Chapter 9: Issues of Substance Abuse and Related Crime in Adolescence Flashcards
Canada is a source for both…
Marijuana and designer drugs.
Where are many of Canada’s intravenous drug users located?
In Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Substance Abuse
Excessive, unhealthy use of a substance such as alcohol, tobacco, or illicit drugs.
Why do governments try to decrease drug use?
Drugs may be detrimental to a young person’s future. It is better to prevent use rather than reducing future harms or social costs.
What institutions are strained because of drug use?
Productivity (business), enforcement and criminal justice, health care, and social-welfare.
What is Canada’s strategy to reduce drug use, introduced in 2007?
National Anti-Drug Strategy.
For most drug categories, use is ___.
Decreasing.
Substance use ___ with age during adolescence.
Increases.
What was alcohol originally used for?
Nutrition, medicine, relaxation, pleasure, and religious worship.
What is the most common drug used by youth?
Alcohol.
What is the minimum age to purchase and consume alcohol?
19 in all provinces except Alberta, Manitoba, and Quebec (18).
Alcohol acts as a ___ ___ ___.
Nervous system depressant.
What makes alcohol desirable?
- Increases sociability.
2. Misperceptions about alcohol consumption of peers.
Symptoms of alcohol abuse.
Loss of balance, delayed reactions, impaired vision and other senses, confusion, impaired memory, dizziness, vomiting, and unconsciousness.
Those who smoke often begin in ___ ___.
Early adolescence.
What is the minimum age for purchasing or smoking tobacco?
18 or 19.
What is the stimulant drug within tobacco?
Nicotine.
Is illicit drug use common within the general youth population in Canada?
Outside of marijuana, no.
Marijuana is also referred to as a ___ ___.
Gateway drug.
Alternate names for marijuana.
Dope, grass, pot, or weed.
Alternate names for cocaine.
Rock, snow, C, or coke.
Alternate names for heroin.
Junk, smack, H, or horse.
Examples of inhalants.
Gasoline, solvents, aerosol sprays, commercially available gases and nitrites.
Alternate names for amphetamines.
Crank, jib, ice, crystal meth, or meth.
Alternate name for amphetamines.
Speed.
Examples and alternate names for club drugs.
Ecstasy, ketamine, and GHB. MDMA, X, XTC, or hug drug.
Polysubstance Use
Using a combination of two or more substances concomitantly.
What is a possible explanation of high rates of marijuana use with regards to reporting?
Can be more often reported as a result of controversy surrounding the legality of the issue.
True or false? There is greater experimentation in adolescence and this carries into adulthood.
False, many illicit drug using youth abstain later in adulthood.
What is the selection bias challenge when measuring adolescent drug use?
It is easy to survey adolescents still in school, but difficult to survey street-involved youth.
Social Desirability Effects
Biases in research caused by respondents’ desire to provide what they feel is the socially acceptable response or ‘what the researcher wants to hear.’
Street-Involved Youth
A heterogeneous population of youth between ages 12 and 24 who lack adequate shelter and are considered to live outside the mainstream youth population.
List the 3 reasons adolescents use drugs:
- For pleasure.
- As a result of peer pressure.
- As a means of coping.
While lack of pro-social alternatives can lead to drug use, so can the tendency to seek ___.
Pleasure.
Inaccurate perceptions adolescents hold with regards to the prevalence and regularity of their ___ drug and alcohol use is an important component of peer pressure.
Peers’.
When peer pressured because they feel drug use is normative, many adolescents may view drug use as…
A social development milestone or a rite of passage.
Do individual or social factors alone cause substance abuse?
No. It is an interplay of those two factors.
Using substances as a means of coping is less prevalent than the other two reasons. However, it has been suggested that it can ___ the other two reasons.
Follow.
Method of Administration
The path by which a drug or other substance is brought into contact with the body. Common methods include smoking, ingestion, injection, and intranasal inhalation.
What is the most serious consequence of substance abuse?
Death.
Binge Drinking
Heavy alcohol consumption over a short period of time for the purpose of becoming intoxicated. Generally, the concept is operationalized as the consumption of five or more drinks on one occasion (four or more for females).
What are some effects of heavy alcohol use?
Reduced attention and executive functions.
What are the effects of marijuana use?
Memory detriments.
What causes psychosis?
Stimulants (cocaine, amphetamines, methamphetamines).
Psychosis
A symptom of mental illness involving a substantial alteration to an individual’s personality and a loss of contact with objective reality.
Co-Morbidity
Two or more independent and coexisting medical conditions.
Substance abuse is often co-morbid with ___ ___ issues.
Mental health.
Dependence
When an individual feels that use of a substance is necessary for normal daily functioning or when substance use leads to tolerance. Abruptly stopping use may lead to symptoms of withdrawal.
Stigma
A behaviour or attribute that causes an individual to be discredited, rejected socially, or negatively stereotyped.
Does drugs cause crime or does crime cause drugs?
There are underlying factors that cause both.
Tripartite Drug-Crime Model by Goldstein (1985):
Drug causes crime through:
- Psychopharmacological.
- Economic compulsive.
- Systemic.
Psychopharmacological cause of drugs causing crime.
Intoxicating effect changes behaviour and causes rule breaking.
Economic compulsive cause of drugs causing crime.
Drug users commit crime in order to obtain the money ro support expensive drug use.
Systemic cause of drugs causing crime.
Nature of drug market requires those involved to commit crime to protect territory, maintain supply, and retrieve debts.
What are common crimes committed by adolescents?
Property damage, public disorder, violent offences, shoplifting and other thefts, and driving offences.
DRE Evaluation
Drug Recognition Expert Evaluation. A standardized procedure performed by a trained drug recognition expert – involving visual cues, vital signs, questioning, and the provision of bodily fluids by the potentially impaired driver – that is used for determining impairment by drugs or a drug in combination with alcohol.
Drugs can lead to higher rates of committing crimes, but can also lead to higher rates of ___.
Victimization.
Proactive Police Work
Enforcement activities that are police initiated, rather than in response to a call for service.
Sitters
Individuals who are paid to tend to and protect the plants in a marijuana growing operation. Sitters may also appear to legitimately occupy a residence to avoid suspicion.
What is an ideal setting to guarantee all children receive intended message of substance abuse prevention programs?
Schools.
DARE
Drug Abuse Resistance Education.
What are the most effective type of school-based substance abuse programs?
Skill-based, where youth are taught resistance skills and learn about the social influences of substance use while receiving other life-skills training.
What are the least effective school-based substance abuse programs?
Programs that focus purely on information and knowledge about the harms of drugs.
Fear-Based Communication
Messages used to frighten youth away from experimentation with substances by emphasizing the potential negative effects of use.
Harm-Reduction Strategies
Any policies or programs that are designed to reduce the level of harm associated with substance use and abuse without requiring the cessation of use.
Is fear-based communication effective?
No.
Why isn’t fear-based communication effective?
When the worst case scenario does not happen, the message bearer loses credibility.
