Teenage Drug Abuse - Essay Example

Exploration and curiosity has been the best explanation for the prevalence. Many health specialists say that drug addiction prevalence is higher among the adolescents and the teens. The teens, just like other people take drugs in order to change their way of perception on things, how they feel and behave. Medical practitioners use psychoactive substances for these purposes. Kofi Annan says in one of his reports that the teens fall into addiction of three kinds of drugs and substances; depressants, stimulants and hallucinogens (Annan 2).

Depressant affects or controls the nervous system and thus are sedatives. Stimulants regulate neural activity while the hallucinogens produce mental effects and changes. According to Annan, “The growing trend in abuse and production of psychotropic substances must be reversed.” (1). The reasons why teens get hooked up into drug and substance abuse are numerous. A number of studies have been done as to the causes of the phenomena and more or less alike conclusions and findings were made. Unlike more of the past studies, which showed “having fun,” as the greatest reason for indulgence, more recent studies reveal that teens indulge into the habit in an attempt to solve problems.

Stress, low self-esteem or social acceptance, misinformation, self-medication and easy access to drugs easily explain the scenario. A more recent study was done to ascertain the main reason why teens fall into the problem of abusing drugs (Anon 3- 4). In the study, which took 30 months and 923 youth respondents, one respondent had this to say; “If I don’t do drugs, I feel like am going insane. Because I have all these thoughts and all this pain, in my heart and I cannot get rid of it, you know?

Drugs are the only thing that takes it away. That’s why I do drugs. Because it keeps me, not happy, but it keeps me from being so sad that I want to die.” (Anon 4) Proper ways of addressing stress among the teens would go a long way to curb the problem (Staff 1). More so, boosting self-esteem and proper information is vital in dealing with the problem of drug abuse among the teens. Staff says that the prevalence of substance and drug abuse is higher among the teens that are never told by their parents about drug abuse than those that are told (Staff 1, Para 7).

She therefore concludes, “The sooner your teen gets help for drug abuse, the more likely they’ll be able to avoid the long-lasting consequences” (Staff 1, Para 8). Different ways have been advanced to curb the alarming rate of indulgence among the teens. As discussed above, corporate social responsibility, in the fight, is inevitable in order to win the battle. Parents, teachers, mentors and guardians have all a common responsibility of ensuring that drug abuse among the teens is controlled.

In addition, another group of findings have shown that religious beliefs and religion have in the past played a critical role in the battle against drug and substance abuse. According to Wallace, Brown, Bachman and La Veist, “Religious faithful teens are less likely to indulge in drug use as opposed to the non-religious ones,” (10). High rate of drug abuse is noted among the African and white Americans who are not ascribed to religious movements. Therefore, as the research by Wallace, Brown, Bachman and La Veist ascertains, religious affiliation go a long way in the