1. PROBLEMS OF THE SPREAD OF NARCOTICS
Nowadays, the problems of the spread of narcotics has become more severe especially among children and teenagers. According to statistics from the Public Health Ministry, the number of narcotics users are increasing, which may cause bad effects to their health, intelligence and concentration in studying resulting in lower quality in the population. This causes a lot of difficulty in developing the country and dealing with others in the world in the future.
Therefore, prevention and solving this problem should be an immediate priority in families, schools, communities, and the country.
There are various narcotics and they can be categorized into three types:
1. Neuroleptic: this type can cause drowsiness. Examples are opium, morphine, heroin, sleeping pills, tranquilizers, and dried alcohol.
2. Neurotic Motivated: this type causes nervousness resulting from taking amphetamines, cocaine, caffeine, Mitragyna speciosa, and dietetic drug.
3. Hallucination effect: this type causes illusions, false hearing, unreasonable fear, which may cause danger themselves or others. Examples are LSD, mushrooms, vapor from gasoline engines, paint thinner, glue, etc.
These days, narcotics have been widely developed in the form of tablets and liquids mixed in drinks, desserts, or different kinds of food, which is difficult to detect, so it causes harm to children and teenagers.
1.1 The causes of drug addiction
The problems of drug addiction include the following:
1) PERSONAL CAUSES INCLUDING:
- Age: most drug addicts are teenagers; they are eager to try new things.
- Knowledge, attitude, and ideas concerning narcotics and violence. For example, it is believed that violence or cruel words can make others believe and follow them, hitting children can help encourage them, or being a bully who has to fight in order to win etc.
- Lacking essential skills in adjusting to others in the group such as communication skills, anger management, appropriate behaviors, etc.
- Drug usage and alcoholic drinks make people lack the ability to control themselves.
- Having experienced violence, having seen violent acts, or having weapons at hand can cause them to harm others when they get angry.
2) FAMILY’S NURTURING INCLUDES:
- Lack of love, understanding and support from the family. For example, children without an elder’s advice may use drugs.
- Being raised in a family in which the members commit violence, so they think it is a common behavior.
- Having been punished and hurt.
- Having parents or relatives committing a crime.
3) ENVIRONMENT INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING FACTORS:
- Different social status, economy, city life with high competition and stress.
- Fast economic growth and high unemployment in youngsters.
- Effects from media like movies, television, and newspapers showing violence.
- Social standards supporting violence; for example, those who commit violence are not punished, which makes people misunderstand that committing an act of violence is tolerated in society.
- Weapons are easy to possess.
1.2 Harm, danger, and effects of narcotics
Harmfulness and danger caused from taking narcotics not only directly affect the user’s body and mind, but they also affect family, society and the nation as mentioned below.
1) The effects on a drug user include destruction of the neural systems and organs of the user. Therefore, a person who takes drugs can have poor health in both his body and mind such as being very thin, pale and dark skin, fatigue, weariness, degenerated brain, poor memory, and easily infected with other diseases such as an inflammable liver and kidneys, respiratory disease, heart disease, cancer, low immunity, mental disorders or deterioration, bad temper, depressed, worried, out of one’s mind, etc.
The aforementioned effects will cause drug users to be incapable both physically and mentally of living their own lives in society, lacking confidence, losing personality, not paying attention to themselves or work or learning. Some drug users may have an accident making them crippled, such as falling from a high place while working or falling down as a result of the drugs effect on neural systems and the brain.
2) The effects and danger to the family: drug taking can cause a bad reputation to that person and the family. Moreover, a drug user may be irresponsible to the family resulting in losing income since money has to be spent on drugs. Some spend a large amount of money to cure the diseases caused by narcotics, all of those things cause a burden to their family leading to family problems, frequent quarrels, broken families, etc.
3) The effects and dangers to society and the economy: those taking drugs feel that they are inferior to others in society, and their behaviors or ideas may lead to social problems such as committing a crime, robbing, attacking others in order to take their property and also cause accidents and spreads disease. These cause
a personnel loss, loss of property, and asocial and public burden to manage the personnel, labor, and budget to deal with and cure those who are addicted to drugs.
4) The effects and dangers to the country: those who are drug addicted can damage the country’s economy and security because the government has to use a lot of personnel and finances to control and cure drug users leading to a reduction in the country’s stability.