Heroin Essays (1023 words) - Psychiatric Diagnosis, Substance Abuse

Every year since 1975 researchers from the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, in conjunction with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), have conducted the Monitoring the Future survey. The survey asks eighth-, tenth-, and twelfth-grade students whether they have ever used alcohol, tobacco, or drugs and whether they currently abuse these substances. Recent results of the yearly survey show that after declining throughout the 1980s, drug use among teenagers has increased during the 1990s. The survey also reveals that alcohol and tobacco abuse have remained unacceptably high. This state of affairs prompted Health and Human Services secretary Donna Shalala to declare that the entire nineties generation of high school students is at risk for addiction and dependence on drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. Concerned that a number of today?s teens will become drug dependent, many public health officials recommend further study of the causes of teen addiction and the influences on teenagers? use of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. Teenagers and experts cite a variety of causes of substance abuse and addiction among young people. One of the causes of teenage addiction most commonly cited by health specialists is the tendency of young people to underestimate the risk of dependence associated with drug experimentation. According to these experts, teenagers on the verge of adulthood are naturally prone to engage in risky behavior. Smoking, drinking, and drug use may seem ?adult? to youths who are not mature enough to understand that such behavior poses a threat to their health and well-being, argue the specialists. Many teenagers discover the risks of substance use only after suffering the adverse effects of addiction. Leah, a sixteen-year-old smoker from Washington, D.C., says she did not understand the dangers when she began smoking. She expresses an attitude typical among teens, saying, ?When I first started [smoking] I figured, okay, one cigarette is not going to hurt me.? Leah admits that she is now addicted, and she confesses that she has tried to quit several times but has been unable to do so. Compounding teenagers? underestimation of the danger of addiction, according to Lloyd D. Johnston, director of the Monitoring the Future survey, many of today?s teens have not been educated about the risks of drugs and addiction. Looking at the survey results over the years, Johnston notes that the decline in drug use during the 1980s coincided with a public health campaign that taught teenagers to ?Just Say No? to drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. The demise of that campaign, Johnston contends, is partly responsible for the rising rate of teen substance abuse in the 1990s. He argues that today?s teenagers underestimate the dangers of addiction because they have not received drug resistance lessons in schools, seen antidrug commercials on television, or heard warnings against drug use from parents, community leaders, and peers the way young people in the 1980s did. ?Teens from a decade ago knew more about drugs,? he asserts. Johnston predicts that teenage drug abuse and addiction rates wi ll continue to rise in the absence of effective antidrug messages. Many public health experts maintain that the risk of addiction is overwhelmingly strong for adolescents and teenagers who experiment with what are called ?gateway drugscigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. According to a 1994 report by the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University in New York City, twelve- to seventeen-year-olds who smoke or drink are very likely to try marijuana. Furthermore, the report?s authors assert, the younger children are when they begin to smoke, drink, and experiment with pot, the likelier they are to move on to abuse of cocaine, heroin, and hallucinogens. CASA contends that the recent rise in drug use measured by several national surveys, including the Monitoring the Future survey, portends a future of heavy drug use and likely addiction for many of today?s teens. The center?s report concludes, ?The more often an individual uses any gateway drug . . . the likelier that individual is to become a regular adult user and addict.? Amon g those who might agree with CASA?s view is Sabrina F. Hall, a teenager who is a self-described addict and a member of a twelve-step group. Writing in Newsweek, she states, ?There?s no doubt

Learn More About Inventer Thomas Elkins

Learn More About Inventer Thomas Elkins Dr. Thomas Elkins, an African-American inventor, was a pharmacist and respected member of the Albany community. An abolitionist, Elkins was the secretary of the Vigilance Committee. As the 1830s drew to a close and the decade of the 1840s began, committees of citizens were formed all across the north with the intention of protecting fugitive slaves from re-enslavement. As slave catchers sought fugitives vigilance committees provided legal assistance, food, clothing, money, sometimes employment, temporary shelter and assisted fugitives in making their way toward freedom. Albany had a vigilance committee in the early 1840s and into the 1850s. Thomas Elkins - Patents and Inventions An improved  refrigerator  design was patented by Elkins on November 4, 1879. He designed the device to help people have a way of preserving perishable foods. At that time, the common way of keeping food cold was to place items in a large container and surround them with large blocks of ice. Unfortunately, the ice generally melted very quickly and the food soon perished. One unusual fact about Elkins refrigerator was that it was also designed to chill human corpses. An improved chamber commode (toilet) was patented by Elkins on January 9, 1872. Elkins commode was a combination bureau, mirror, book-rack, washstand, table, easy chair, and chamber stool. It was a very unusual piece of furniture. On February 22, 1870, Elkins invented a combined dining, ironing table, and quilting frame. The Refrigerator Elkins patent was for an insulated cabinet into which ice is placed to cool the interior. As such, it was a refrigerator only in the old sense of the term, which included non-mechanical coolers. Elkins acknowledged in his patent that, I am aware that chilling substances enclosed within a porous box or jar  by wetting its outer surface is an old and well-known process.   Unique Folding Table A patent was also issued to Elkins on February 22, 1870, for a Dining, Ironing Table and Quilting Frame Combined (No. 100,020). The table seems to be little more than a folding table. The Commode The Minoans of Crete are said to have invented a flush toilet thousands of years ago; however, there is probably no direct ancestral relationship between it and the modern one that evolved primarily in England starting in the late 16th century, when Sir John Harrington devised a flushing device for his godmother Queen Elizabeth. In 1775, Alexander Cummings patented a toilet in which some water remained after each flush, thereby suppressing odors from below. The water closet continued to evolve, and in 1885, Thomas Twyford provided us with a single-piece ceramic toilet similar to the one we know today. In 1872, a U.S. patent was issued to Elkins for a new article of chamber furniture which he designated a Chamber Commode (Patent No. 122,518). It provided a combination of a bureau, mirror, book-rack, washstand, table, easy chair, and earth-closet or chamber-stool, which might otherwise be constructed as several separate articles.