Drug
Abuse Term Paper:

For hundreds of years the debate has been led of whether the society is responsible for the problems its members experience. Drug abuse has been one of the most widespread social issues of concern for many years now, but with the rapid development of the pharmacological industry it has gained even more importance. Easy and legal access that almost all the people in developed countries have to drugs enhances this problem, providing all the people with the leaning towards the narcotic substances the opportunity to get them more or less freely.

Advertisement and branding also plays an important role in enlarging the quantity of the drug adjectives. Due to the perverted image that’s created by the commercials, TV shows and films, youngsters often consider the use of alcohol and “light” drugs as the sign of “coolness” and being an adult, thus they often feel they have a right to use these substances even when they’re underage, as most teens and tweens already feel they’re grown up enough to decide for themselves.

Modern Western society is oriented on an independent and autonomic person, and the thought that he/she shouldn’t be “tied to his mother’s apron strings”, instead have to “think for themselves” is put to the contemporary child’s mind at a very early age. But it happens that parents forget or neglect talking about drugs and alcohol, leaving teachers and coevals to deal with this problem. The problem of drug abuse is considered to be vexatious in our society, so that friends and classmates sometimes remain the only source provide that kind of information. And for children an adolescent their own experience or that of their friends, is almost always more prominent and veracious than any of the data given on TV or in textbooks. So, it often happens that youngsters get wry and perverted information about the narcotic substances, thus they aren’t fully acknowledged with the possible consequence before beginning to take any of those.

Let’s acknowledge the fact that people often take drugs to flee from the problems and contretemps they experience during their lifetime. Psychologists name numerous reasons for that, but one of the most significant one is that they don’t posses problem-solving skills needed for successful survival in our society. Schools and colleges do not teach their graduates how to cope with family problems, and they also provide little information on how to find prestigious and highly paid job. Of course some people manage to acquire these skills out of their educational establishment’s walls, but those who don’t, sometimes choose to escape from the duty of dealing with the difficulties by plunging into the narcotic nirvana.

It’s an obvious fact that most people prefer to live, not to survive. But, according to the statistics, in Western countries the percentage of working poor grows every day. Those are people who work sedulously to earn their living, but the money they get is often insufficient even for nutrition, not even speaking about social and medical services. As working poor are often people with the low educational level, many of them do not see any way out of this situation except from drinking or taking drugs to forget about the lack of funds even for providing the essentials for their families and themselves. Becoming a drug addict deprives them, their children and spouses, of any hope to raise their social level, as both purchasing narcotic substances and render for the treatment consumes all the resources the family members come off to get. It’s also statistically proved that the children who come from the lower class are under the great risk of becoming drug addicts, as they tend to repeat their parent’s lifepaths.

As we’ve seen there are numerous societal factors that cause drug abuse nowadays. Of course this doesn’t mean we have to blame the society alone for the problems of its members. Psychological and sociological research show that personal factors also play a significant part in acquiring drug subjection, but we may also contemplate that changing the government policies on some issues may lead to the gradual decrease in the number of alcoholics and drug addicts.

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