. Levy, and Victoria Wells, doctors
and authors of “Adolescent Depression, Alcohol and Drug Abuse”, proclaim that
“among adolescents, lowered self-esteem initiated drug use which then produced
an improvement in self-esteem” (178). This leads us to infer that many
teens use drugs as a coping mechanism for not looking the way they believe that
they should be.
Self-esteem
and depression tend to play a large role in the choice to even consider drugs
in most adolescent cases. When they doubt themselves, they
then turn to substances that give them the illusion to feel better about
themselves. When adolescents begin to abuse drugs it has an effect on a
number of people, including themselves. Their families are also affected
because they will have to deal with a moody and unstable teenager that will do
just about anything to get their drug of choice. This will also occur for the
friends of these teens, who will no longer have that same bond that they once
did because other things have become much more important to their addicted
friend than they are. Although drug abuse will have a
tremendous effect on the friends and family, teens who use suffer the most.
The
effects that drugs have on teens can range anywhere between mental, social and
physical problems. They will soon begin to feel shut
off from the world and everything that they know due to the fact that they are
living a completely separate life from everyone else.
This can result in serious psychological issues from the feeling of isolation
from the rest of the world. The thing that will most likely affect them for the
remainder of their lives is the physical strain that drug use can put on your
body.
The NIDA for Teens reports the physical effects that marijuana alone can have
on a person. Due to the affect that marijuana has on your brain, they
concluded that “your ability to do complex tasks could be compromised, as well
as your pursuit of academic, athletic, or other life goals that require you to
to be 100-percent focused and alert” (“Facts on”). Abusing drugs can cause
multiple problems in one’s life and is often lifelong.
In order for society to truly get a
hold of teens abusing drugs, the pending epidemic, the families and everyone in
the community of these young adults must do a part in knocking out drugs, which
will lead to the reformation of the society we live in.
In the article " Preventing
Adolescent Drug Use: Long Term Results of A Junior High Program", writers
Phyllis L. Ellickson, Robert M. Bell, and Kimberly McGuigan analyze a program
they created to raise teen drug use awareness. They called it The Project ALERT, which they implemented in
30 schools in California and Oregon of different types of backgrounds. The goal was to compare
their form of drug awareness to the ones that the schools already had into
effect. When reviewing their
results, they discuss that “Our analysis of Project ALERT's
results over 6 years yields two major conclusions:(1) Once the lessons stopped,
the program's impact on drug use stopped as well; and (2) the curriculum's
effect on cognitive risk factors lasted considerably longer” (Ellickson 860).
The program had a positive effect on stopping teens from using, but once there
was nothing to raise awareness for them, they continued to abuse drugs.
These results suggest that teens need someone to give them the facts and
knowledge about the substances that they would like to experiment with.
When they are not educated on the effects of these drugs, it is more acceptable
to think that it is okay to abuse.
This is exactly why it is best for the community to pull together and educate
students. The more involved that every person is in this movement, the stronger
the impact will be.
Although
cleaning up the drug problem in society may seem like the most logical way to
go to most people, there could possibly still be those who do not see a problem
at hand.
These advocates most likely consist of those who themselves are using,
including the teens that are being referred to throughout this proposal.
Some
teens may argue that drug awareness programs such as those mentioned before,
take away their right to choose and experiment with things as they grow up.
Today’s youth view drug experimentation as a rite of passage, almost as
something they must experience at least once in their lifetime.
For others, this may simply make them feel as if their clutch or coping mechanism
is being taken away from them. There are some
very troubled teens who would rather fade away their problems rather than face
them.What advocates of drug use do not realize is that these substances do have
consequences that will affect them for the rest of their lives.
Therefore,
precautions must be taken in order to help society.
As
stated before, for this to work effectively every person within every community
must reach out and get involved as much as possible.
Every person is needed to implement the warning of the horrible effects of drug
use to teens who do not know any better.
In “Preventing Adolescent Drug Use: Long Term
Results of a Junior High Program", the writers assert that “We
conclude that teenagers need continued and strong reinforcement to resist drugs
(or other high risk behavior) during the high school years” (Ellickson 860).
This shows that teens need consistency in order for any program to work to its
full potential. Teens need to hear from their
parents, teachers, coaches, neighbors, and many more that drugs will have a
negative effect on their lives and will
cause many problems, so which cannot be fixed easily.
Addiction is a terrible thing to go through life dealing with and is something
that you can never get over. It is our
responsibility to spread the word and raise awareness to our youth whom may not
know of the hazards. The more we talk about
it, the more we can prevent it.
Works Cited
Deykin, Eva Y., Janice C. Levy, and Victoria Wells.
"Adolescent Depression, Alcohol And Drug Abuse." American Journal Of Public
Health 77.2 (1987):
178-182. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
Ellickson, Phyllis L., Robert M. Bell, and
Kimberly McGuigan. "Preventing adolescent drug use: long-term results of a
junior high program." American
Journal of Public Health 83.6
(1993): 856-861.
“Facts on Drugs: Marijuana.” NIDA for Teens. 15 Mar. 2013.
National Institute on Drug Abuse. 8 Apr. 2013.
Johnston, Lloyd. Monitoring the future: National
results on adolescent drug use: Overview of key findings. No. 9. DIANE
Publishing, 2010.
Robins, Lee N. "The Natural History Of Adolescent Drug
Use." American Journal Of Public Health 74.7 (1984): 656-657. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 8 Apr. 2013.
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