Drug Use And Its Effects On Society

As soon as I entered the class, there was a man sitting in our class. His name was Paul Shapiro, and he was from the Orange County Courts. He explained to us what the community court is, and what kind of effect it has on our society. During mid-1980s, crack cocaine was widespread and people kept going back to prison. To cut this infinite loop of incarceration, Orange County made the drug court. It is not like a real court, but rather similar to a program that helps drug addicts free themselves from drug dependence. Unlike other courts, the prosecutor, the attorney, the probation officer, and the judge in the drug court work as a team.

1b. List and describe briefly the major structures of the brain, as presented in your textbook, including the function of those elements that are most related to psychoactive drug reaction.

Crime and drugs are related in several ways. One being, drug production, manufacture, trafficking or possession of illegal drugs may comprise crime. Secondly, drug use could possibly increase the possibility of other crimes like murder or kidnapping. Finally, use of drugs can be connected to bigger problems, such as, the use of illegal weapons and other shapes of violence and terrorism. You may wonder, what causes certain people to participate in criminal activities while abusing illegal drugs?

CRIMINOLOGYDoes drug use cause crime, does crime cause drug use or is the relationship entirely co-incidental?INTRODUCTIONIn this paper I will look at the amount and type of crime caused by drugs, the relationship between drugs and crime and the relationship between alcohol and crime.

Whichever stance you may have on the matter, it is pretty evident that drug use is increasingly prevalent and an ongoing issue in the United States. “Drug use is on the rise in this country and 23.5 million Americans are addicted to alcohol and drugs. That’s approximately one in every 10 Americans over the age of 12 – roughly equal to the entire population of Texas” said Dr. Kima Joy Taylor, director of the CATG Initiative (Drugfree.org). Because of facts like these, the War on Drugs was created with the proposed mission to deplete the number of drugs being consumed and sold in the United States. After over forty years since Nixon declared it, the War on Drugs has continuingly failed its promises and created additional social problems for

Drug usage has a major impact on America. If drugs were to be legalized, drugs would change the way we live in America. Drugs have been a problem to America’s society and the environment only because people use them for unhealthy reasons. Doing so can cause lung cancer, hair loss, rotten teeth and many more side effects. But if people start using drugs for the better of self and their environment, drugs can be used as medicine, to lower crime rates, and to stop the drug black market. As drugs have its disadvantages they would have a more beneficial leeway on us the people if used for more healthy and environmental reasons.

Atrociously, it appears that drugs and crime seem to go hand in hand. Moreover, research has been broken down into three hypothesizes to analyze the relationship between drugs and crime. Those hypothesizes are, drug use causes crime, crime causes drug use, and finally, both drug use and crime share common causes. Furthermore, the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program, known as ADAM II, is utilized by the Department of Justice to show statistics of individuals who have been apprehended for serious crimes and tested through urinalysis for a number of illicit drugs. The statistics indicate that the use of drugs among the arrestee population is higher than in the general population and confirm the suspicions about the correlation between drug use and criminal behavior. However, it does not indicate the causative relationship, therefore hypothesizes were created to untangle the confusion of the research into the possible causal relationship between drugs and crime (Levinthal, 2012).

According to numerous studies, substance abuse is the number one enabler to crime prone citizens. Substance abuse, such as alcohol, illegal drugs such as cocaine or marijuana or even over the counter cough medicine, can greatly impact one’s decisions and actions. By mistreating the use of these substances, dangerous activities can occur. Some of these choices that these individuals make can lead to multiple years in prison or even death. Substance abuse and crime has gone down somewhat since the 1970s, but has been slowly starting to rise.

