The Anti-Drug Abuse Campaign - Essay Example

"The Anti-Drug Abuse Campaign" is a wonderful example of a paper on the addiction.

The goal of this campaign is to promote the elimination of drug and substance abuse among the youths in order to ensure safety, health as well as their quality of life.

Background Information

In the year 2009, a study was conducted in the United Kingdom that depicted that approximately 22 million people in the UK were facing societal challenges resulting from drug and substance abuse. The study also indicated that about 95% of this group was unaware of the challenges they faced from the use of drugs (Ghodse 2009). However, a small percentage of those who recognized that they faced drug use challenges made efforts to create solutions but were not successful.

  The rationale of the Campaign

            Justification

The use of drugs and substance abuse has a major negative effect in modern society; specifically, it affects families, individuals, communities which directly impacts economic development. The problems associated with drugs and substance abuse are cumulative in nature as they lead to other more extreme dangerous health problems for instance: HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnancies, criminal activities, suicide as well as domestic violence (Times of India 2012).

This campaign will focus on creating awareness among the Youths age 18-25 years; this age group forms the foundation of the future generation and studies have shown that they are the most affected by drugs and substance abuse.

Current Campaign Practices

Various organizations and institutions have made different efforts to curb this menace in the current society; however, their efforts have not been adequately successful, hence creating the need to create more solutions. This is what has been my drive to create this campaign, which I believe will bring a major change in our society (Healthy People 2011).

The most applied technique is awareness creation on various media channels such as radios, television programs as well as internet sources. Despite these efforts, drug and substance abuse challenges have been on the rise for the last four decades (Healthy People 2011).

However certain measures have shown success in the reduction of drug and substance abuse among the youths. One of the successful measures that have been taken is the use of punitive measures implemented by the law (Healthy People 2011).

Planning Process

Health Issue Targeted

This campaign focuses on creating awareness among the youths on the negative effects of using drug and substance abuse.

Methods of Communication Applied

Various means of communication are usually employed to ensure that the information is properly received and taken into consideration. There will be various volunteers who will assist in disseminating the information to the public, specifically, the youth. This information will be disseminated by use of flyers that will contain summarized information containing the negative impacts of drug and substance abuse, pictures of affected body parts as well as the reasons why the youths should stop using drugs. The information contained in the leaflets will be used as a form of encouragement to inform the youth that they have the power to stop drug and substance abuse among themselves.

      Target Areas

The flyers will be distributed randomly in public places such as Shopping Malls, streets, public parks, public resting places like areas with ‘frustration benches’, stadiums, airports, and bus terminals.

                                                      Expected Outcomes

The main expectation of this awareness program will be an enhanced knowledge of the negative effects of drug and substance abuse in society. Additionally, it is expected that there will be reduced negative health effects resulting from drug and substance abuse hence improved economic development.

   Implementation and Evaluation

These activities will be conducted simultaneously; the awareness will be implemented after gathering adequate resources ranging from financial to human resources. At the same time evaluation will be conducted to determine areas of weakness or challenges that may hinder the success of the campaign.

At the end of the campaign evaluation studies will be conducted to determine the efficacy of the campaign in reducing reduce health hazards related to drug and substance abuse. These studies will be conducted by the use of interviews that shall be conducted in major health institutions, the local communities as well as in rehabilitation centers. Consequently, the study will also assist in the determination of whether the campaign was a success or not and the formulation of solutions to future awareness programs.

                             Critique of the Resource Used

One of the probable challenges that the campaign may face is the fact that most people tend to ignore or dismiss the information contained on the fliers as a result of their simple appearance. Moreover, Flyers may not have a long term advantage over the targeted group; studies have shown that the average attention people tend to give to the flyers is forty seconds.

However, our main intention is to create awareness among the youth that the habit of using drugs and other substances is actually dangerous to their health and to the overall society. In as much as most campaigns have been done to create such awareness, I believe that this campaign will also have significant effects among our youths. It will also act as a reminder to the youths that drugs and substance abuse is dangerous.