drug addiction as a social menace essay

Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Drug Addiction — Drug Addiction – The Scourge Of Modern Society

Socio-cultural Context of Drug Addiction and Ways to Deal with It

• Categories: Drug Addiction Drugs

About this sample

Words: 1347 |

Published: Jul 15, 2020

Words: 1347 | Pages: 2 | 7 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof. Kifaru

Verified writer

• Expert in: Nursing & Health

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 799 words

4 pages / 1991 words

4 pages / 2018 words

1 pages / 536 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Drug Addiction

Drug addiction is a widely misunderstood condition. The timeless nature versus nurture debate is often brought up when discussing drug dependence. Is addiction a mental illness or a consequence of poor lifestyle choices? Are [...]

The Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) has expressed concern about the increasing number of children who are engaged in alcohol and substance abuse. How can guidance counselors assist DEC to curb the problem of drug abuse?Use and [...]

A drug is any substance other than food that provides nutritional support that, when inhaled, injected, smoked, consumed, absorbed via a patch on the skin, or dissolved under the tongue causes a temporary physiological and often [...]

He lowers his hand to reach down, and curves a strong grip around her small wrist, abruptly stopping her in her tracks. “What is it, what's troubling you?” he asked in an anxious voice once again. “It's...I'm pregnant!” Finally [...]

Louse-borne typhus is one of the oldest pernicious diseases, that has been haunting mankind since ages. Known by the many names such as “camp fever”, “war fever”, “jail fever” and “tabarillo” and confused with many other fevers [...]

In 1946 the World HealthOrganisation (WHO) defined health as a ‘state of complete physical, mental and social well-being. This definition integrates the main concepts of health and identifies that health can be viewed [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

104.Short Essay and Article on : Combating the Menace of Drugs

Write an article on ‘Combating the Menace of Drugs’.

Ans.                    Combating the Menace of Drugs                      

Drug addiction is a problem that has been increasing menacingly among our society today. It has ruined thousands of families in India. Addiction can trap anyone. Drug It ruins the victims physically, mentally and spiritually. It causes problems in the family and contributes to delinquent tendencies in society. Drug abuse leads to crimes and criminal behaviour. It affects the law and order situation affecting the moral health of the society. The abuse of narcotics has caused a widespread concern to all the civilized countries of the world. It is a curse for a developing country like India. Poverty, unemployment and lack of opportunities have caused a deep sense of resentment, anger and depression among the youths of the country. High aspirations, expanding ambitions and initiating consumerism have only worsened the situation. Broken families, loss of moral values and lack of proper guidance force the youths of today to resort to immoral and escapist practices of drug addiction. The young people fall easy prey to drugs. They lose their discretion, conscience, self-control and willpower. They indulge in anti-social activities and soon become outcasts in society. It is shocking that more than 80 per cent heroin addicts in India are in the age group of 12-25 years. This abuse is more pronounced in cities but even our villages are not completely free from this menace. Mostly disillusioned youths alienated from their families and parental love take to drugs in deep frustration. The drug trade flourishes in our slums, hotels, nightclubs and bars. An all-out war must be launched against the menace of drugs. The government must root out the centres and dens of this trade giving exemplary punishments to the guilty. Voluntary organizations, social networks and educational intuitions HMS enlighten young men and women taint the menace of drugs We can’t, afford to lose any more time: ‘No’ to drugs must start from today and  from just now,

Download the above Article in PDF (Printable)

Want to read more:-.

141.  Life in a Big City

142. A Glaring Educational Evil

143. The Cruel Practice of Using Animals In Circus Shows

144. Human Wants And Resultant Corruption

145. Remedy For Decreasing the Crime Rate Amongst Educated Folk

146. Educative Value of Films

147. Onions With Real Tears

148.Children’s Role in Curbing Black-Marketing

149.  The Place Of English In India

150. ‘Declining Standard of Sports in India’

Related Posts

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

the new old age

Why Are Older Americans Drinking So Much?

The pandemic played a role in increased consumption, but alcohol use among people 65 and older was climbing even before 2020.

By Paula Span

The phone awakened Doug Nordman at 3 a.m. A surgeon was calling from a hospital in Grand Junction, Colo., where Mr. Nordman’s father had arrived at the emergency room, incoherent and in pain, and then lost consciousness.

At first, the staff had thought he was suffering a heart attack, but a CT scan found that part of his small intestine had been perforated. A surgical team repaired the hole, saving his life, but the surgeon had some questions.

“Was your father an alcoholic?” he asked. The doctors had found Dean Nordman malnourished, his peritoneal cavity “awash with alcohol.”

The younger Mr. Nordman, a military personal finance author living in Oahu, Hawaii, explained that his 77-year-old dad had long been a classic social drinker: a Scotch and water with his wife before dinner, which got topped off during dinner, then another after dinner, and perhaps a nightcap.

Having three to four drinks daily exceeds current dietary guidelines , which define moderate consumption as two drinks a day for men and one for women, or less. But “that was the normal drinking culture of the time,” said Doug Nordman, now 63.

At the time of his 2011 hospitalization, though, Dean Nordman, a retired electrical engineer, was widowed, living alone and developing symptoms of dementia. He got lost while driving, struggled with household chores and complained of a “slipping memory.”

He had waved off his two sons’ offers of help, saying he was fine. During that hospitalization, however, Doug Nordman found hardly any food in his father’s apartment. Worse, reviewing his father’s credit card statements, “I saw recurring charges from the Liquor Barn and realized he was drinking a pint of Scotch a day,” he said.

