Paper on Children and Substance Abuse

Children and Drug Abuse

Student’s Name

Professor’s Name

Course Title

Date

Drug and Substance abuse: Impact on young children under the social care in Vermont, United States 

Abstract

In the recent past, the cases of drugs and substance abuse among children have been on the rise in Vermont. This article, examines the social background of the children under the social care. Most of the children under the research had experienced a background with drug and substance abuse among the adults. The research had also examined those children who are under the family care but with a drug and substance abuse history. The results indicated that, the children who were brought up under the social care systems, were likely, or had once abused one or two drugs. The children whose care was entirely form the parents who had a drug abuse historical background, were likely to abuse drugs later in their lives but did not abuse any form of drug currently. There researched had also revealed that the children who had abused drugs only used either bhang, or cigarette and alcohol. However, the abuse of hard drugs like cocaine and heroine was not prevalent due to the unavailability. The substance abuse among the researched groups indicated that violence within their families and peers was common with more mental health problems. On the other hand, the research revealed out that there was drug abuse reduction among those under the total control of their parents for a period of more than two years.

Introduction

Drugs abuses in United States have been on the rise in the recent past. The abuse however, has been varying from one state to another. The states of Texas, California and Illinois, whose drug abuse cases have been associated with the increasing number of illegal immigrants, have been noted as most notorious regions with substance use. Heroin and cocaine has been the most preferred drug since they are easily smuggled from Mexico. However, among the juveniles, cocaine bhang and heroin has remained to be the favorite substance to be used. They are associated with delight; clubbing and street life commonly referred to as ‘ghetto’ life Liang et. al (2012). The government has been concerned with the increasing use of heroin and cocaine in the past five years among the school going children.

 Most of them tend to drop out of school as addiction develops while other has been noted to join criminal gangs. The gangs have a social structure to enable them to peddle drugs within the school. According to a survey conducted by the United States health department (), 1 in every 5 adults have confessed to have abused an illegal drug over their lifetime. However, the highest percentage of the abuse was realized among the youths aged 9 to 15 years. Following the arguments of Liang et. al (2012), bhang and alcohol were the most abused drugs among the juveniles, while cocaine and heroin was mostly abused by the adult. Sedatives and anti-depressants were also recorded to have been abused by the youth with this age bracket, with more males being involved than females (Caulkins et.al, 2015).