Strategies set in place do not solve the drug problem around the world - Research Paper Example

? Strategies set in place do not solve the drug problem around the world Drug abuse has become rampant among the youths worldwide. It is a curse on the future of any society as teenagers get more addicted towards drugs as means of easy way out of their physical and emotional problems. Drugs can destroy the lives of millions of young people who are the assets of world. Drugs are a major threat to the health of the young generation; it generates crime and kills the hopes of millions of people and their families. Drug abuse can cause mental and physical problems for the addicts. There are several social and environmental factors why people start using drugs. Types of drugs consumed depend upon the price and accessibility of particular drugs. There are many other reasons that push the young people towards drug abuse like family tensions, peer pressure, poor school performance, low self-esteem, inadequate social skills, depression and so on. There are various drug policies all over the world to fight against this grave social problem. Most of the policies strive towards creating awareness of the evils of drug abuse. With the rapid change of lifestyle, growing competition among peers in educational and professional arenas, drug abuse is an ever increasing social malady. The governments’ efforts of creating strategies to cope with drug abuse have so far been essentially unsuccessful. This paper focuses on drug policies and their inadequacy among young generation. Drug policies To fight drug use, it is imperative that effective preventive strategies be implemented. Such strategies must cover all stages of life, from infancy to adulthood. Such strategies can keep the youth away from consumption of all kinds of drugs including alcohol. The Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) has adopted six kinds of preventive measures. The first one is Information dissemination that is designed to create awareness about drugs and alter the youth’s perspective of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. The second one is Preventive education that enables the youth to acquire personal and social skills for better health, and this keeps them away from drug use. The third one includes Alternative approaches that assume that young people who get engaged in drug-free activities with be benefited by those activities rather than through activities concerned with drugs. The fourth one is Problem identification and referral involves those youth who have already been addicts of drugs and have drug-related physical or emotional problems, and suggesting to those youth regarding appropriate treatments. The fifth one is Community-based process that enhances resources in the communities, for instance, building training agencies to promote awareness through education. The sixth one includes Environmental approaches that build policies to increase protection measures and reduce risk factors of drug use (Promising Strategies to Reduce Substance Abuse, 2000, pp.1-2). Legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco, and illicit drugs like cocaine, heroin, marijuana have many harmful affects. Alcohol consumption can lead to road accidents, domestic violence and crime. Heavy drinking can cause chronic diseases like liver cirrhosis and brain damage. If pregnant women consume alcohol, then there is possibility of birth defects. Smoking tobacco is a major cause of breathing problems and cancer. Illicit drug use can cause road accidents, violent outbursts and crime. Then there is also the risk of getting affected by HIV/AIDS through unsafe injection of illicit drugs. The goal of National Drug Strategy 2010-2015 is to reduce the social, economic and health problems that occur due to drug use. The three approaches adopted are demand reduction, supply reduction and harm reduction. By demand reduction strategy, prevention measures are taken to reduce the consumption of alcohol and other drugs in the community. It also guides people to recover from the addiction and return to normal life. By supply reduction strategy, measures are taken to stop or ban the production and distribution of illicit drugs and control the sales of legal drugs. By harm reduction strategy, the negative social, economic and health consequences are reduced (National Drug Strategy 2010-2015, 2011, p.2). Drug control strategies In the recent years, there has been an alarming growth of illicit drug abuse among the young people. In the Unites States, national survey was conducted in the year 2009 that estimated 21.8 million people are addicted to illicit drugs like cocaine, marijuana and heroin among other drugs. A large number of adolescents are exposed to preventive measures taken by drug policies both during school and outside school. Every year drug policies are created and old ones are re-designed to adapt to the sensibilities of the young generation. Huge expenditure is involved in drug preventive measures. With so much effort and expenses, it is necessary that drug policies be based on evidence gathered on why and how the young people take to drugs. For this purpose, intensive research and fieldwork is required in order to draft effective drug preventive measures. As is commonly found that drug policies and strategy makers focus more on the risk factor i.e. the reasons why young people are getting attracted towards drug abuse and becoming addicted