Drug Abuse

Drug Abuse

Human beings have a widespread and long-standing affinity for different types of nonmedical and/or illicit drugs, such as tobacco, marijuana, opiates, and cocaine, etc. Many people try and use those nonmedical and/or illicit drugs for a variety of social and economic reasons. Unfortunately, most people are not always rational or careful in their ways of using drugs until the negative consequences have completely occurred. In recent years, the trend and ways of illicit drug uses among young people is even worse. Drug abuse is simply defined by Encyclopedia Britannica as the excessive or addictive use of drugs for nonmedical purposes (1). Because of diversity and changes in cultural and legal norms, there is no consensus on a standardized definition for drug abuse. Therefore, according to Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology, "Drug abuse generally can be defined as the harmful or risky use of legal or illegal drugs or the use of legal drugs in a manner or amount inconsistent with medical advice" (280). As shown, drug abuse is harmful and illegal; and it can probably cause permanent physical and emotional damage to users.

Drug abuse has been not only a contentious issue but also a severe social problem. Today's social awareness of drug abuse identifies a lot of issues, for example, criminal behavior and economic resource loss, etc. According to Encyclopedia of Educational Psychology, "The drug abuse is frequently associated with a myriad of psychosocial issues, including violence, homicide, homeless, premature death, psychopathology, and economic losses; for young individuals, in particular, drug abuse is also correlated with school failure, criminal activity, drugged driving accidents, aggressiveness, unsafe sex, unplanned pregnancy, and suicide" (280). This statement demonstrates that drug abuse could definitely give rise to various problems that threaten our whole society. First of all, Drug abuse could produce numerous devastating health problems including cancer, heart disease, HIV/AIDs (result from injection drug use or sex with injection drug users), and mental illness. These health problems, as a result, could possibly destroy the entire health care systems. Secondly, it could cause enormous drug-related crimes. Obviously, these crimes could impacts the whole criminal justice systems. Thirdly, drug abuse could negatively influence educational outcomes; and it is frequently associated with low academic performance and failure in school. In addition, drug abuse more or less affects business's productivity and profitability. To sum all, the consequences of drug abuse adversely impact not only individuals who abuse drugs but also almost all aspect of the society.

Not only is the United States facing the sorts of drug abuse problems, many countries in the world are also facing this serious problem as well. The growing trend in drug abuse is widespread around the world, so drug abuse has totally became such a global problem and impacted many different geographic areas in the world. In the United States, for example, drug abuse has been more or less impacting nearly all areas, from large metropolitan counties to small rural areas. As written by Linnae Hutchison and Craig Blakely, the rate of illicit drug use in all age groups demonstrates that large metropolitan counties is ranked in the highest rate of illicit drug use (7.65%), nonmetropolitan area is in the second place (5.8%), and 4.8 percent in completely rural counties is rated in the third place (146). This data shows that large metropolitan counties are the highest risk area of drug abuse. However, the rate of drug abuse among youth in the large metropolitan areas is quite different from the all age group's rate in the large metropolitan. "The prevalence of illicit drug use among youth reveals an emergent trend: 14.4 percent in rural areas, 10.4 percent in counties with small metropolitan areas, and 10.4 percent in large metropolitan area" (Hutchison and Blakely 147). All in all, the large metropolitan counties in the United States have the highest rate of drug abuse even though the rate of illicit drug use among urban youth is lower than rural youth.

From the data above, we can also find out that a high percentage of the population impacted by drug abuse is young people. In fact, the population impacted by drug abuse ranges from homeless, to white-collar professionals, students to rural farmers, street children to suburban teenagers. In 2008, National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) demonstrates that the rate of illicit drug use among young adults aged 18 to 25 in the past year is 33.5 percent, followed by the youth aged 12 to 17 with 19 percent. At last, there is a 10.3 percent of adults aged 26 and older abusing drugs in the past year ("National Drug Threat Assessment 2010" 1). More and more of youth are turning to drugs, and their habits and behaviors put them at increased risk of overdosing, or even death. Actually, this phenomenon and trend are widespread in recent years. In the World Drug Report 2010, it indicates that "Drug abuse occurs most frequently among young people in the 15-35 age group, with a particular concentration in the 18-25 age group" (171). The prevalence among young people tends to be higher than among the general population. In fact, people who abuse drugs come from all walks of life.

The rapid social and technology change have made people obtain illicit drugs easier and faster. Thus, drug abuse cause kinds of problems that have never been happened before although the United States has been consistently affected for decades. It impacts many sectors of society in different ways, and every year it generated a huge economic loss to the government. According to the article "Info Facts: Understanding Drug Abuse and Addiction" from National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), "Estimates of the total overall costs of drug abuse in the United States, including productivity and health- and crime-related costs, exceed $600 billion annually. As staggering as the number is, it does not fully describe the breadth of destructive public health and safety implications of drug abuse and addiction, such as family disintegration, loss of employment, failure in school, domestic violence, and child abuse" (1). This statement clearly stresses that the money just directly incurred in drug-related law enforcement, therapy, and other assistance is an overwhelming amount of expenses; however, this enormous expenses do not even contain the indirect costs such as loss in employment, premature death, school failure, and homeless. Obviously, it is a big challenge for the U.S. government. As stated by the National Drug Threat Assessment 2006, "the economic consequences of drug abuse severely burden federal, state, and local government resources