Diverse groups of children undergoing adolescents experience several changes in their physical, mental, and social developments. These changes young people experience may affect their health and well-being for the rest of their lives. Therefore, adolescent’s investments on health and well-being of children are interventions, which might have significant impacts on a child’s development. Besides, such investments are usually accompanied by social and economic benefits, which amounts to ten times more than they cost (World Health Organization, 2018). However, in many countries, adolescent issues remain neglected. It is a life period that children are exposed to health-related risks, which might affect them for the rest of their lives. Therefore, this paper seeks to discuss advocacy actions related to adolescent issues.
Adolescent Drinking/Drug Use
There are critical concerns regarding the increasing population of adults who experience addiction to drinking and drug abuse. Addiction is a critical chronic disease that affects the brain and other negative consequences. Despite a ban on the sale of alcohol to adolescents, many countries grapple with the challenge of its increased use among this group of the population. Many parents have neglected adolescent children, which has resulted in risky behaviours such as drinking. In almost every country, harmful drinking has become common among youths who are aged between 12 years to 18 years. Drinking makes children lose control of themselves. It may result in unsafe sex, dangerous driving, and crime. Also, drinking among adolescent is the primary cause of injuries, for instance, road accidents, which are often fatal or can leave one with a disability (World Health Organization, 2018). Alcohol can lead to violence between partners. A drunk youth can easily lose his or her self-control and become violent with his or her partner. Some violence among youths is fatal, leading to the death of an individual. Therefore, there is a need for advocacy to help youths stop alcohol and drug use since substance abuse has consequences such as imprisonment and poor performance in class.
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According to a recent study done in the U.S, at least one in ten adolescents in Latin American countries use drugs. In Latin America, children between 13years to 17years use drugs and alcohol. The study revealed that in the U.S, at least one in five children in grades nine to 12 are using marijuana. Also, the consumption of tobacco among youths in the U.S and Latin American countries is proven to be more than 40% among youths (Schraufnagel, 2015). Canada, on the other hand, has been reported to have a low number of youths using drugs. A current study showed that only 5% of children in Canada have tried smoking at 11 years. However, in Canada, children between 12 years to 14 years have 16% of the boys and 18% of the girls using alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana (Hopfer, 2014). Therefore, this paper discusses how to advocate for youth using harmful legal substances and actions that can be used to support youths.
Advocacy Actions
The plan for this advocacy is to present a community-based prevention intervention. It will reduce drug and alcohol use among youths and strategizing potentials to stop youths from using legal products to get drunk. Many youths find themselves in criminal activities resulting from substance abuse. Therefore, by the end of the advocacy, there should be a reduced substance abuse among youths, which is the primary aim of advocacy. Besides, as a result of this advocacy, one should learn the effects of substance abuse (Sussman, Arriaza, & Grigsby, 2014). Also, understand rules and regulations concerning substance abuse, anti-drug norms, and social influence.
Further, the advocacy plan will be based on certain evidence-based prevention aspects. They are combined to create an intense community prevention intervention discouraging youths from using harmful legal products such as marijuana, cocaine, tobacco, and alcohol. Therefore, the advocacy strategies, which will be used, include community mobilization, environmental strategies, and school-based prevention education. However, this essay will discuss two advocacy actions, which include community mobilization and school-based prevention education.
Community Mobilization
Community mobilization action is designed to create community awareness and involve communities in actions, which will reduce substance abuse among youths. Communities must actively participate in mobilization to benefit from the prevention approaches. Successful community mobilization has to undergo the following steps: assessing community readiness, forming a base, creating a plan for action, implementing the plan, seeking results and sustaining the effort (Allen et al., 2014). Community readiness assessment focuses on the community preparation for stopping the use of legal substances, which include smoking and drinking alcohol among youths. Also, forming a base is significant since it will comprise of agencies, leaders, and laws addressing health and social problems caused by alcohol and drug use.
Creating a plan of action should develop a concrete strategy. For instance, media advocacy is a significant plan to motivate policymakers, police, and parents among other community members to be involved in the prevention interventions within the community. Besides, engaging youths in such programs will assist in advocacy. Seeking the result involves evaluation, which is an essential aspect to mobilization and determining whether there is a change among the youths who use drugs. Besides, sharing results with the key community leaders, such as law enforcement officers is essential to the sustainability plan. Additionally, positive results depict that there is a reduced use of harmful legal products among youths will motivate local leaders. It results in advocacy sustainability.
