DRUG ABUSE
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According to a drug prevention site called http://www.drugfreeworld.org, it discuses why people actually take drugs. The author tells us that people usually take drugs because they want to change something about their life. Drug users tend to use drugs for a numerous amount of reasons. Some include to experiment, to feel cool, to fit in, to relieve boredom, to escape, to rebel, and to relax. It's almost as if it looks like people use drugs for the same reason why people eat junk food. The answer to that would be that people use drugs as a form of pleasure, it makes them feel good once they tried to so they don't want to stop because to them it's so good, just like junk food to many other people. The purpose of this website is to tell the audience the truth about drugs, any kind of drug from marijuana to heroin. The website even has its own phone number that you can call to get further information on a specific drug or even if you have a question about anything. The website provides two different telephone numbers, one of them is specifically for the United States and the other number is an international number. This website also has an interesting logo. The logo is shaped as a globe, with two stick figures inside of the globe holding hands. The stick figures represent a drug-free world foundation and the colors are green, white, blue, and black just as it matches with the rest of the entire website itself.
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On the other hand, there are also many problems involving the abuse of over the counter drugs, so it's not just illicit drugs. As stated in a news article called "Psychological factors associated with over-the-counter drug abuse among youth", male, Hispanic, high school students, or an employed student has the highest risk for OTC drug abuse. The authors also stated that those who had antisocial problems were also at a high risk for abusing OTC drugs. Also, the journal article states that out of 55,000 students among grades
7-12, more than seven percent of those teenagers have or still do abuse OTC drugs. (King; Vidourek; Merianos. 68) |
First Digital Justice Resource - D.A.R.E.
Since there are many problems with teenagers abusing drugs, I have the perfect proposal for my first digital justice program, which is called D.A.R.E. Dare is called Drug Abuse Resistance Education and its purpose is to resist drugs and violence. Dare is a page on Facebook and they even have their own website called http://www.dare.org/. This program helps students that join, prevent the use of drugs and students will work with local police officers for ten weeks. They will learn all about the dangers of drug use and sign a pledge not to use drugs.
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This digital justice program is the strongest to me because it focuses on mainly teenagers that have done drugs in the past and people usually start abusing drugs in the teenage years of life. One personal reason why I chose this program specifically is because I was driving behind this car a couple of months ago and I noticed a sticker on the back of that car. The sticker said “I am a proud parent of a D.A.R.E student” and I never knew what D.A.R.E even meant. Now that I'm using this same program for my personal use, I'm glad I learned more about it because D.A.R.E looks very successful.
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D.A.R.E. does try to recruit volunteers for a project which is to recruit people to join the program. The recruiters will be local police officers in their certain districts whenever the D.A.R.E. program is trying to get people to sign up. The logo for D.A.R.E. which is the image above, has a black background with white and red words. This works with the website itself because the dark colors come out into effect that sets the mood across to the audience. The authors are talking to teenagers specifically, but also to other people that want to start to change their life by signing up to D.A.R.E. The authors are also trying to reach the parents of a teenager that has a drug addiction problem. These type of parents are those who are most likely to use the official D.A.R.E. website because they would want future and present updates on news that can help their children overcome a problem!
The audience for D.A.R.E. is specifically towards parents, teenagers, school teachers, guidance councilors who can help, and for drug users who want to change. D.A.R.E. is the best thing to look at if a drug user is trying to change their ways. Logos is used rhetorically here as the D.A.R.E. program is acting as a form of logic to a person, it's like a wake-up call.
Second Digital Justice Resource - YouTube
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My second digital program is different than D.A.R.E because it shows a virtual video about drug prevention. YouTube is a very helpful resource since it practically fights for the same exact cause as D.A.R.E, which is to help prevent the use of drugs. In the YouTube video about drug prevention, the title is called “They Lied!” Looking into this video, it shows many various and different scenarios about teenagers specifically, abusing a different type of drug. This video, which can be accessed from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrcOVpAKsUg, takes us through how the specific teenager feels while using each drug. Each teenager uses a different drug, for example one smoked crack, the other shot up heroin. At the end of each teenager's part, they all said the same lines which was “they said if I did drugs with them, all of my problems would be solved. So, I did... They Lied!” This digital program is warning anyone looking to do drugs for pleasure and for fun, to stop before they even think about it. After watching the teenagers act on the drugs that were used, I'm sure that no one in their right mind would ever consider using a drug ever again. |
This video has a rhetorical effect as the purpose of the video works the same way as D.A.R.E, it is trying to prevent drug abuse. The abusers are informing us about the set of issues going on in their life at the moment. As the video goes on, the background effects represent the moods of how the drug abusers actually feel and what they're seeing. During the teenager that took the LSD, the background effects shows a constant circle moving that is acting as a way to confuse the audience to show that the young adult that took the LSD is unhealthy and currently disabled. I personally like this digital justice resource because it's a video of visuals that help me understand the meaning of the purpose, rather than just a plain text of words that would put me to sleep.
