Substance Abuse
Introduction
Substance abuse is among the society’s main problems that are related to youths. For clarity substance abuse is a habitual and addictive action of taking harmful drugs and substances. This phenomenon is sometimes referred as drugs abuse. In the field of research and juvenile justice, substance abuse is sometimes is commonly defined as the repeatedly use of substances and drugs to an extent it becomes habitual, disrupting the life of the user in all aspects of life, that is, social, physical and spiritual welfare (Engel & Schutt, 2005; Lewis J., Dana R. & Blevins G. 2001; Bachman R. & Schutt R, 2010). Substance abuse is very common in teenagers and youths who are already in their youthful years. Substance and drugs that are abused includes; alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, heroine, cocaine, ecstasy pills etc.
Research purpose statement
This research proposal, seeks to find various issues that are related to substance abuse among them being, substance abuse among teenagers, various kinds of substances and drugs that are commonly abused and various means which authorities and school use to reduce the prevalence of substance abuse among the youths. This research proposal, also acknowledges the issue of substance abuse and its relation with HIV and AIDS. Substance abuse has also been linked with crime in many parts of the world especially in United States. The following research is aimed at providing information that may be used in solving this social problem or as a precedent of further research on substance abuse in future.
Literature review
The impact of substance abuse has attracted the attention of the world health organization (WHO). From WHO perspective, the continued use of harmful drugs and substances has been linked to psychological, cognitive and behavioral anomalies among those who use these substances. When the use of a drug or a harmful substance becomes inevitable to a user, then it is possible to attend to such a case. In fact, the whole system of a user may be rendered non-functional including with health, social life and spiritual wellbeing, since the individual simply has an uncontrolled desire and depends entirely on the drugs.
Substance abuse among teenagers
To many societies, substance abuse prevalence among the youths or simply put teenagers is very high. Teenagers are trying to catch up with the new trend of substance abuse faster than adults. It is has become almost a norm in every high school and college to find students smoking or taking alcohol. Although it is against the law to use outlawed drugs, teenager find this thrilling and cool a concept that ahs become popular among American and European school teenagers. However, minority youths in American schools are the most affected with this social anomaly. Use of substance and drugs has almost become a common concept among the black and Hispanic youths in American schools. The use of alcohol and tobacco is highly prevalent and studies have shown that this problem may be factored by other social problems; lack of employment, hostile neighborhoods, poor family backgrounds, and low parent attention and sometimes as result of peer pressure.(Word Bank, 2003; Spiegler, 1993; DIANE, 1993). It is important to note that a lot of risks are associated with substance and drugs abuse, especially when the education and the future of the young men and women are at stake.
Risks associated with substance abuse among teenagers
A research that was done in Israel revealed that when teenagers get involved in consumption of substances an drugs there are greater risks of engaging in sexual related activities (Kim & Kim, 2008). It is important to note that, use of substances abuse impairs conscious judgment. When youths engage in such risky behaviors there are higher chances that young girls will get pregnant and drop out of school. Chance’s to contact sexually transmitted diseases at such instances are also very high, for example crack cocaine users at some point can be said to have a higher risk if obtaining HIV and AIDS infections according to a recent research (Neinstein, 2007). It is also common for youths to engage in criminal activities and violence as they try to find means to sustain their daily substance and drugs consumption. Teenagers are known of eve joining criminal groups and gangs in their neighborhoods and they engage in robbing people and doing shopliftings to gain money to buy drugs. Another significant risk is that, teenagers become vulnerable to social problems before time, that is, in their quest to find drugs, they become adventurers to issues that they cannot handle at their young age, for example, they become vulnerable to crime, to rapist, to deadly disease etc. for young people, education is their only means of survival, any other activity that disrupts such organization is unlawful and use of substance and drugs qualifies for such.
Types of substance and drugs commonly used among teenagers
According to a report named National Household Survey, it was evident that alcohol is the most abused substance in United States and among the world youths. In United States alone, every two out of three adolescents use alcohol (Galanter, 2005). It was also revealed tat most of the non-alcoholics were using other drugs such as over the counter drug, according to National Institute of Drugs Abuse (NIDA). According to NIDA, these drugs includes, pain relievers such as Vicodin, depressants such as Valium, stimulants such as Adderall. Others include prescription drugs that if taken in large dosage can lead to complications.
Prevention of substance abuse among the teenagers
Prevention of substance abuse among the teenagers is not just parent responsibility, but its impact in the society calls for joint responsibility among teachers, parents, governments, medical agencies etc. Wilson & Kolander, (2010), in their research of preventing alcohol, tobacco and other drugs (ATOD) came up with models they believed could be sued to prevent substance and drugs abuse in the society. Among these models are; a social cognitive model, a social context model and a social development model.