In all societies, there are substances that are deemed as both not acceptable and acceptable for consumption. The laws today are a result of ever changing societal norms. Before a particular drug is discovered, it is not illegal; it simply exists in nature. When that substance is introduced into a society, it must be determined if its effects are in line with the societies morals which may be in large part regulated by the dominate religion. If it is proven to be beneficial to the society and abides by the social morals its use is largely unregulated. If an individual in that society that is not a part of the dominate religion uses an illegal substance, are they exhibiting deviant behavior or practicing their freedom of religion? Of

Cocaine’s impact on modern society according to the United States Department of Justice says, how only 1% of cocaine is used on an everyday basis by college-aged students. Furthermore, they say that the casual use is much higher because within the last year 5.1% of college-aged students consumed cocaine. However, nothing can really be done to change these percentages because due to the 20th century this illegal drug, as some others, have become legal in the United States therefore, trying to prevent this drug is something that can’t be accomplished.

A lot of people link drug abuse with crime, at times even with violent crime. This association comes from psychopharmacological association that imply that people may engage in criminal acts after taking some kind of substance known to undermine their judgment as well as self-control result in paranoid thoughts and distortion of inhibitions (Sewell, Poling and Sofuoglu, 189). Though all substances that affect the central nervous system might result in this kind of relationships, scientific information indicates that some type of drugs have a more strong effect than others. Such drugs are alcohol, cocaine, phencyclidine and amphetamines (McCauley, Ruggiero, Resnick and Kilpatrick, 136). Inversely, cannabis and heroin are less associated with desire to commit

Drug abuse and predatory criminality go hand in hand in a few, select social groups, while in others, drug abuse most often occurs without criminal behavior (other than the fact they’re doing drugs.) Despite what most might think, drug abuse typically follows predatory criminality. As drug abusers keep trying harder drugs due to necessity, the intensity of their criminal behavior escalates dramatically. When using more than one type of drug at one time, studies show that the frequency of criminal activity increases. But, when these drug offenders decrease the amount of drugs they put in their system, their rate of criminal activity also decreases, which shows that drugs can cause a person to commit crime. This shows that drug usage can cause crime and stopping drug usage can slow or even halt criminal activity.

     Do people ever think about the consequences about drug abuse? Not many of us do but we all know what it does to us. Drugs are harmful to the brain and the body system itself; they affect the heart in many ways and because of that people become unconscious as to what their actions are. They do not realize how badly they can harm the community around them. Drugs are normally used by those who are not involved in activities such as, religious clubs, sports, etc. The users are normally stressed out with life and at times they just need something to set their minds aside from problems which occur in their everyday life. There are many reasons as to why and how drugs affect the community around the drug user

Studies found as many as one-half of all homicide perpetrators and victims had been drinking, and a large proportion of violence occurs in places where alcohol is consumed. (Lowry) This phenomenon may be linked to psychoactive effects of alcohol. In addition to pharmaceutical effects of drugs, interpersonal violence may result from economically motivated crimes to support drug use and activities related to the supply and distribution of illegal drugs. (Lowry) Tobacco use amongst adolescents has also been associated with interpersonal violence and delinquency as part of a syndrome of problem behaviors that includes illicit drug use, early sexual intercourse, and school dropout.” (Lowry). Not only is it related to violence, it is a compounding problem in itself. It has been reported that “12- to 17-year-olds at drug- and gang-free schools, those reporting drugs and gangs at their school were nearly 12 times more likely to have used tobacco (23% vs. 2%), three times more likely to have used alcohol (39% vs. 12%), and five times more likely to have used marijuana (21% vs. 4%), according to the report.” (Mahoney)

A drug is a chemical substance applied into treating, diagnosing and preventing one from disease infections or a substance that is used by a person to enhance his or her physical and mental state in the perceived effect. Drugs used for different purposes and their effect depend on which cause for usage. It causes both positive and negative consequences directly to the user and in the long-run it affects the whole society or community. Drug addiction is the activity of uncontrollable dependence on a substance by the user no matter the harm caused by its usage. It is a habit that has been in many years hard to curb especially among the youths. “We must recognize that substance abuse and addiction is a disease, not a moral failing or easily abandoned self-indulgence,” (Califano, 2008).The cases of drug abuse have been on the rise over the recent years and resulted in crimes. The cases have a great effect affected the society in general since the reliable energetic youths have turned to drug abuse. However, some measures have been initiated to mitigate, curb and treat drug addiction in the society as outlined in the essay.