The audience for YouTube on this drug prevention video is specifically towards teenagers the most because they're the people who are more vulnerable to believe anything that someone tells them, especially if someone tells a teenager to try a drug because "all the cool kids are doing it." This video is a warning for teenagers and anyone else who is thinking about trying any drug, after watching this they will definitely think twice. Pathos is used here because the audience of this video feels sympathetic for these teenagers and how they have turned out after abusing these different kinds of illicit drugs.
Third Digital Justice Resource - Facebook
My final digital resource is Facebook and it's a picture of a previous drug users' personal Facebook page. The man is from Israel and fortunately, he was recently recovered from drug abuse. His name is Adam Barak and he purposely split up his personal page for the public to see how he as
changed in a good way. The left side of the photo shows a picture of Adam when he was abusing drugs within a twelve month time frame. He had scars all over his face, scratch marks, and even blisters. Another picture on the left side of Adam's personal profile shows him as a homeless man sleeping outside, next to a car in a sleeping bag. On the other hand, the entire right side of Adam's page shows him one year after he stopped abusing drugs which was his recovery. In the top right of his profile, his face is completely cleared up and he looks like a healthy, normal, everyday hard working man. In the bottom picture, it shows Adam in bed stretching his arms, he looks healthy, and his hair is neat unlike the photo from when Adam was acting as a homeless man. To see more about Adam, please visit http://www.facebook.com/user/adambarak. |
This page is effective for a numerous amount of reasons. The main reason is that it acts as a purpose which is to prevent drug abuse. This page would reach out to the current drug users to show them that they change too just like Adam here did. This page is prodigiously effective because it communicates its purposes without hardly using any words on it at all, just visuals. It's amazing how the audience can understand that the page is about drug prevention just by looking at a before and after picture.
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Personally I like this page the most because of how the purpose is shown: no words, no complications, all in plain view sight from recovery pictures. Even Adam's profile picture (default) represents half a man on one side of darkness and half a man on the other of lightness. The bright side would represent a recovery stage showing light, whereas the darkness shows him struggling in the past just waiting to do some drugs. Lastly, this page would seek attention of the less educated because the majority only deals with visuals.
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Since Facebook is an extremely popular social site that one in six people who today, this audience is towards a ten year old child all the way up to a ninety year old. This specific page on Adam's downfall and recovery is a warning not to use drugs because you can end up looking similar to him. On the other hand, as a last resort, the audience here can be a current drug abuser because after seeing Adam's recovery it may give that person the confidence to change today just like Adam did. Ethos is used here because Adam's page is acting as a convincing way for the audience that he's credible and worth listening to because Adam changed and so can someone else as they can be persuaded.
TIME TO WRAP IT UP..
In conclusion, all of these digital justice programs fight for the same cause which is to prevent users from continuing to abuse drugs. If anyone knows anyone that uses drugs, maybe the D.A.R.E program can be a strong resource that someone can show that person. I argue that anyone can change starting today, just like Adam did. Drugs was and will never be a good thing because it completely causes your brain to malfunction in a way where a user will become less alert day by day.
Bibliography
http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ez.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=bcc7af06-fe53-4b81-a90d-ca95c358ef03%40sessionmgr110&vid=3&hid=104
King, K. A., Vidourek, R. A., & Merianos, A. L. (2013). PSYCHOSOCIAL FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH OVER-THE-COUNTER DRUG ABUSE AMONG YOUTH. American Journal Of Health Studies, 28(2), 68-76.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrcOVpAKsUg
http://www.dare.org/
http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/drugs/why-do-people-take-drugs.html
http://www.facebook.com/user/adambarak
http://www.puresilvabannermaker.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr8jknZEZXQ
King, K. A., Vidourek, R. A., & Merianos, A. L. (2013). PSYCHOSOCIAL FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH OVER-THE-COUNTER DRUG ABUSE AMONG YOUTH. American Journal Of Health Studies, 28(2), 68-76.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrcOVpAKsUg
http://www.dare.org/
http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/drugs/why-do-people-take-drugs.html
http://www.facebook.com/user/adambarak
http://www.puresilvabannermaker.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr8jknZEZXQ