A social cognitive model
This model focuses on behavior change among the youths through observation techniques. The model encourages youths to be conscious of the surrounding, especially the cause-effect relationship of personal and environmental interactions. Through this model, teenagers are able to change their behaviors by observing examples of people in the society who have previously abused or not abused drugs. They are then required to retain this information and put into action the beneficial aspects of that particular observation. This model also encourages that a reward or punishment be issued depending on the action taken by the teenager as a matter of instigating motivation good behaviors in a teenager.
Social development model
This model assumes that the drug user or the teenager is aware of the consequences and risk associated with substance abuse. Since a behavior change process has already been made available to the drug user, a behavior development model is initiated to ensure that the drug abuser do not retreat back to using of drugs and substances. Use of pro-social activities and skill become essential in this model. These pro-social measures are meant to ensure, the person in question is within a non-drugs and substance condoning environment, for example, social gathering. A good example of such is through group counseling sessions where a person gains confidence, good interpersonal relationships and an intrinsic development of intra-psychological growth in the teenager or the substance and drugs abuser.
Social context model
This model, works best after objective application of the social development model has already been realized. This model, tries to restructure the context under which teenagers and ATOD abuser are likely to conduct their unlawful activities. This is achieved through activities that encourage environmental and cognitive behaviors interaction. Under this model, the general society plays a key role in ensuring that, constant measures are taken when teenagers are within school and outside school. This means that government and health agencies have a chance to organize campaigns and camps for the youths during summer holidays. The church is another important society stakeholder and can be crucial in developing the spiritual wellbeing of the teenagers, especially on issues that regard making good choices and peer pressure.
Research question
This research proposal is based on the following questions. What is meant by substance abuse? Is substance abuse among teenagers a worrying social problem? What are the risks of substance abuse among teenagers? What are the most common substance and drugs used by teenagers and what are the preventive measures for preventing substance abuse among teenagers?
Research Hypothesis
This research proposal has multiple hypothesis, that is, substance abuse among teenagers has is one of the biggest social problem in united states, substance abuse has resulted to other social problems like teenage pregnancy, crime, unemployment and high rates of HIV and AIDS infection among the teenagers and finally substance abuse can be prevented or reduced by 10 percent through a comprehensive social approach by the genera society.
Research methodology
Due to the magnitude of the research study, the researcher will sample several about 100 high schools in United States and 50 colleges. In every high school institution, 50 student aged between 12 and 10 years will be randomly selected and the same will be subjected to colleges where 30 students will be randomly selected. A structured questionnaire will then be issued to the sampled students. The questionnaire will ask general questions on drugs and substance abuse among teenagers.
Data collection and analysis
All questions are to be collected after two weeks of the questionnaire issuance. The data analysis of the questionnaire will be analyzed on the basis of understanding of the question and complete answering of the questions. Questions that will be half completed will be disregarded. Qualitative techniques such as mean, median, mode and standard deviation will be used to analyze research variables such as prevalence rate of substance abuse among blacks, whites, males, females etc.
Data presentation
The research proposal and collected data will be presented by means of a power point presentation and bar charts.
Conclusion
This research proposal aims at bringing to the light a social problem that is highly affecting young men and women in the society. This research proposal therefore, seeks to find the cause, effect and answers towards the problem of substance abuse among teenagers. This research proposal also recommends for any critic for further improvement on the research. It is the wish of the researcher, tat this proposal will be used for further research regarding the same issue.
References
Bachman R. & Schutt R. (2010). The practice of research in criminology and criminal justice. California: SAGE
DIANE Publishing. (1993). Desktop guide to good juvenile probation practice. Pennsylvania: DIANE Publishing
Engel R. & Schutt R. (2005). The practice of research in social work, Volume 1. California: SAGE
Galanter M. (2005). Alcohol problems in adolescents and young adults: epidemiology, neurobiology, prevention and treatment. Basel; Birkhauser
Kim H. & Kim H. (2008). Juvenile delinquency and youth crime. New York: Nova publishing
Lewis J., Dana R. &Blevins G. (2001). Substance abuse counseling. California: Brooks/Cole
Nenstein L. (2007). Adolescent healthcare: a practical guide: issue 414. Maryland: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Spielger D. (1993). Alcoholism among U.S ethnic minorities. Pennsylvania: DIANE Publishing
Wilson R. & Kolander C. (2010). Drug abuse prevention: a school and community partnership. Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Learning
World Bank. (2003). Caribbean youth development: issues and policy directions. Washington: World Bank publications
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