subsequently. However, the emphasis should be placed on protective factors, and research work should concentrate on “characteristics, situations and experiences” (Davis & Spillman, 2011, p.14) that can persuade people against the abuse of drugs. All pervasive research has proved that most drug addicts have a history of both genetic and environmental disorders for instance; they may have parents who are into drugs, peers who are drug addicted, family dysfunction, childhood trauma and abuse, low achievement skills and so on. Drug policies should be able to identify protective factors in relation to resilience. Resilience is a process that allows people to recover from adverse situation and lead a normal life. This process is a long one and strongly influenced by protective factors. Protective factors can be intrinsic like creative skills and cognition or extrinsic like family and social support. A growing child who faces the challenges of life can have the tendency to resort to drug abuse as mode of escapism. Providing the child with proper combination of protective factors like motivation to succeed, family cohesion, involvement in school activities, emotional control and high self-esteem can keep the child away from drugs (Davis & Spillman, 2011, pp.14-15). Drug strategies need to educate the young people on drugs, and for this, the support of peers and families is necessary. Most prevention programs do not have sufficient evaluation processes nor are they built on any observations based on field research. Such programs are way below the success level. Since drug abuse is a global phenomenon, so the effort to eradicate the problem vests on all countries. Drugs are generally produced in developing countries while the larger market is the developing countries. The entire drug system is consisted of a complex system of manufacture and distribution. Illegal drug abuse is one of the most important and multifaceted threat to the American society. In America, there is huge demand market because of illegal drug consumption and this encourages criminal activities. Crimes like stealing and prostitution become rampant as drug users resort to these for funding their habits. Drug manufacture and trade incite instability and severe violence. Till date all efforts to eliminate drug abuse have mostly been unsuccessful. Drug industry has so far been able to overcome any strategies implemented by the government, fulfill the growing demand, surpass borders and capture the young generation of the Latin American states. Since the Latin American authorities have failed to control the drug traffickers, they have managed to pose a threat to the very existence of societies by destabilizing fragile national institutions. To eradicate this monumental threat and curse to the society, it is required for the US and Latin American authorities to implement a cooperative approach (Horwitz, 2010, p.139). Illegal drugs have incapacitated many urban communities with a pervasive fear of gang violence. Even those staying at home fear burglaries and fear for their children due to open dealing in streets. The strategies adopted by the police often fall too short in the face of drug traffickers. Very often, the police are no match in front of the resilience of the drug trade. Moreover, the incapability of courts to provide deserving punishments further mitigates the potential impacts of the efforts of the police. The money and political power that support the police strategists are not the only assets available for drug control. Communities also have the resources to curb drug dealings and consumption. Therefore, it is required for the police to work in cooperation with the citizens and community groups to cope with the drug problem. There are however, many limitations attached to police activities that contribute towards failure of drug control strategies. It become very difficult for the police to arrest and prosecute drug dealers because of lack of “complaining victims and witnesses.” (Moore & Kleiman, 1989, p.2) The resilience of drug trade and assurance of huge profits make the drug dealers fight the police rather than admit defeat in the face of police action. Furthermore, drug strategies include informants and undercover operations. Such strategies put the police executive at risk of corruption and taking advantage of authority. This leads to anger among the police and many officers get provoked to plant evidences or adopt other illegal measures to pursue justice (Moore & Kleiman, 1989, pp.1-3). In UK, drug policies have failed to show positive results as they are flawed in terms of “presentation, balance and priorities.” (McKeganey, 2007, p.560) The policies gave more emphasis on criminal justice than on drug-related health issues. Similarly, the policies did not give enough attention to drugs like alcohol and tobacco. Drug policies also have the tendency to narrow down their net by “demonizing particular substances and particular categories of drug users.” (McKeganey, 2007, p.560) In the long run, drug policies fail to achieve their target of protecting the youth from drug use as drug consumption among the youth has invariably increased in the last decade. Enforcement programs more often cannot be implemented properly because of budget constraints. If effective, enforcement should be able to increase the prices of drugs and reduce accessibility. However, in the past few decades, there has been no evidence of price increase; rather there has