Public health officials are increasingly alarmed by older Americans’ drinking. The annual number of alcohol-related deaths from 2020 through 2021 exceeded 178,000, according to recently released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention : more deaths than from all drug overdoses combined.

An analysis by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism shows that people over 65 accounted for 38 percent of that total. From 1999 to 2020, the 237 percent increase in alcohol-related deaths among those over age 55 was higher than for any age group except 25- to 34-year-olds.

Americans largely fail to recognize the hazards of alcohol, said George Koob, the director of the institute. “Alcohol is a social lubricant when used within the guidelines, but I don’t think they realize that as the dose increases it becomes a toxin,” he said. “And the older population is even less likely to recognize that.”

The growing number of older people accounts for much of the increase in deaths, Dr. Koob said. An aging population foreshadows a continuing surge that has health care providers and elder advocates worried, even if older people’s drinking behavior doesn’t change.

But it has been changing . The proportions of people over 65 who report using alcohol in the past year (about 56 percent) and the past month (about 43 percent) are lower than for all other groups of adults. But older drinkers are markedly more likely to do it frequently, on 20 or more days a month, than younger ones.

Moreover, a 2018 meta-analysis found that binge drinking (defined as four or more drinks on a single occasion for women, five or more for men) had climbed nearly 40 percent among older Americans over the past 10 to 15 years.

What’s going on here?

The pandemic has clearly played a role. The C.D.C. reported that deaths attributable directly to alcohol use, emergency room visits associated with alcohol, and alcohol sales per capita all rose from 2019 to 2020, as Covid arrived and restrictions took hold.

“A lot of stressors impacted us: the isolation, the worries about getting sick,” Dr. Koob said. “They point to people drinking more to cope with that stress.”

Researchers also cite a cohort effect. Compared to those before and after them, “the boomers are a substance-using generation,” said Keith Humphreys, a psychologist and addiction researcher at Stanford. And they’re not abandoning their youthful behavior, he said.

Studies show a narrowing gender divide, too. “Women have been the drivers of change in this age group,” Dr. Humphreys said.

From 1997 to 2014, drinking rose an average of 0.7 percent a year for men over 60, while their binge drinking remained stable. Among older women, drinking climbed by 1.6 percent annually, with binge drinking up 3.7 percent.

“Contrary to stereotypes, upper-middle-class, educated people have higher rates of drinking,” Dr. Humphreys explained. In recent decades, as women grew more educated, they entered workplaces where drinking was normative; they also had more disposable income. “The women retiring now are more likely to drink than their mothers and grandmothers,” he said.

Yet alcohol use packs a greater wallop for older people, especially for women, who become intoxicated more quickly than men because they’re smaller and have fewer of the gut enzymes that metabolize alcohol.

Seniors may argue that they are merely drinking the way they always have, but “equivalent amounts of alcohol have much more disastrous consequences for older adults,” whose bodies cannot process it as quickly, said Dr. David Oslin, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia.

“It causes slower thinking, slower reaction time and less cognitive capacity when you’re older,” he said, ticking off the risks.

Long associated with liver diseases, alcohol also “exacerbates cardiovascular disease, renal disease and, if you’ve been drinking for many years, there’s an increase in certain kinds of cancers,” he said. Drinking contributes to falls, a major cause of injury as people age, and disrupts sleep.

Older adults also take a lot of prescription drugs, and alcohol interacts with a long list of them. These interactions can be particularly common with pain medications and sleep aids like benzodiazepines, sometimes causing over-sedation. In other cases, alcohol can reduce a drug’s effectiveness.

Dr. Oslin cautions that, while many prescription bottles carry labels that warn against using those drugs with alcohol, patients may shrug that off, explaining that they take their pills in the morning and don’t drink until evening.

“Those medications are in your system all day long, so when you drink, there’s still that interaction,” he tells them.

One proposal for combating alcohol misuse among older people is to raise the federal tax on alcohol, for the first time in decades. “Alcohol consumption is price-sensitive, and it’s pretty cheap right now relative to income,” Dr. Humphreys said.

Resisting industry lobbying and making alcohol more expensive, the way higher taxes have made cigarettes more expensive, could reduce use.

So could eliminating barriers to treatment. Treatments for excessive alcohol use, including psychotherapy and medications, are no less effective for older patients , Dr. Oslin said. In fact, “age is actually the best predictor of a positive response,” he said, adding that “treatment doesn’t necessarily mean you have to become abstinent. We work with people to moderate their drinking.”

But the 2008 federal law requiring health insurers to provide parity — meaning the same coverage for mental health, including substance use disorders, as for other medical conditions — doesn’t apply to Medicare. Several policy and advocacy groups are working to eliminate such disparities.

Dean Nordman never sought treatment for his drinking, but after his emergency surgery, his sons moved him into a nursing home, where antidepressants and a lack of access to alcohol improved his mood and his sociability. He died in the facility’s memory care unit in 2017.

Doug, whom his father had introduced to beer at 13, had been a heavy drinker himself, he said, “to the point of blackout” as a college student, and a social drinker thereafter.

But as he watched his father decline, “I realized this was ridiculous,” he recalled. Alcohol can exacerbate the progression of cognitive decline, and he had a family history.

He has remained sober since that pre-dawn phone call 13 years ago.