EFFECT OF SOCIAL VICES ON THE YOUTH.

“Drugs are tearing apart our societies, spawning crime, spreading diseases such as AIDS, and killing our youth and our future.” Kofi Annan, former UN secretary General. This statement by Kofi Annan is very true today.

Despite well-known risks, people continue to abuse drugs, and such abuse continues to destroy lives. Drug abuse costs the United States an estimated 100 billion dollars a year in health care, reduced job productivity, lost earnings, and crime. Well, do you know which group suffers most? It’s the youth. According to a Brazilian study, 24.7 percent of youths between 10 and 17 years of age have already tried some kind of drug. Also while teenage drug use in the United States may have declined somewhat in recent years, alarming numbers of young ones there are addicted.

Consider seniors in high school. According to one study, 37 percent had at least tried marijuana in the previous year. One out of 5 had used it in the past month. Almost 1 out of 10 had tried the drug ecstasy in the past year.’ The most murderous group of Americans are in the 18-to-22 age group,” according to a recent report. “In 1979, says the FBI, they accounted for 25% of all murder arrests.” The British Office for National Statistics reports that “12 per cent of pupils aged 11-15 had used drugs in the last year. . . Cannabis [marijuana] was by far the most likely drug to have been used.” Particularly alarming was the fact that “more than one third (35 per cent) had been offered one or more drugs.”

Youngsters have always committed crimes. But usually they expressed remorse when caught. However, more and more of today’s troubled youth don’t seem to know that their crimes are wrong, nor do they care. How else do you explain why two Cleveland teenagers paid another youth $60 to murder their father “because he wouldn’t let us do anything we wanted to do, like smoke pot”? Leaving their father’s body on the floor of their home, they took his credit cards and paycheck and went on a 10-day spending spree. This was reported in one news bulletin.

Another report from the European Union reveals that among young people, “drinking to inebriation has become increasingly common.” The report also says that such “alcohol abuse is associated with various short term adverse effects such as accidents, violence and poisoning, as well as with developmental and social problems.”

Crime and its related effect has also embodied the youth of today that most has lost real hope in Life. Emmanuel, a young Nigerian, is alarmed at the rising insecurity, explaining: “In the past, whenever thieves wanted to break into a house, they would wait until the owner was away. Now it does not matter if the whole family is at home. The thieves knock on the door and demand that you give them your property. If such a thing has started occurring now, what will it be like in the future?” Is Emmanuel alone in this kind of fear? Not at all. We all share in such fear. The effect of such fears has lead to a number of Youth developing low self-esteem.

Chicago researchers surveyed 1,331 teenagers over an 18 years period and the result was that the self-perceptions of American teenagers apparently have become decidedly less positive. The study describes today’s teenagers as being less secure than before, with lower ethical standards. About one fifth of them say that they are empty emotionally and confused most of the time, and that they would rather die than go on living.

Suicide has also risen as a result of insecurity among the youth today. “The number of children who threaten and attempt suicide has increased,” says Dr. Cynthia Pfeffer, a Cornell psychiatrist. “Studies in the nineteen-sixties indicated that no more than ten per cent of the children sent to outpatient clinics showed suicidal behavior. In a recent study I did, thirty-three per cent of the children had suicidal ideas.” Suicide is a leading cause of death among American teenagers today. Some of us today feels a bit insecure in a world were every social vice is increasing at an unprecedented rate and yet we do not know how to steer the wheel to the right way. Well keep deliberating on it and see you next week. Till then have a wonderful time.