been reduction of prices. The continued rise of drug consumption proves the easy accessibility of drugs (McKeganey, 2007, pp.560-561). For the eradication of drug problems, it is important that both drug producing countries and consuming countries work in cooperation. Any drug policies with efficient strategies will mostly fail unless there are successful national and international level programs to curb the production, distribution and consumption of drugs. Countries that cultivate drugs cannot control the production nor can consumption countries control consumption. This is because unless demand of drugs can be controlled, supply cannot be curbed. Similarly, as long as supply will be there, demand will exist. Most drug control programs have not concentrated on alternative solutions like creating awareness about prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. The programs have also not strived to improve social conditions that have pushed the youth towards drugs. Conclusion The various drug control strategies have so far shown performances that have been below the success level. The emphasis of drug policies should be more on the protective factors like providing the youth with opportunities to garner skills and be motivated for a successful life. The failure of drug strategies has been mainly because of the insistent demand-supply chain. It is imperative that both drug producing countries and consumer countries join hands to deal with this global problem. To make demand reduction successful, it is important to create awareness among the youth about the harmful effects of drugs. Along with this, law enforcement is also necessary to curb the demand side. Drug trade is a complicated process of manufacture, distribution and consumption. So, all these three aspects need to be curbed by proper drug control strategies. In order to cure the society of illegal drug use malady, a multifaceted and balanced program is needed to reduce both demand and supply simultaneously. Drug policies should stop categorizing types of drugs and drug users. They should equally focus on both illicit drugs like cocaine and heroine, and legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco. The law enforcement officers need to work in cooperation with communities to achieve their desired target of protecting the youth from drug use. References Davis, S.J. & S. Spillman (2011) Reasons for Drug Abstention: A Study of Drug Use and Resilience. Journal of Psychoactive drugs, 43(1), 14-19 (There has been consistent growth of drug use among the youth in spite of various drug policies. However, many people do not resort to drugs in their adolescent years. This articles attempts to reason why some people are more resilient than others. Effective prevention programs can be created by understanding why some people refrain from using drugs.) Horwitz, B. (2010) The Role of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD): Confronting the Problem of Illegal Drugs in the Americas. Latin American Politics & Society, 52(2), 139-165 (This article talks about multilateral approach to combat drug use. Both US and Latin America are working in unison to develop an antidrug regime namely CICAD. CICAD is yet to be bestowed with higher authorities to help public officials to deal with drug problem. However, it has allowed US and Latin America to share the burden of drug control.) McKeganey, N. (2007) The Challenge to UK Drug Policy. Drugs: Education, Prevention & Policy, 14(6), 559-571 (This article talks about UK drug policies. The weaknesses of policies and their failure to achieve desired target are of main concern. The suggestion is to give more focus on health issues as effects of drug use along with criminal justice. The drug policies need to enforce restrictions of legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco.) Moore, M.H. & M.A.R. Kleiman (1989) The Police and Drugs. Perspectives on Policing, No.11 from: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/117447.pdf (This paper talks about the strategies adopted by the police to deal with drug problem. The resilience of drug trade often makes the police efforts fail. Lack of punishment by courts also works against police strategy. The police needs the cooperation of the community for dealing with drug problem) National Drug Strategy 2010-2015: A Framework for action on alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, (2011) nationaldrugstrategy, received on November 26, 2012 from: http://www.nationaldrugstrategy.gov.au/internet/drugstrategy/publishing.nsf/Content/DB4076D49F13309FCA257854007BAF30/$File/nds2015.pdf (This article talks about the National Drug Strategy 2010-2015. It works towards reduction of demand-supply chain of drugs. It also attempts to reduce the harmful effects of drug use. A detailed explanation of the consequences of drug use including consumption of alcohol and tobacco is also given in this article.) Promising Strategies to Reduce Substance Abuse, (2000) OJP, retrieved on November 26, 2012 from: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/docs/psrsa.pdf (In this article an assessment is given on the most effective global strategies for drug control. The core elements of the strategies are provided with examples as a guide for the communities. Drug prevention and treatment is possible only through collaboration between different drug policy agencies. Prevention strategies are created to cover the different levels of risk.) Read More