Daring to Defy Drug Abuse
If you have ever seen the movie The Wolf on Wall Street, there is no doubt you have seen the effects drugs can have. Leonardo DiCaprio portrays a high-strung stock broker reliant on a multitude of illegal drugs to keep up with his hectic life style. His addiction gets so severe that at one point in the movie, he is lying on the floor, unable to move due to the drugs’ effects on his body. Even though the movie is set in the 90’s, a decade infamous for its use of drugs, today, drug usage and abuse has never been more of an issue. According to Alice Park (2016), “More people died of drug overdoses in 2014 in the U.S. than in any other year” (p.49). What people fail to realize is that drug abuse effects more than just the individual that uses them. The loved ones trying to support the user, the community the user is in, can all be affected by drug abuse. In fact, all members of society are affected by the abuse of drugs. In short, no one benefits from drug abuse. In the words of the Nation Institute of Drug Abuse, “Drug abuse is a major public health problem that impacts society on multiple levels. Directly or indirectly, every community is affected by drug abuse and addiction, as is every family. Drugs take a tremendous toll on our society at many levels” ( Magnitude, 2016).
Obviously, drugs abuse has the most effect on the individual. Drugs of any sort have pronounced impacts on a user’s personal life, mental and physical health as well as their
Many people do not understand why or how other people become addicted to drugs. Drug addiction is a complex chronic disease that causes impairment with the mind to express emotion, engage into physical activities and simply being one’s self. In fact, through scientific research, people understand more about how drugs work in the brain more than ever, and they also know that drug addiction can be successfully treated with some help from those who want change in the death rates amongst drug addict Americans. No one will ever truly understand why a person performs such deadly behaviors, but this is their way of crying out for help. It is time to take a stand and help those in need of escape from drugs and
Substance abuse is a very widely known public epidemic in today's society. Many people are unfortunately plagued by this issue. According to Emedicinehealth.com (2012), “People abuse substances such as alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs for varied and complicated reasons, but it is clear that our society pays a significant cost,” (para. 1). People that are affected by substance abuse includes a very different range of people. Many that abuse the substances end up having health-related problems which in turn increases the need for health care. Other people that are affected by substance abuse are the family members and friends of the abusers because they have to deal with the person abusing the substances. Things that can be abused are
There are many differing viewpoints in the United States when dealing with drug policy. Within the political arena, drug policy is a platform that many politicians base their entire campaigns upon, thus showing its importance to our society in general. Some of these modes within which drug policy is studied are in terms of harm reduction, and supply reduction. When studying the harmful effects of drugs, we must first to attempt to determine if drug abuse harms on an individual level of if it is a major cause of many societal problems that we face today. In drawing a preliminary conclusion to this question we are then able to outline the avenues of approach in dealing
Maia Szalavitz, author of Unbroken Brain, points out in an article about our finger-pointing mentality on drug abuse, “Addiction is one of the most serious health problems we face today, and as of 2010, more than 23 million people have an addiction to drugs, and according to the National Institutes of Health, these addictions contribute to more than 100,000 deaths per year.” Drug abuse is a major problem in the United States and throughout the world as more and more people become addicted every day. When you hear the words drug addict you think of desensitizing terms, like “junkie” or “crack head,” and when you see someone panhandling for money on the street, passed out, or swaying in a doorway you likely wonder, “why don’t they just get
Drug abuse does not only impact a person’s well-being, but it also negatively impacts society. The economy is impacted by health costs incurred from prevention, treatment, and hospital visits. Public Safety is impacted by drug-affected driving. Operating a vehicle under the influence is illegal and dangerous for the driver, passenger(s), and other people on the road. There are three classifications for drug abuse related crime: nexus, economic-compulsive, and systemic. Drug abuse also hinders productivity because addiction causes an individual to constantly seek the drug while deeming all other things less important. Companies experience loss of potential income from employees that are under the influence, incarcerated, hospitalized, or seeking treatment. Finally, economic consequences effect specific populations which include children, women, and people with low-income. Drug prevention strategies have been identified as a way to decrease economic consequences on society (“Economic Consequences of Drug Abuse,” 2013).
