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Battle Against Substance Abuse Essay

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The Constant Battle Against Substance Abuse
The battle against substance abuse began about five decades ago in the 1960’s. Baby boomers born in the 1940’s were now in their twenties and they used narcotics such as; LSD, marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine, and many more drugs and alcohol because they were the new form of rebellion. The drinking age was lowered from twenty-one to eighteen resulting in many accidents and deaths. This quickly got out of hand and many fell into a pit of addiction which they could not escape. Substance abuse became a large problem but was not handled appropriately. According to Gary De Blasio, executive director of Corner House Counseling Center for Adolescents and Young Adults in Princeton, a reason why this happened …show more content…

Cigarette ads on television and on radio were banned by President Richard Nixon. A few years later, President Ronald Reagan’s wife, Nancy Reagan, created an anti-drug campaign and began to put it to action. During this time, many other programs were implemented such as the D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) drug education program that we all seem to be familiar with. However, despite the ban and new programs to educate the public, drug users began to rise once more with modernization of …show more content…

Ritalin is a prescription drug that is abused mostly by teens who are in search for a feeling of focus. Ritalin is commonly prescribed to young adults like Andrea. She was in seventh grade when ritalin was prescribed to her for ADD (attention deficit disorder) that she was pretending to have. She became addicted, taking 40 milligrams a day and not sleeping for days, as she suffered from severe psychotic

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Due to the unprecedented expansion of the war on drugs by the Reagan administration started a long period of skyrocketing rates of incarceration. The huge number of offenders incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenders increased from 50,000 to 1980 to over 400,000 by the year 1997. In 1981, Nancy Reagan began a highly publicized antidrug campaign called “Just Say No”, as public concerns arose due to the portrayals by the media about people addicted to a smoke-able form of cocaine dubbed as “crack”. This campaign set the stage for zero tolerance policies implemented in the late 1980’s.

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They wanted to see it come to an end because they saw it a great public enemy. The United States president Richard Nixon in 1971 declared drug abuse a number one public enemy during his message to the Congress on dug abuse control and

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Later in the 1980’s, President Reagan revamped this, with it being called Reagan’s Intensified War on Drugs. The issue was that some people believed Reagan had intended certain consequences with this “war” while others disagreed. Things such as police brutality rose and so did arrests on non-violent drug use. That being said, Reagan’s Intensified War on Drugs had more unintended consequences than it did intended ones.

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In the 1980’s and 1990’s there was a drug hysteria that took place in the United States. The incarceration rates began to skyrocket within our prisons and this was all in connection to the drug war. Many people were being arrested and received harsh sentences for minor drug offenses and this increased the number of people in jails and prisons. In result, drug courts emerged and policies were implemented. One particular Proposition that took place in California is Proposition 36 the Substance and Abuse Act.

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The state has also cut plans for drug treatment.”. This is corroborated on a federal level by the percentage of federal anti-drug budget for prevention and treatment from 1970 to 2000. This data shows that when Reagan took office in 1981, funding for drug-use prevention and treatment plummeted from 57% to 28%, and stayed there until 1990, where it increased slightly to 32%. This data was initially published by the National Drug Control Strategy, a bipartisan government organization that's purpose is to outline the country’s efforts to reduce illicit drug use and its consequences in the United

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This U.S. Census shows how alcoholics couldn’t cope with withdrawal or their depression as alcohol helped with that. This could have made them unstable and dangerous. McCay’s cartoon shows how prohibition has done more harm than help because it was promoting bad activities. With alcoholics going into withdrawal, they had to turn to dope to cope with it, so dope spread rapidly. This is why danger changed America’s mind on

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Gaudio states “Early reformers, convinced that society’s duty was not to confine youth, but rather to save them.” (p. 213). Drug laws are far too strict and based on moral panic and not factual information. Drug use prior to the drug war was not seen as an issue and even though crime rates have been dropping since the 1980s, when asked, a majority of the population will say that crime rates are increasing. These responses are based on perception, because the media and politics put fear into the perceptions of the public and they play on that fear to gain views and votes.

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The use of narcotics like cocaine, claimed many lives and earned widespread coverage by media and news. Following this Nancy Reagan began the “War on Drugs”, a campaign to combat pre-existing drug usage and prevent future

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Drug abusers’ children are neglected, abused, and even abandoned. In the 1870’s, anti-opium laws were first directed and Chinese immigrants. During the early 1900’s, in the South, the first anti-cocaine laws were directed at black men. In the 1910’s and 1920’s, in the Midwest and Southwest the first anti-marijuana laws were directed at Mexicans – both immigrants and Americans. In modern time, major disproportioned drug enforcement

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During the late 1960 to early 1970, New York city struggling with the Drug laws, and so many pressures and negative affect around the whole city. The country filled with gloomy air and everyone looks depressed, it is a really tough time. In the 1971s, American president Richard Nixon announced that drug abuse as the number one enemy in the United states, he started a war on drugs, there was unprecedented in history and this policy still continues today. The drug war was a huge failure, bringing an unexpected and devastating effect. In the United States, nearly 90 percent of treatment-seeking patients who began using heroin in the previous decade were white, this is a big change from racial representation prior to the 1980s.

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In 1970, President Richard Nixon, in response to the drug use coupled with the hippie counterculture of the late 1960s, signed the Controlled Substance Act (CSA) which enacted a method of classifying drugs by categorizing them into five schedules, schedule one considered to be the most dangerous. Shortly following this act, in June of 1971, Nixon declared “The War On Drugs”, famously naming drugs and drug abuse “Public enemy number one”. (History.com, 2016). Following Nixon’s presidency, many presidents and administrations, including Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, have continued the support for The War on Drugs, but where are the results? It seems today that the abuse of drugs is worse than ever before.

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In the name of fighting drug abuse, governments unleashed a war on drugs that continues to rage today. Drugs have numerous negative consequences that can result from an addiction, but some can have positive effects when used appropriately and under the care of a healthcare professional. The War on Drugs is a government-led initiative aimed at stopping illegal drug use, distribution, and trade by issuing increased prison sentences for drug-related offenses, and it increased federal funding for drug-control agencies and treatment efforts. Instead, it has resulted in a disproportionate amount of incarcerations of minorities.

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Addiction is the reliance on a routine. There are many addictive stages. Addiction, as it comes along, becomes a way of life. The persistent use of the substance causes to the user serious physical or psychological problems and dysfunctions in major areas of his or her life. The drug user continues to use substances and the compulsive behavior despite the harmful consequences, and tries to systematically avoid responsibility and reality, while he or she tends to isolate himself/herself from others because of guilt and pain (Angres, & Bettinardi-Angres, 2008).

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Some may not be too familiar with the war on drugs and the effects it has had on the society we live in. The war on drugs was started by the Nixon administration in the early seventies. Nixon deemed drug abuse “public enemy number one”. This was the commencement of the war on drugs, this war has lasted to this day and has been a failure. On average 26 million people use opioids.

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