Substance Abuse Increasing in Inner-City Minorities
Substance abuse is an ever increasing epidemic facing America's inner- city minorities. There are several different drugs that are gaining popularity amongst inner-city youths 1. Juice, that is marijuana soaked in embalming fluid is starting to show up in more and more inner east coast cities 2. Crack or rock cocaine is by far one of the most addicting drugs out there, it's been engulfing
America's inner-cities since the early 80's 3. Heroin, is also making a comeback
4. Alcohol and marijuana are still very popular in the lower and upper classes 5.
There are some very distinctive differences in the substance abuse seen in the less fortunate classes and the
…show more content…
To get an accurate perceptive of substance abuse in an inner city environment, I conducted an interview with T.J, an 18 year old black crack addict from uptown Manhattan.
Here are some excerpts from our conversion.
Me: How did you start using drugs?
T.J: It started when I was about 11 smokin' weed. After a while weed wasn't getting me high enough. So I searched for a new thing then I found the big boy
(crack). My first time smokin' crack, I bought a five dollar rock off this nigga on 115th and Saint Nicks. I went back to my rest and smoked that shit up. I loved the high. It took me to another planet and shit. The next day I went back and bought a ten dollar rock and it hasn't stopped since.
Me: How long ago was that?
T.J: Three years, kid.
Me: What has your crack addiction done to your life?
T.J: What life? Crack is my life. My moms won't talk to me. My family, if they see me they don't say shit. My only friend is my pipe. I done stole shit from my moms, my boys and just almost anybody I come across. If I don't get my shit for a while I start shaking. It's like food for me. I need it to survive.
Me: Did you finish high school?
T.J: Naw kid, like five months after I hit the pipe I dropped out.
Me: What are you trying to do about you problem?
T.J: Well right now I'm in Detox. I'm trying to get my life back on track. It's mad hard though.
To get the middle class version of
The book being reviewed in this papers is Code of the Suburb: Inside the World of Young Middle-Class Drug Dealers by Scott Jacques and Richard Wright. This book is written on the context of 30 different individuals from a small location referenced as “Peachville” in Atlanta Georgia (Jacques & Wright 1). Each of these known individuals during their time in high school were selling drugs. Marijuana was the particular substance to be sold, but few dove into other illicit drugs including ecstasy, cocaine etc. (3). Generally speaking, the first questions that appears is what pushed these students to dive into the prospects of peddling and using drugs? Better yet, why continue to use them? The 7 chapters included in this book contain various stories of popularity and financial gains and losses along with the destruction of relationships.
It was right there I just had to grab some I knew this was going to get me in trouble later but I really wanted some!
It was during the mid-1980s that the emergence of a new smokable form of cocaine, called crack, had been introduced to the United States. Crack, was highly-addictive and swept through impoverished areas of cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Miami. In the end it caused devastating effects for black and Latino Americans. As crack cocaine was becoming a grim and rising epidemic, hip hop was evolving alongside it. It was in the 1980s that crack cocaine and hip hop became the two leading fundamentals of urban street culture. It is not suggested that hip hop caused the crack epidemic, or vice versa. But, it can be argued that both fed off each other, particularly hip hop off the crack culture itself.
Crack cocaine contains ammonia, water, and baking soda. After the chemicals are integrated, the mixture is heated to remove hydrochloride. Adding alcohol to cocaine can result in a hazardous, complex chemical called coca ethylene. Medical use of cocaine is rare; practices of selling cocaine have been illegal since the 1970's. After an eye, ear, or throat surgery, cocaine would be used as an anesthesia for pain, but the drug could be easily abused (DEA). People essentially used cocaine for a euphoric, or "pleasurable" effect, and after a single dose, signs of mental awareness appear (T., Buddy).
Asian Americans are always shown to have a relatively low rate of substance abuse among all the ethnic groups in the US (Kim, Ziedonis, & Chen, 2007). In fact, studies suggest that Asian American youth are more vulnerable for emotional and social difficulties than youth of other races or ethnicities (Wong et al. 1998). As a group of immigrants, Asian American youth often face acculturation stressors like low self-esteem, high depression and anxiety and social isolation, and more and more studies have reported various behavior problems among Asian American youth, like gang activities (Zhang, 2002), a rapid increase in juvenile crime (Le, 2002) and a significant increase in violence.
About 24 million Americans over age 12 (or 9% of the population) have used an illegal drug (mostly marijuana) or abused a medication in the past month, (APA 2013). A drug is (1) any substance that affects the physical or mental functioning of a living organism, especially one used for the treatment or prevention of an ailment or disease or (2) a stimulant or narcotic taken otherwise than medically
Sour Kush’s high was pretty hard to describe. Imagine smoking a cup of coffee. The twist is the longer it’s affect lasts, the drowsier you feel. You will first feel a flow of energy rushing towards your brain and body. This felt like eating 20 sugar cubes at once. I was laughing my ass off with the rest of my pals. Pretty soon we came up with a rather futuristic hotel. Too bad that the design was waaaay off from what could be supported by the laws of physics. Still, it was a pretty good brainstorming session. You could say that our creativity took the best of us.
Drug usage is widely considered to be a black problem, but various studies have found that all races use drugs at roughly the same rates. Nonetheless, a 1995 issue of the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education found that 95% of the people who were asked to describe a drug user pictured a black person. The reason is that minorities are statistically much more likely to be arrested for drugs because minorities are aggressively pursued, arrested, and prosecuted. As a result, seventy-five percent of the drug offenders in state prisons are black or Latino. Consequently, minorities are also stereotyped as drug dealers, but they’re no more likely to deal drugs either. Even the former “drug czar” Barry McCaffrey acknowledged that most people buy their drugs from “their own race generally.”
crime, laziness and use of illegal drugs. Drug abuse is one of the most discouraged
Up the big cafe where the neon blue sparkles up a hue… remember from when I first met you
at sixteen i had moved onto bigger and better things thc was a thing of the past, and in its stead i had found a new drug. one that gave me wings and allowed me to fly to places i had never been before.
with kids I grew up with but wasn’t ever close to, and still others with kids I have
Cocaine can be identified as a white powder which can then be snorted up a person’s nose, an alternative method to taking is to inject directly into the blood stream. Crack Cocaine comes about by chemically altering the Cocaine powder to form hard crystals, which can be known as ‘rocks’.
I used to get very high and fall asleep on subways that were on endless loops and on one, I found a journal from the 90s and I thought that was the most interesting thing I would ever find, but then I met you in our friend’s apartment when I was drunk and you were eating birthday cake off a paper towel.
in a long breath of air in order to calm myself down. I had run up the