Heroin Addiction

[Name of the institute]Heroin Addiction

Introduction

Heroin use or abuse is one of major concerns prevailing in the American society. The increasing number of youths addicted to heroin use is surely an alarming sign and the issue needs to be addressed properly. Although there are a number of heroin intervention programs in place, but they have failed to produce any substantial results depicting any decrease in the heroin using trends among the adolescents. This paper discusses the pros and cons of heroin use among the American youth and the factors that have influenced them to take up drugs or get addicted to heroin. The findings will provide an insight into the contemporary trends of heroin use among the American youths.

Discussion

According to the definition proposed by the Center of Substance Abuse Treatment, adolescence as a period when an individual experiences vivid growth in his or her physical body size, social thoughts, and emotions (Scorzelli, 2002). This is a time when individuals seem to feel themselves independent enough to take their own decisions. In the ongoing war on drugs, those incarcerated have been lost in the cause. I believe this to be a significant problem; due to the economy we have seen a big hike in the problem with drug addiction and those who sell drugs. I work in a prison, and there are many instances where we find drugs, whether on the inmate or in their cells (Berridge, 2004). This is the first point that needs to be tackled, and we need to find these security breaches in the prison. Since the beginning of my career, I have never been searched at work, I can only remember one occasion where my bag was looked over, nothing was ever removed, not once did I receive a body check. Employees can bring in drugs so easily and often do, so I cannot imagine how many visitors bring in drugs.

When a heroin addict is released, and he goes back into the community, it does not bring any improvement to the situation of the prisoner; neither does it protect the society against his criminal acts. Besides this, the prisoners who have a strong link between drug-related crime, and finance will benefit from this program too and their release will be deferred until their dependency on drugs ends (Berridge, 2008).

Factors Influencing Heroin Addiction among Adolescent

There are many factors, social, economical, and emotional that influences an individual's through process during adolescence, eventually leading him or her to get addicted to heroin use.

Ethnicity

During the analysis phase, it was found that ethnicity is one of the major factors that contribute to the prevalence of increased heroin usage among individuals. It was found that Native Americans and Whites are more likely to use legal heroin, whereas other groups, more significantly, blacks and African Americans were found to be attracted towards using illegal heroin. It is also an established fact that the number of male adolescents using heroin is much more than that of adolescent girls involved. This fact points out ...