Drug & Alcoholism Addiction: A Social Evil - Essay Sample

Introduction

Drug and alcoholism addiction in recent days are among the major social evils affecting both the local and global society. Both addictions are proven dangerous and a factor of societal or family gradual growth. In comparison, drug abuse and addiction are related to dependence on substance use because of pleasure for example cocaine, heroin, and marijuana amongst others while alcoholism is addiction or full dependence to alcoholic drinks (Ashley Addiction Treatment, 2019). This essay will analyze in-depth the topic of drug abuse among college students and answer the following questions; What percentage of college students use marijuana and cocaine? Explain the results of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health on the overall rates of marijuana and cocaine use among a different ethnic group such as whites compared to Africans Americans and Hispanic in the U.S. How much is the U.S. spending per year on federal drug-control efforts? What can you do as a health educator to prevent overuse of marijuana and cocaine? The primary reason causing rapid drug abuse among college students includes social pressure, emotional or stress problems, and genetics.

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Most commonly, a large percentage of young adults struggles with substance and alcohol abuse. The statistics of drug abuse among college students depict the growing concerns among the public worldwide due to the rapid rise of drug abuse from cocaine to marijuana and hallucinogens throughout college institutions. According to the data statistics derived from National Institute on Drug Abuse survey conducted in 2016 among young adults in developing the rate of drug use among college students, the resulted percentage were glaring (Ashley Addiction Treatment, 2019). Moreover, specific drugs, for example, Marijuana, Adderall, cocaine, alcohol, and hallucinogens, for example, LSD and ecstasy, were identified as the most commonly abused drugs among young adults. Compared to 2.8% of college students using marijuana in 1996, the rate in 2016 had rapidly accelerated to 4.9% in addition to non-college daily users of marijuana of age range 19-22 years which made up to 20.6% (Ashley Addiction Treatment, 2019). Adderall usage percentage among college and non-college teens, on the other hand, was 9.9% and 6.2% respectively in 2016 (Ashley Addiction Treatment, 2019). Addiction to Adderall is now a major concern among college students. In 2007, cocaine users among college students were 5.1% thus prevalent too (Ashley Addiction Treatment, 2019).

According to data collected by Healthy People (2019) from the NSDUH (National Survey on Drug Abuse and Health), the rates of illegal use of substance and alcoholism among young people with age ranging from 12-to-17 years in 30 days increases rapidly with age as illustrated in Fig1 located in the appendix section. In comparison of disparities among ethnic groups in 2017, Asian young adults illustrated low rate of illegal drug or alcohol use with 7.4% among other ethnic and racial groups which included; mixed raced, white non-Hispanics, American Indians, Latino or Hispanic adolescents, non-Hispanic black and Native Hawaiian young adults who added up to 16.3%, 15.5%, 14.4%, 12.2%, 11.9%, and 11.9% respectively (HealthyPeople.gov, 2019). In comparing on young adults born in the United States and those born in other countries, young adults from outside the U.S. depicted low rate of substance and alcohol use with 8% compared to 14.2% of young substance users born in U.S. (HealthyPeople.gov, 2019).

The rapid use of drugs substance among college students and the entire population as a whole is affecting individuals and society in various ways or instance violent crimes. On this account, the U.S. government have been implementing various programs and strategies to combat drug abuse for nearly a century now. Sadly, it's a losing battle as its seen (Stanford University, Nd). Most efforts have been focused on drug use criminalization as a strategy of eradicating drugs supply. This includes use of countless U.S. billion dollars while efforts of law enforcement and interdiction have not been fruitful as drugs continue to be easily accessible and available in America. From Statista (2019), the graph below shows the total spending of the U.S. federal government on drug control from the 2013 financial year to 2019. From the graph, it depicts the increase concerns of controlling drug use in the country with 2019 having the largest amount requested for funding drug control.

Fig1: U.S. federal spending on drug control according to Statista (2019)

Conclusion

In conclusion, based on the above brief description about drug usage among college students and young adults at large, it's clear that more students are falling for drug abuse due to social pressure while others end up being depended on them. It's also clear that the implemented strategies of drug control by the federal government are not yielding positive results; thus as a health educator, I think the government should shift their spending on funding drug control from penalization and law enforcement to treatment, education and prevention strategies. This will be great assistance to marijuana and cocaine users among college students and the other users in general.

References

Ashley Addiction Treatment. (2019). College Students Drug Use Statistics. https://www.ashleytreatment.org/college-student-drug-use-statistics/

HealthyPeople.gov. (2019). Substance Abuse. https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/leading-health-indicators/2020-lhi-topics/Substance-Abuse/data#top

Stanford University. (Nd). The United States War on Drugs- Stanford University. https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/paradox/htele.html

Statista. (2019). Total federal drug control spending in the United States from F.Y. 2013 to F.Y. 2019 (in a million U.S. dollars). https://www.statista.com/statistics/618857/total-federal-drug-control-spending-in-us/Appendix

The graphical illustration below shows how drug use among young adults, including college students increases with age concerning the essay above, according to HealthyPeople.gov. (2019)