Drug abuse or substance abuse refers to the use of certain chemicals to create pleasure-able effects on the brain, affecting the brain’s normal function. When drug abusers become addicted to the drug, they cannot resist the urge to use them no matter how much harm the drug may cause because they lose their ability to reason in front of temptation. Let’s see about the social impacts of drug abuse.
Drug addiction not only includes heroin, hashish, cocaine, or other illegal drugs. Even excessive use of alcohol, sleeping pills, and snit depression medication can cause the same effect on the human brain.
Effects of drug abuse on young children
Young children or teenagers are the easiest prey of drug abuse because of curiosity, peer pressure, and bad company. Even though drug addiction is treatable, it can leave long-term effects on children’s brains and future because under the influence of drugs, anyone can commit a crime as drugs affect human cognition.
As we can see in drunk driving cases, how children can become convicted criminals or murder someone due to a reckless act that can badly affect their future. Due to the increase in several such cases, law firms offer trained lawyers in that area as Phoenix DUI attorney offers particular DUI lawyers to deal with such matters in California.
Causes of drug abuse
It is difficult to grasp the reason for the increasing ratio of drug abuse as it varies from person to person. Bad Company and lack of parental care and love are essential factors because most of them, due to the careless behavior of parents, children can resort to drugs to escape from the bitter realities.
Moreover, exposure to a peer group or group which encourages drug abuse is also the leading cause of drug addiction in young adults.
Sometimes, people who suffer from mental health problems like anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, etc., can also become drug addicts to get rid of their stress. Other causes of drug abuse can be for recreational purposes or as a means of obtaining creative inspiration.
Social implications of drug abuse on the family system
The social institute that suffers most from drug abuse is the family because even if a family member is a drug addict, it affects the whole family. If that person is the breadwinner of the family, it can affect the family’s financial condition as that person will be unable to work and earn.
Drug abuse affects the cultural and social standing of the family in many ways, like draining family resources, extramarital relations, violence towards others due to anger management issues. The rehabilitation process is also quite expensive, which can put a burden on underprivileged families.
Drug abuse in educational institutes
The increasing number of drug abuse cases in educational institutes is alarming, and this issue should be addressed more seriously. Students are considered the future of the nation, but due to deteriorating conditions of schools and universities, they are now playing the role of factories of drug addicts.
Easy access to drugs and poor management on every level is one of the main factors that help in the drug industry’s flourishing. To deal with this problem, strict rules should be enforced in educational institutes. There is a need to hire psychologists or mental health experts who can help students manage their mental issues, solving the problem of drug abuse.
Impact of drug abuse on crime rate
Even though drug abuse is a personal crime of self-harm, a drug addict can inflict harm on others as well. Under the influence of drugs, a person becomes unable to understand and behave rationally as drugs affect the mental cognitive process.
An addict can murder, rape, stole or abuse under the influence of drugs as his senses become desensitize. We see drunk driving cases every day that show how people put others and their own lives in danger. There are also case studies of serial killers and terrorists who use drugs before committing crimes. So we can say that drug abuse also affects the crime rate.
Moreover, it’s challenging to deal with cases of drug abuse legally because, in some cases, a person can be released on parole because he was unaware of his actions which affect the justice system as well.
Unemployment and pressure on co-workers
Drug abuse affects addicts on many different levels. It can affect the workplace or job, and work status includes more than being employed and unemployed. It refers to contribution in one’s work environment, like doing the job correctly and on time. Drug abuse can influence a person’s ability to do a job correctly, which can, in turn, put extra pressure on their co-workers.
On the global level, drug abuse is one of the reasons for the higher unemployment rate. A trend is seen that increased rate of unemployment can be seen in the same age group people as those most likely to use drugs. That’s why we can say that drug abuse affects the national and international monetary markets as well.
Strains on the health care system of the country
Drug abuse comes with many other health problems as toxic substances in drugs can affect human organs and even cause life-threatening diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease, HIV, etc. The treatment of these diseases is also quite expensive, which can put a burden on the pocket.
Increasing the ratio of drug abuse also puts pressure on the public health care system of the state as it’s the responsibility of the state to provide its citizens with proper health care. The state has to invest more in the institution of medicine to curb health care issues like spending more on life-saving equipment, hiring more health care staff, etc.
Adverse effects on the economy
Drug abuse is that big of a crisis in the modern world as terrorism and global warming because its impacts are multifold. Drug abuse affects a country’s economy in many ways, as it can burden the economy of the state. As we know, that drug dealing business is illegal and widespread, that’s why to deal with it, sometimes countries have to create a separate force that can deal with narcotic related crimes as in Pakistan Anti-Narcotic organization was established to control the spread of drugs in society.
As Pakistan is underdeveloped with a struggling economy, it puts added pressure on the economy to create and train a separate force to counter this issue. Moreover, it affects the country’s workforce as drug abuse is common in educational institutes, which causes long-term harm to the state’s economy.
Child abuse and sex trafficking
Criminally minded people can use drug abuse to manipulate their victims. We can see in our surroundings that most of the time, abusive and drug addicts parents abuse their children, which in turn makes them leave their houses.
Children abused by drug addict parents can themselves become targets of drug abuse very quickly as children copy their parents’ behaviors. Homeless children and drug addicts can become prey to sex traffickers because their only concern in life is the availability of drugs to use.
Sex traffickers provide them with drugs and easy money in turn for their services. That’s why we can see an increase in the number of child sexual exploitation and human trafficking cases.
Solution
We can see how seemingly common and personal drug abuse issues affect almost every sphere of our lives. There is a need to counter this problem globally because it’s no longer a national problem. Cross border trade of drugs and their spread is a collective problem.
To solve this problem, it’s important to discourage the growth of opium cultivation firstly. There is a need to develop better laws to regulate intoxicated substance usage in the medical industry so that addicts can no longer use legal means to get drugs like addicts can’t use medicines like antidepressants for drug abuse.
Conclusion
There is a need to counter this problem urgently. Due to the normalization of drug addiction through popular media, as seen in movies and dramas, more innocent minds are infiltrated by this content.
Moreover, due to digital media, it’s easy to buy and sell illegal stuff, including drugs, as many people use the dark web for drug dealings and other crimes. Governments should take steps to hire mental health doctors or psychologists in every organization so that people should know that drugs are not the solution to their problems.
More than anything, there is a need to educate children about the harms of drug addiction on the school level. To control drug abuse in higher educational institutions, it’s necessary to enforce rules and regulations given by institutions. In the political sphere, there is a need to develop stricter laws against drug dealers as most of the time, and drug dealers were not punished for their crimes due to inadequate evidence or personal relations with the political elite.
