Abuse Among Aboriginal Youth

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Often time we associate alcohol and drug abuse with our adult census and we negate the fact that drug and alcohol abuse is prevalent in our youth community as well. With this essay I want to redefine what alcohol abuse is, and what drug abuse is, and what its association is with today’s youth. Hopefully I will awaken a saying of old in all of us, and that is, “It doesn’t just take a family to raise a child, but a community,” and reaffirm the responsibility of everyone that is associated with our youth in some way to make a difference. So what is alcohol abuse? Alcohol abuse, now included in the diagnosis of alcohol use disorder, is a disease. It is characterized by a maladaptive pattern of drinking alcohol that results in negative work, medical, …show more content…

In comparison, 38.6% of male and 21.9% of female Caucasian youth abused alcohol. Marijuana use among Aboriginal youth was also higher. In the same study, 47.5% of male and 48.5% of female Aboriginal youth were found to use marijuana in comparison with 29.1% of male and 24.2% of female Caucasian youth.Youth were considered to have abused alcohol if they answered yes to the question: "Have you ever been drunk?". In 2013, 3.5 percent of 8th graders, 12.8 percent of 10th graders, and 26 percent of 12th graders reported getting drunk in the past month, continuing a downward trend from previous years. Significant declines include sharp drops from previous years in daily alcohol use by 10th and 12th graders (0.9 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively, in 2013). In 2013, 22.1 percent of high school seniors reported binge drinking (defined as 5 or more drinks in a row in the past 2 weeks)—a drop of almost one-third since the late …show more content…

New synthetic drugs are a cause for concern, but their use is not increasing. Synthetic marijuana (also known as Spice or K2)—referring to herbal mixtures laced with synthetic chemicals similar to THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana—was added to the MTF survey in 2011, when 11.4 percent of high school seniors reported using it in the past year; in 2013, it had dropped to 7.9 percent. These mixtures could be obtained legally until 2012 and are still wrongly perceived as a safe alternative to marijuana. The synthetic stimulants known as “bath salts” were added to the survey in 2012; in 2013, just 0.9 percent of seniors had used these drugs in the past