Adolescent´s Drug Abuse on the Rise

Teens use drugs for many different things, for example fitting in can be a big contributing factor to teens usage of drugs. Stress can also be a big factor, most things that cause stress for teens can be school/grades, sports, family, and relationships. Pier pressure often gets teens to do things they normally wouldn't do, which can create some bad habits, and in order to be cool you have to do what everyone else is doing. Due to stress, the pressure to fit in, and doing good in school teens often don't want to feel anything and drugs can minus those feelings and can create pleasure depending on the drug taken. Another example would be the role models they have in their life. Most teens follow what their parents/guardians do. Due to this seeing what their parents are doing that causes curiosity. Which leads to teens wanting to experiment with

“Since 1992, the high rate of illicit drug use among youth has been steadily increasing” (Juvenile Justice, 1997). This has become a trend that needs to be put to a stop. There are too many youth that are involved in criminal activity and that are labeled actual juvenile delinquents in the criminal justice system. Researchers can’t help to believe that alcohol and substance abuse has something to do with the emerging problem. “Drug and alcohol use also increases the likelihood that a youthful offender will have prolonged interaction with the juvenile justice system” (Reclaiming Futures, 2012); this is a fact. Many juveniles who participate in substance abuse usually affect their loved ones and friends.

At twelve years old, my biggest concern was how many more days until softball season started. I was concerned with history tests and my favorite shows on tv. I was a normal twelve year old. However, it seems as though what is normal is changing, rapidly. Teenage drug use is sweeping the nation. Rural areas, which Missouri has an abundance of, are being hit hard by what is now considered “the norm” for teenagers. Missouri is overrun with teenage drug users; due to, limited educational programs, negative parental assistance, and no solutions.

The topic of this paper will be substance abuse in adolescents. I will mainly focus on family structure, neurobiology, prevention, and treatment of the adolescents. I decided to research this topic because many of my acquaintances and family members have had to deal with substance abuse, especially during their adolescent phase. The driving point for me was that I wanted to understand why substance abuse in adolescents kept occurring and how I could help make the adolescents that are in my life situations better.

To understand and attempt to combat adolescent drug abuse, people must understand the effects of

Drugs are used for many different reasons among teenagers and children. The most common reasons are “coping—to deal with anxiety, anger, depression,

06) Teens basically see or hear the medicine on TV or radio, and thinks it is okay to use it. “We've become a society that basically says, 'If things aren't perfect in your life, take a pill,' " Fay says.”This causes our young people to see drugs as an answer" (USA TODAY Section: Life, Pg. 06). But, if there no conflict with them, they will use drugs to help them relax and have more fun.”But teens drink and smoke for other reasons as well. In the survey, 41% of boys responded that "parties are more fun with drugs" -- an increase from 34% in 2008. More than half reported that drugs help teens relax in social settings” (USA TODAY Section: Life, Pg. 06).

In today's society nothing affects lives of teenagers more than alcohol,drugs or prescription medications. Teens use drugs and alcohol to help with problems they have in life. Those problems can range all the way to financial struggles all the way to something simple such as peer pressure. There are over hundreds of reasons why teens use drugs and alcohol to cope but the main ones are to help with peer pressure or bullying, household problems and relationships with family, and negative influences from family and friends. All of those are serious issues that teens are facing right now and to cope with those issues they are falling to an addiction of drugs and alcohol. Teens feel that using drugs and alcohol will help them ignore those

Adolescence substance use not only impacts the user, but it has serious impacts on their community or our society. They can be affected physically, psychologically, socially, academically, and economically. Adolescence that develop a pattern of repeated use tend to lose interest in normal activities such as sports (NIDA, 2014). Adolescence that misuse substances are more likely to develop mental illnesses or mental health problems such as depressions and psychological abnormalities (Crowe, A.H, 1998). With psychological abnormalities, the adolescence is more likely to lose their ability to socialize. Rapid social changes may occur where the adolescent may weaken their sense of family and increase the sense of belonging to other people, groups and places (UNDCP, 1995).

In our society today, there are several issues and social problems which continuously eat us up and at the end, would lead to a non-functioning society. Some of the social problems include poverty, drug abuse, prostitution, and so many others that affect us. Some of these would cause more harm than good if not handled in time to avoid the spread. This is because when it exceeds the time limit, it will create hazards to the community (Walker et al, 68). One of the issues we will consider precisely is that of drug abuse. It is majorly experienced among the teens and the youth, which is the young generation. Drug abuse mainly causes so many effects such that if it is not dealt with it immediately, the problem would seem like a typical societal behavior, and its adverse effects would cause deterioration to the wellbeing of the society.

According to research done by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in April of 2017, drug-related deaths have more than doubled since 2000. In 2004, the University of Michigan and the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, showed that 70.6 percent of high school seniors had used alcohol in the past year. Substance abuse is when a person can not control their intake of drugs and/or alcohol. This disease causes major health issues and distorts the thinking a person’s mental health. This crisis is important because it ruins the lives of millions of addicts, and affects all types of race, gender, sexuality, and age group. Because this is manipulative illness heavy influences social environments, addiction affects the lives of many impressionable adolescents.

Drug abuse is becoming a growing problem among teenagers. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse's 1999 survey of 2,000 teens, about 14 million teens ages 12 to

Hard drugs have been around for hundreds of years. It is a reoccurring problem in society that is increasing dramatically among adolescence and young adults. The actual drug can change he structure and function of the brain. It can do great harm to the human body psychically, emotionally, and socially. Often times, young adults have a greater risk of addiction when they become older and the addiction can transfer to adulthood. There are many way to prevent drug use and addiction amongst teenagers. However, if they do not seek help, the problem will continue. Drug use can prevent an individual from achieving goals society has set and increase the likelihood that the individual will engage in deviant criminal behavior. It has been argued amongst scholars and researchers that drug use can occurs through biological cause. Some argue that is caused through interaction with current drug users. Overtime, nonmedical prescription opioids and heroin became the drugs that have a higher chance of being used and abused amongst young adults. The authors, Magdalena Cerdá, Julián Santaella, Brandon D. L. Marshall, June H. Kim, and Silvia S. Martins, of the article, Nonmedical Prescription Opioid Use in Childhood and Early Adolescence Predicts Transitions to Heroin Use in Young Adulthood: A National Study, conducted a research to examine the relationship between nonmedical use of prescription opioids and heroin beginning from childhood to young adulthood.

Now, there are lots of teenagers all over the world /use drug. And it /becomes a very normal thing in social. Why /the teenagers want to use drug? Drugs/ blur memory, causing blank spots. When a person tries to get information through this cloudy mess, he can’t do it. Drugs make a person feel slow or stupid and cause him to have failures in life. And as he has more failures and life gets harder, he wants more drugs to help him deal with the problem. There are two very important reasons for that, such as environment and different personalities.

Some teens rely on drugs due to the stress that they are facing at home,problems such as getting good grades, they will get stress if they do not get the grades that their parents expect them to get,therefore they turn to drugs to help them feel better. Dysfunctional families also often cause teenagers to turn to drugs as they do not feel and get the affection that they are suppose to get from their parents ("Drug abuse and Addiction", 2010).