Substance Abuse in Teens

Teenage drug use is a continuing epidemic now plaguing the United States. Drug addiction is occurring more frequently in teenagers the rates are also going up. According to an article from Medicinal News Today “fifteen per cent of teenagers had positive results on a substance abuse screening test when they came in for routine outpatient medical care”medical news today (Nordqvist 2007) so when children see their doctors they care coming up positive for using drugs. The article stated that adolescent addiction can “generally predict future addictive disorders” (Nordqvist 2007).

I got this image from http://flickr.com/

Substance abuse is one of the leading causes of death among the United States teenagers following unintentional injuries, homicides and suicides. This is because teenagers are very rebellious and think they know everything when they actually don’t and they try to experiment with too many things which lead to an overdose. Drug abuse can also be linked to a “conduct disorder, unplanned sexual activity and depression” (Nordqvist 2007) and a variety of side effects. It can ruin families and friends trust and mess up your goals.

I used drugs in high school and I choose never to go class because my goals were about getting high and rebelling. Sometimes I think if I maybe didn’t fuck up my last two years in high school maybe I would have went away to college and graduated on time and had a real job by now. I see people my age already done with school and they are working in their career and it sucks because I chose a different path when I was a teenager. I did a lot of things that I look back on now and say what the hell was I thinking I would never do something like that now. I really wasn’t thinking about what I was doing because my mind was so messed up and I didn’t care about myself. Now I am on the right track and I am going to school full time, working full time and living with my boyfriend. I don’t use drugs anymore I think their stupid and a waste of money, now I’d rather save my money for other things than use it for drugs. I am kind of grateful that I had an experience like that when I was a teenager rather than later on in life because I got help early and got back on track.

It is really important to notice if your children or anyone you know is using and it is effecting their life because I teenagers don’t know the consequences of their actions and how it can affect them later on in life. If teenagers are getting addicted to drugs now we need to do something to help them before it is too late. The article stated that “early identification and intervention of adolescent substance use present the greatest opportunity for reducing the burden of addictive disorder later on in life” (Nordqvist 2007).

I got this image from flickr.com

Teen pregnancy the social issue

Teenage pregnancy is becoming an important social issue in our culture. Nearly half of the teens in the United States have had sex at least once between the ages of 15 and 19. A teen that is sexually active and does not use contraceptive methods, has a “90% chance of becoming pregnant in the first year of having sex” according to guttmacher.org. That is a scary factor to think after the first time you have sex you can get pregnant within a year.

I found this image on :http://http//www.topnews.in/health/files/pregnancy.jpg

Each year about 750,000 teenagers between 15 and 19 get pregnant. Teen pregnancy rates are higher in the United States and are eight times as high as Japan’s rates. Some questions I wonder about are How come our rates are so high and what are we doing to deal with this problem. Also why aren’t teenagers more careful when they do have sex.

This is a social issue that can be helped by providing them with education about contraceptive methods, STD’s and education. This is an important issue to discuss because there is a lot at risk for teens that become pregnant. For example it makes it harder for the mother to finish school on time and for the most part teenagers are still developing. How is a teenager financially ready to support a child when they are still in high school. I don’t think they are emotionally ready either and I think it is important to get the message out about teen pregnancy and the outcomes it leads to. For a teenager becoming a mother at such a young age it leads to “affects the health and well being for the next 20 to 40 years” according to cnn.

I do agree that the media does have a potential role in this epidemic but it is not the entire cause for it. Somethings that teens see on tv they might want to be like or do. During the last election Sarah Palin’s daughter was a teenager who was pregnant and to me it seemed like the family was ok with it like it was an everyday thing. To have a girl in the spot light like that is unacceptable and I don’t think it sends an appropriate messages to the youth’s of America. The parents need to be more aware of what their children are doing and send a positive message to their kids.