Lesson learned in the community mobilization action is that in some communities, the advocacy action might not work, for instance, in communities where the problem is not acknowledged. Some communities do not view drug consumption among youths as a problem; thus, they feel nothing should be done. However, a post result proved that in many societies, the strategy work and has helped in reducing alcohol and drug abuse among youths. Therefore, advocating for change in adolescents who use drugs can be produced through community mobilization. All community leaders and policymakers, therefore, must be made aware of the action to ensure the success of advocacy, which is the primary objective to accomplish.
Education Prevention Intervention
School-based programs strategy for reducing drug use among youths has history. Cognitive-behavioral skills often improve through life skills training. It decreases the motivation to use legal substances among youths. It decreases the vulnerability to environmental influences promoting drug use among adolescents (Miller-Day et al., 2014). Besides, the availability of harmful substances is reduced, and the youth’s cognitive behavioural skills might be increased; thus, the adolescent’s drug consumption will decrease. When alcohol and substance abuse decrease among youths, there will be a decrease in negative activities and illegal activities, leading to death, depression, or imprisonment. Notably, youths will experience a change in academics, and they will probably experience a positive change in class.
Further, prevention education is concerned with reducing substance abuse; for instance, reducing youths desire to acquire harmful legal products. Moreover, school-based education reveals information concerned with the risk of drug abuse among youths, and social influence to inhaling or using harmful legal products. Life skills are taught to adolescents to prepare them adequately for resisting social influence, which might lead them to alcohol and substance abuse. The method of teaching life skills to youths is through combining didactic techniques such as demonstration and behavioural homework tests.
Similarly, a personal intervention program can be developed from life skill training for the rural population in America. The program was started to address the risks of substance abuse among youths and to create protective ideas in the pre-adolescents. At adolescents, children are often driven by emotions and attitudes. Therefore, there is the need to formulate such pre-adolescent protective risk factors to help in reducing or stopping drug use among youths (Hawkins, & Weis, 2017). Risk factors addressed in the program include social influence, which may result from peer pressure. Other risk factors are interpersonal factors such as poor communication and intrapersonal factors, which may be low self-esteem or inability to make decisions.
Lesson learned from prevention education action is that learning life skills is significant to children and should be taught in pre-adolescent. Besides, it is a significant method for advocacy. School-based programs will enable children to acquire the life skills necessary to protect them from social influence. In America, for instance, many children get involved in alcohol and substance abuse through peer influence. Some of the youths cannot make proper decisions; thus, they are easily convinced by their peers to use harmful legal products. Therefore, accomplishing the objective of prevention education action, youths must be made aware of substance abuse consequences.
Conclusively, to fight youth’s involvement in alcohol and drug use, governments and organisations need to advocate for community prevention intervention. These interventions must advocate for community mobilisation and classroom education discouraging children from using harmful legal substances. The community prevention intervention is an advocacy action used to improve community involvement and increase implementation of social strategies reducing the availability of alcohol and drugs used by youths. Besides, advocating for reduction and increase student’s cognitive and behavioural life skills will decrease alcohol and drug use among youths; thus, it will reduce children involvement in illegal activities.
References
Allen, J., Mohatt, G. V., Beehler, S., & Rowe, H. L. (2014). People awakening: Collaborative research to develop cultural strategies for prevention in community intervention. American journal of community psychology , 54 (1-2), 100-111.
Hawkins, J. D., & Weis, J. G. (2017). The social development model: An integrated approach to delinquency prevention. In Developmental and Life-course Criminological Theories (pp. 3-27). Routledge.
Hopfer, C. (2014). Implications of marijuana legalisation for adolescent substance use. Substance Abuse, 35 (4), 331-335.
Miller-Day, M. A., Alberts, J., Hecht, M. L., Trost, M. R., & Krizek, R. L. (2014). Adolescent relationships and drug use . Psychology Press.
Schraufnagel, D. E. (2015). Electronic cigarettes: vulnerability of youth. Pediatric allergy, immunology, and pulmonology , 28 (1), 2-6.
Sussman, S., Arriaza, B., & Grigsby, T. J. (2014). Alcohol, tobacco, and other drug misuse prevention and cessation programming for alternative high school youth: a review. Journal of school health , 84 (11), 748-758.
World Health Organization. (2016). Strengthening intersectoral collaboration for adolescent health (No. SEA-CAH-22). World Health Organization.
World Health Organization. (2018). Adolescent and Youth Regional Strategy and Plan of action : Retrieved from http://www1.paho.org/hq/dmdocuments/2011/Adolescent%20and%20Youth%20Regional%20Strategy%20and%20Plan%20of%20Action.pdf
World Health Organization. (2018). Advocating for Change for Adolescents: Retrieved from https://www.who.int/pmnch/knowledge/publications/advocacy_toolkit.pdf
