Cocaine Addiction Research Papers

Cocaine addiction is a growing issue in the youth population because “the use of alcohol and illicit drugs typically begins during adolescence. For most, this use is experimental or occasional, but a substantial minority will experience harm to their current or subsequent health, or threaten the well-being of others” (Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, 2007, p. 3), thus alarming a future of inevitable adversities in abstaining from drugs. Cocaine is a popular drug that continues to make its popularity through the years of our youth and all the way up to adulthood. Cocaine is derived from the leaves of a coca plant that’s found in South America. From a historical context, according to Norton, Bonin, Weinrath & Canada's Drug Strategy (2000)
3). This being said, teenagers are easily influenced to try drugs by their environment. Once initiated, many become dependent on the drug as a way to cope with their overwhelming situations. The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (2007) suggests prominent justifications for drug use surrounding the theme of dealing with psychological conditions, untreated trauma, self-medicating to cope with toxic environment and to fit within their desired peer groups. Cocaine can produce chemical and physicals changes to the brain, “ making it harder to act on the desire to quit” (The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, 2007, p. 3) and as adolescent’s brains are still developing, it can produce harmful long-term effects on that individual that could have easily been averted if interventions and education were deliberated prior to the youth as preventive measures. Cocaine abuse is serious because it can lead to the initiation of other much far harmful drugs and even, mixing drugs together once tolerance has developed from explicit usage, consequently concluding in an overdose and major withdrawal from