Not only the rich can be tempted to abuse mind altering drugs, for those at the lowest part of society suffer and abuse substances. A statistic from the 2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health explains that “ regular use by the unemployed was double that among those employed full time: 8.4% vs. 17%.” Drug abuse is not just limited to young adults, but being raised by a someone who is addicted to drugs can be just as detrimental to a person's health. Joseph Califano notes “70% of abused and neglected children have alcohol or drug abusing parents.” And because we do not want drug abuse to continue harming the lives around us all prevention should start with protecting children by providing a proper drug
Although some people argue for the legalization of drugs, addiction to these substances has caused a huge increase in violent crimes in the home, at school, and on the street. Many people do not understand why individuals become addicted to drugs or how drugs change the brain to create compulsive drug abuse. They mistakenly view drug abuse and addiction as strictly a social problem and may characterize those who take drugs as morally weak. One very common belief is that drug abusers should be able to just stop taking drugs if they are only willing to change their behavior. This is a false and uneducated belief. Drug abuse may start as a social problem or social escape but one the addiction has taken ahold of a person
Drug abuse is a nation-wide epidemic that, like I previously mentioned, is seen as immoral. Society in the United States has a habit of trying to ‘fix’ behaviors and ideas that violate the social norms. Therefore, drug abuse, although a victimless crime, threatens our society more than that of white-collar crimes, which victimizes the general public. The court system pays closer attention to drug abuse cases than to white-collar cases because society has grown accustomed to viewing drug abuse as an embarrassing situation. As a proud country, we don’t like the idea of being
In the midst of 2008 financial crisis, a portfolio-manager instructs his employees to neglect the best interest of clients in order to increase company profits. Meanwhile, Jim Baxford (Dominic Purcell), a former soldier and armored car driver, lives with his wife, Rosie, in New York City. Rosie is in the process of recovering from a near-fatal brain tumor. Their health insurance has reached its limit, and Jim finds that he is unable to afford her treatment. He decides to cash in the pension he earned from serving in the military, but learns that much of it is lost as a result of bad investments on the part of his financial adviser. In addition, he finds himself in a $60,000 lawsuit as a result of bad real-estate investments
20 million is half the population of the state of California. 20 million people currently work and live in Tokyo. 20 million viewers stream into the National Dog Show every year (“Our Drug Culture”). When the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health was distributed, 20 million Americans over the age of 12 admitted to using illegal drugs in the month preceding the survey. With this astonishingly high number, it can be inferred that the current punishment in place for recreational drug users - jail time - does not fix the issue of drug addiction that the United States currently faces. Although advocates for sentencing non-violent recreational drug users to jail claim that imprisonment will lower both crime and overdose death rates, the United States government should instead sentence drug offenders to time in rehabilitation facilities.This would guide users towards a sober lifestyle and end the ongoing cycle between drug use and imprisonment.
Substance abuse and addiction have become a social problem that afflicts millions of individuals and disrupts the lives of their families and friends. Just one example reveals the extent of the problem: in the United States each year, more women and men die of smoking related lung cancer than of colon, breast and prostate cancers combined (Kola & Kruszynski, 2010). In addition to the personal impact of so much illness and early death, there are dire social costs: huge expenses for medical and social services; millions of hours lost in the workplace; elevated rates of crime associated with illicit drugs; and scores of children who are damaged by their parents’ substance abuse behavior (Lee, 2010). This paper will look at
I also think that drugs can affect everyone because usually people take them to forget about their everyday life' issues. Then, when you have an addiction life drugs, it affects everyone around you because your priority in life become drugs. This is result to a community based program in order to help
Since 2000, the drug use rate in America has risen to the highest it’s ever been. In a survey done in 2009, 8.7 percent of people age 12 and up said that they used illegal substances within a month of taking the survey, a 9 percent increase since 2008 (Abuse, National Institute on Drug, 2010). This statistic alone is very concerning due to
It’s easy to lose track of the chaos that happens in the world on a day to day basis when your main priority is deciding what to eat for lunch tomorrow, or even dreading your next shift; yet we can turn on the news and hear about the most recent overdose and not even blink an eye. The blatant disregard for drug addicts today is at an ultimate high. In the past two years alone, more people have died from opiate addiction than they have in the entire Vietnam War. The fact that drug users are seen as lower class members of society as only aided in the increase of addiction and death, killing more Americans than HIV/AIDS did at its peak. Though the epidemic did not occur overnight, it has recently become one of America’s biggest health confrontations. Although there is no absolute solution, in order to decelerate the prevailing wave of usage and overdose/death, decriminalization in correlation to government funded programs could give ease to the definition of the word “epidemic”.
Drug abuse is a major public health issue that impacts society both directly and indirectly; every person, every community is somehow affected by drug abuse and addiction and this economic burden is not exclusive to those who use substance, it inevitably impacts those who don 't. Drugs impact our society in various ways including but not limited to lost earnings, health care expenditures, costs associated with crime, accidents, and deaths. The use of licit or illicit drugs long term, causes millions of deaths and costs billions for medical care and substance abuse rehabilitation and the effects of drug abuse extend beyond users, spilling over into the society at large, imposing increasing