Drug abuse in America is a major problem. Especially among teenagers.
Drugshave hurt the lives of nearly 40 percent of all teenagers in America. Either with healthproblems, DWIs, highway crashes, arrests, impaired school and job performance. Thesedrugs that teenagers use range from Alcohol, LSD, Marijuana, and even Cigarettes. Mostof the teenagers that are involved in drug abuse have either, broken families, parents thatare drug abusers, a unstable environment where they are constantly moving from place toplace, or there parents aren’t exactly making a lot of money and they are never aroundbecause they are trying to make enough money for them to survive. But even to mostordinary teenager can have a drug problem depending on there friends, and relationshipwith there family.
These teenagers turn to drugs because they have no where else to turn. Therefamily members aren’t ever around, or hardly ever around. Some teens may have thereparents around, but they too are involved with drug abuse, giving little or no attention tothere children. They may have dropped out of school, or aren’t meeting the standards setfor them to meet, giving them a sense that they aren’t worth anything. So what do theydo? They turn to drugs, thinking that it will take all there problems away. They soondiscover new friends with the same outlook on drugs as they have.
And now they have aplace to turn, a place where they will not be rejected or put down, a place where nothingmatters, everyday is a good day. Until they finally just fall apart. The reason most teens get involved in drugs is because they have what’s called alow inner and outer containment. Inner containment is what people believe is right andwrong, like your beliefs and morals. These ideas are taught to you at a young age by yourparents, and other people in your life that are important to you.
If your inner containmentis low, meaning that you don’t have people that have put ideas into your head aboutwhat’s right and wrong, then your chance of being a drug abuser increases. Outercontainment is like the law, teachers, friends, and family. If you have a lot of peoplearound you that are constantly telling you drugs are bad, you will be less likely to getinvolved with the drugs because you don’t wanna let these people down. But if you don’thave very many people around you like teachers say if you dropped out or something. Then you don’t have anyone telling you not to do drugs, which means you will probablydo them. But if you have a strong social bond (i.
e. attachment to parents, school, church,etc. ) you will be less likely to become deviant because you don’t want to let them down. If a person has a low inner and outer containment, they probably don’t feel to great aboutthemselves either, and feel as if they are lost in society.
They look for someone to leadthem, or look for a way out. When a person doesn’t know what to do, they are more proneto get involved with deviance. This theory is known as Anomie. Differential Association ties in with the containment theory also. It means thatpeople will learn to be deviant (i.
e. drug abuse) by the examples sent to them byimportant people in our lives. These important people could be parents, and family. When you grow up you always look to your parents as a role model, and everything theydo you want to do. They develop ideas in your head also about what’s right and wrong,these ideas are constructed realities. If a teenagers parents are involved with drugs, theteen or child will observe that and think that it is OK for them to do the same thing,because they think it must be normal, after all the parents do it, why can’t they? Anotherexample of Differential Association would be with friends.
If some of the teenagersfriends are involved with drugs, the teen is more likely to get involved with them becauseof peer pressure from them. They also have a need to fit in with them and they will doanything to gain that acceptance. Along with Differential Association comes DifferentialReinforcement. Reinforcement is what a teenager would get from his peers.
Lets say theteen starts doing drugs like .
