U.S has a high number of adolescents hooked to illicit drug use and the percentage of drug abusers is increasing at an alarming rate. There are several reasons for an adolescent to indulge into drug abuse. Factors such as anxiety, depression, getting bored of many things in life, believing that drugs relieves stress, or to forget the painful memories of the past, and building a faith that drugs will help them fit into all situations are few causes that attract the drug abusers. Hundreds of drugs are available in the market depending on the user preference, categorized as hard drugs and soft drugs. People initially begin with lighter drugs like marijuana, and when it starts giving a good feeling, they move to hard drugs, to experience an even better feeling. At this stage the personal disapproval of using of a particular drug becomes strongly defensive against use, and it is difficult to analyze the effects of the use of one drug over another.
Many states support the use of marijuana and disapproval towards this drug does not seem to decrease in the near future. With the legalization of marijuana in many states, the young and the adolescents are prone to use the drug without any fear of being penalized. It may be tough task to prevent the young people and adolescent from using other forms of health hazardous things like tobacco, alcohol, or marijuana, but legal steps can be taken to prevent to the users from getting addicted to the multiple hard drugs. As there is a rise in the number of marijuana users and decrease in the use of disapprovals it is required to know if the sale of marijuana or other drugs reduces disapproval towards the use of possible hazardous drugs.
Hard drugs are the ones that are dangerous to health, hard drugs include powder cocaine, crack, heroin, amphetamine, ecstasy, and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hard drugs, and cigarette are known to have the highest risk factors. The strongest protective factor not to use drugs is the disapproval of low level drug such as marijuana. It is not yet certain if regular use of marijuana reduces disapproval towards the use of the hard drugs. Many marijuana users not only mark out other drug users at lesser levels, but also defame users’ addicted to hard drugs such as heroine, ecstasy or powder cocaine.
Young people aged 18-24 are the main users of drugs, and the risk of this type of craving in common is seen in children of alcoholics or drug addicts. If the drug addiction starts at a very young age then the person is more likely to try hard drugs at the earliest. Mortality rates are higher in people abusing hard drugs when compared to marijuana users. Using hard drugs makes the person lose concentration on higher priority things in life and neglect other responsibilities. Literature indicates that disapproval by peers in one’s birth cohort is a robust factor predicting use, over and above individual attitudes . Students who used marijuana also use alcohol because it is not as strong as the hard drugs and addiction towards both of them are similar. In females disapproval of crack use or being highly religious increases the odds of disapproval toward crack use, and use of alcohol, cigarettes, or multiple hard drugs that lessen the probabilities.
Hard drugs also induce many health effects that may include unintentional death by drug poisoning, injury, and suicide; infectious diseases such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Any overdose of drugs causes’ death and the hard drug opioids is majorly known to increase the number of deaths, which refrains drug abusers to disapprove the drug that they are addicted to. Drug users who have been using heroin for a long period of time are known to be chain smokers than the people who use other forms of hard drugs than heroin. Smoking and drinking are related with heroin use, and people who use cocaine and not heroin are at a higher risk of death. Though the drug users are aware of the risks associated with each hard drug, they disapprove to use any other drug because they are used to the feeling and bodily changes that their drug provides.
With regard to LSD disapproval, identifying as female, black, or religious increased the odds of disapproval, and high parent education and alcohol, cigarette, and hard drug use decreased the odds of disapproval . Hard drug users mainly use only hard drugs to satisfy themselves, and in case of the absence of most hard drug users had also used alcohol
(94 %), cigarettes (77 %), or marijuana (81 %) , but did not disapprove of using their existing drug. Alcohol is normally weak when related with disapproved drugs, and it is normal that the hard drugs users may always not support themselves with alcohol in the absence of cocaine or heroin.
A person using multiple hard drugs always wants to disapprove about the type of hard drug used; however, use of only one hard drug reduces the probabilities of disapproval towards the drugs other than crack and heroin. The constant use marijuana predicts lower disapproval towards the use of LSD, amphetamine, and ecstasy, as these drugs seem to be more socially acceptable than the other hard drugs such as powder cocaine, crack, and heroin. Marijuana users are very much less likely to disapprove LSD, ecstasy and heroin as marijuana induces perceptual changes and altered state of consciousness. Disapproval may not be a disgrace as the policy makers do it regularly to legalize or regularize about the personal disapproval towards the hard drugs, while considering personal disapproval as self-protective.
It is required by the legislation to create stringent rules for the hard drug abusers, as once an individual begins the use of a hard drug, that person will disapprove the use of any other hard drug which are at lower levels. It is quite important to focus on the prevention of the use of any of these “harder” illicit drugs, but it is also important to collate these illicit and illegal drugs and educate users about each and every negative effect of every hard drug, so that disapproval rates can increase and we have a healthy nation.
Works Cited
Palamar, Joseph. "Predictors of Disapproval toward “Hard Drug” Use among High School Seniors in the US." Society for Prevention Research 15 (2013): 725-735. PDF.
