Young women engage in drug abuse
After I watched a TV programme which was about young women using drugs, I realized that the problem of drug abuse was becoming more and more serious especially among women. I think that there are a few factors leading to these problems.
First, I think some abusers may have to face relationship problems. Just like Yee Man, her mother had left her since she was small. At the same time, her father didn’t care much about her. With the lack of family support, love and care, it was easy for her to try taking drugs. Besides, some may also have to face relationship problems with men when they break up, women usually feel hurt easily and it is very hard for them to recover, so they may choose to take drugs in order to escape from reality.
Second, I think that some abusers take drugs because of peer pressure. Just like Joey, she started to take drugs because of her friends. Adolescents may be afraid of losing face if they don’t follow the group norm. They may want to impress their friends or win their acceptance.
Third, some adolescents take drugs out of curiosity. They may misunderstand that drugs can help them to escape from unhappiness and solve their problems. However Joey thought that taking drugs would just worsen the problems. She said drugs could not actually help her, but it was just a kind of escaping from reality.
At the same time, taking drugs will cause many problems to the abusers and also their family and society
To begin with, let’s talk about the impacts on the abusers. Drugs are harmful to the body. It will easily weaken one’s health. Also, after taking drugs, abusers may have illusions. This will cause emotional instability. They may lose control and hurt themselves without realizing what they are doing. They may even commit suicide.
Taking drugs could also ruin their studies, social life and their career, since they may be caught by the police. So it is very dangerous for people to take drugs.
Moreover, taking drugs will ruin one’s family. The abusers may spend a lot of time enjoying taking drugs. They will not spend much time in caring about their own family. They may always ask for money from their family. They will never understand their family’s difficulties and will not carry out their duty well. So their family may stay away from them. From the programme, we can see that Yee Man’s home had been taken over by her friends for taking drugs. As a result, her father had nowhere to live. So taking drugs could ruin the family.
Furthermore, taking drugs will disrupt social order. It is illegal to take drugs. The more people take drugs, the more the disruption to the social order. Also, drugs are addictive. People may tend to spend a huge sum of money in order to satisfy their desires. So they may commit crimes in order to obtain more money to support their expenditure. They may also be controlled by triad members. The amount of crime in society may increase. So taking drugs will disrupt social order.
Because of the above problems, I have a few suggestions for the family, school and government.
For the family, I suggest the parents have more communication with their children. This can help them to understand their feelings. Also, they should accept their children’s limitation. No one is perfect. They should not expect too much from them. Instead, they should spend more time in understanding their needs.
For the school, they should hold some talks to teach the parents how to help their children avoid taking drugs. They can also teach the parents how to use an effective way to communicate with their children. The social workers at school should also chat with the children who may have some relationship or emotional problems in order to let them express their own feelings. This can help them avoid using drugs to solve their problems.
For the government, I think that they should just use education to teach the children not to take drugs. Instead, I suggest the government should give more subsidies to NGOs to enrich their resources in helping the drug abusers. The NGOs can have more money to hold some courses, employ more social workers to help the drugs abusers get back on the right track.
I hope my suggestion scan help in solving drug abuse problems among the youth.
Tam Teresa Sie Wai 5A