DANGERS OF DRUG ABUSE AMONG THE YOUTHS. A RESEARCH PROJECT MATERIAL ON PHARMACY
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
Drug abuse is one of the top problems confronting the nation today especially among the youth. Incidences of drug abuse and related anti-social behavior have tremendously increased in recent years. This has become a matter of concern to the government, parents, teachers, Non-governmental organizations and all other relevant agencies. Parents do not recognize the extent of drug use and as a result, some young people think they can use drugs with impunity. Most parents believe that it is the responsibility of teachers to check drug abuse among school going youths and still most of them delude themselves that their children are safe and secure. Drug abuse is not confined to young people in certain geographical areas or from particular social-economic backgrounds. It affects the nation as a whole-both urban and rural areas. The concept of “drug” has been defined as any chemical substance which affect living organism. Such a substance may be used to fight infections and illness or minimize pain, fatigue, anxiety or at times to achieve certain level of euphoria. WHO (1952) defined “drugs” as any substances that when taken into a living body produce reactions or modify its psychological and physiological functioning. On the other hand “drug abuse” has been defined as any use of drugs for nonmedical purposes almost always for altering consciousness. Drug abuse denotes substances that change the mental or physical state of a person and that may be used repeatedly for that effect leading to abnormality. WHO defined “Drug dependence” as a “state” arising from repeated administration of a drug on a periodic or continuous basis in order to experience its psychic effect and sometimes to avoid the discomfort of its absence.(Kilonzo, 1996:170). However, experience shows that drug abuse has been on the medical and nonmedical drug which is the concern of this study. For the medical drugs, using them without prescription of the medical personnel or using them contrary to the prescriptions of the medical personnel is considered as abusing the medical drugs.
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