Essay Sample Dedicated to Substance Abuse Prevention Programs

There are many vices that are associated with drug and substance abuse. The greatest of these vices are ailments that they cause to the involved parties directly and those around them through passive abuse. The dangers are so many and may trickle down to as many people as possible who come in contact with the abuser. There is also the risk of becoming an addict, at which state the individual becomes dependable on the drug. To combat these there are so many programs that have been set up in the United States to help prevent and combat this drug and substance abuse.

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Prevention Programs

One of such programs is the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids. It is an organization that is committed to the fight against substance abuse. They serve as the link between the families of the involved individual and experts to help prevent substance abuse. They offer information on what to look at and they possible ways of finding out if a member of the family especially children are getting involved in any sort of substance abuse (Freeman, 2011). They also offer material support for the families who deserve it to help their loved ones to treat the diseases or to curb the addiction that they may have developed. This is done through the use of professionals who the program offers to the parents to assist. This program offers parents of these kids to give an account of their story through their parent blog.

Partnership for Drug-Free Kids majorly depends on funding acquired from donations. Members of the public are invited to make donations as well as fundraisings that the program uses to meet its expenses. They also get funding from partners who join them. For all those who feel they have a moral obligation to play in the social change of their society, they are encouraged to be part of the program either through partnership, donations or fundraisers.

Center for Disease Control and Prevention is another organization established with the motive of fighting these vices. Through its office on Smoking and Health, the organization has developed a program that helps prevent cigarette smoking among families in the US. They offer extensive information to families on the dangers of all sorts of smoking and their related health effects. The main aim is to prevent smoking with an objective of preventing occurrence of smoking related adverse health effects such as lung cancers. In partnership with other organizations such as Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), they are also directly involved in fighting smoking by identifying potential tobacco sources of supply of tobacco and initiate other economic avenues in place of tobacco growing. They have agents all over that readily help families that have members that have already been affected.

The program is majorly government funded through the Department of Health and Human Services. Though the government is the major funding organization, other individuals of the public are invited to make their contributions as well.

Successes

Basing on statistics collected in the year 2013 alone, CDC's campaign against tobacco use has led to over 1.6 million smokers trying to quit the habit and the agency managed to help over 100000 of these individuals to quit. To date the agency is still actively involved in this fight and is aiming at a tobacco free future at least for the generations to come. Despite the challenges that face the CDC in this fight, it is making great milestones in making sure that little or no drugs are supplied in the society.

Partnership for Drug-Free Kids has also made strides in its fight against substance abuse among the underage. They have connected thousands of families who have had their kids helped. Through their efforts, many teens have come out in the open and discussed their causes for getting involved in substance abuse and these are being used as guidelines to help determine more teens that may fall culprits of these behavior (Capuzzi & Stauffer, 2016). Basing on this real life experiences, more teens are even older folks are being lured into quitting their drinking and smoking habits.

Factors for Substance Abuse Involvement

There are many challenges that the youth and groups vulnerable to drug and substance abuse are prone to. Some of these factors are hereditary while others are learnt behavior.

Environment

Teenagers brought up in suburbs likely tend to be involved in substance abuse. This is because most of these suburbs are the intertwined in the channels of flow of these substances as they are ferried to the markets (Lander et al, 2013; Duncan et al, 2014). Sometimes these teens are used as the agents selling these substances which put them at a high risk position of them being actual users. Devastating living conditions of the families that are in the suburbs are major contributions to their drug menaces. Since they desperately need a means of living, they readily engage in the sale of drugs. Parents may also expose their children to substance abuse through domestic violence acts or being substance abusers themselves. Children may learn substance abuse by observing their parents.

Peer pressure

Peer pressure is one of the main factors associated with the reasons why young people engage in substance abuse. Majority of the teens that have been involved in substance in the past have done it because their friends do it or they are induced to it by their friends (Gopiram & Kishore, 2014). Keeping the wrong company of friends increases the chances of the teen ending up as a drug or substance addict.

Heredity

Sometimes the risk of addiction trickles down to genetics. It is without a doubt that if there is a smoking behavior within ones lineage, it is likely that it will resurface in one of the younger generations. For cases such as alcohol addiction and other substances such as cocaine, the habit is likely to occur in descendants of the abusers (Bevilacqua & Goldman, 2009).

Government Involvement

The government has an obligation of creating a safe environment for all its citizens as far as health is involved. With this regard, it is therefore obligated to come up with measures to curb undesired practices such as substance abuse. In this fight, it may employ measures of getting to the source of these substances. As the law enforces, the government is engaged in investigations that unmask drug cartels for the purpose of prosecution and punishment. The main aim of investigation is to single out the individuals who create the main drug problem. This may be followed by long law suits in which the abusers may be offered protective custody and used as witnesses to prosecute the drug or substance suppliers. Protective custody may mean total separation from family until the cases are over due to the dangers that the witnesses are exposed to (Chakravarthy et al, 2013). As a result the abusers may decline to come into the open and aid the government in fighting this substance abuse. In addition, the government should be concerned with the children of the offenders regardless of the crime committed. Minors of the offenders should be accorded the necessary care by taking them to foster homes (Johnson et al, 2007). The offenders are likely to go back to drugs once released from jail and find their children suffering.

Conclusion

Every member of the society has a role to play in fighting substance abuse. It is a vice to the whole society and not just involved individuals. Both government and its citizens need to work together to create a conducive environment to combat these vices. Parents should constantly be on the look to note the type of company their kids keep. Helping their young ones choose the right type of friends will help them monitor their kid's movements and even note when they are being induced to substance abuse or when they are being used as these substance traffickers.

As much as the government may be so much interested in bringing the drug traffickers to answer for their wrong in the society, it should employ the use of less witness involving law suits such as the use of undercover agents who will collect credible evidence and record it for use in courts rather than involving so many witnesses needing protective custody.

References

Bevilacqua, L., & Goldman, D. (2009). Genes and Addictions. Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 85(4), 359-361.

Capuzzi, D., & Stauffer, M. (2016). Foundations of addictions counseling (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson.

Chakravarthy, B., Shah, S., & Lotfipour, S. (2013). Adolescent drug abuse - Awareness & prevention. The Indian Journal of Medical Research, 137(6), 1021-1023.

Duncan, D., Palamar, J., & Williams, J. (2014). Perceived neighborhood illicit drug selling, peer illicit drug disapproval and illicit drug use among U.S. high school seniors. Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, And Policy, 9(1), 35-51.

Freeman, D. (2011). Teen drug abuse rising: Why?. Cbsnews. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-drug-abuse-rising-why/

Gopiram, P., & Kishore, M. T. (2014). Psychosocial Attributes of Substance Abuse Among Adolescents and Young Adults: A Comparative Study of Users and Non-users. Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 36(1), 58-61.

Johnson, K., Courser, M., Holder, H., Miller, B., Ogilvie, K., Moore, R., ... Saylor, B. (2007). A community prevention intervention to reduce youth from inhaling and ingesting harmful legal products. Journal of Drug Education, 37(3), 227-247.

Lander, L., Howsare, J., & Byrne, M. (2013). The Impact of Substance Use Disorders on Families and Children: From Theory to Practice. Social Work in Public Health, 28(0), 194-205.