This is a paper about Drug Abuse as a contributing factor to Social Deviance in Canada. Includes a full bibliography.

Essay by SkyLynxUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, November 2002

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The topic of this paper is "Drug Abuse amongst teens in Canada", this paper will attempt to discover and reveal the reasons why teenager in Canada abuse drugs. Theoretical examples will be incorporated into a sociological framework of theories that will attempt to provide an insight into the reasons behind "Drug abuse amongst teens in Canada". For the sake of simplicity and for the sake of the reader, the definition of "drug-abuse" will remain constant and simple. Drug-abuse is the abuse of an illegal drug that is frequently used. This paper will not talk about coffee or cigarettes and it will not debate the issue of occasional use as abuse of a drug.

On page 327 in the textbook, there is an example of drug-abuse amongst teens in Atlantic Canada. The pseudo-article describes a study where the use of drugs amongst these teens is on the rise. They attribute the rise to several things, however the most important issues that are mentioned are "peer-pressure" and the lack of educational programs that fall into the gray-area of adolescents.

Everyone is aware of what peer-pressure is, people feel compelled to join in the illicit behavior of their peers simply for the sake of fitting in and belonging to that group. The gray area of teens is a different matter. Most people can make the distinction between teens that don't do drugs at all and those that are hardcore users of drugs. That's where the gray area comes into play, those teens that might be prone to experimentation, but are not heavy users right now. They could be abstainers, occasional users or they might become heavy users if they are not educated right away. What the article in the textbook stresses is a new form of education regarding drugs, one that...