Drug Abuse in Kazakhstan :: Drug Abuse, Substance Abuse

Today the problem of drug abuse is the most serious and severe problem not only in Kazakhstan but throughout the world. The current problem is very acute in Kazakhstan. There are 49, 984 registered drug addicted people, and among them the amount of children is 3, 071 (Over 3 thousand drug addicted kids are registered in Kazakhstan, 2011). Drug addiction is considered a disease, and it is in fact spreads like a virus among children. The danger from drugs is too great to ignore. Although the problem of drugs may seem impossible to avoid, we still can prevent this problem throughout society by taking some powerful and effective actions. People are supposed to help youth drug abusers kick the habit and abolish it as soon as possible in order to ensure the healthy growth of youth and social stability. Today more and more teenagers in Kazakhstan are victims of drug abuse and government should take urgent actions to improve this situation by providing drug education program, making effecti ve laws to stop drug dealers, and creating more medical centers. According to the poll conducted among Kazakh schoolchildren in 2006, 12 percent of junior pupils have used drugs once in their life, 2-5 percent of schoolchildren regularly use drugs. On the whole, the Kazakh teenagers use â€Å"light† drugs like marijuana. Only in the first six months of 2007, 986 adolescents using drugs were registered versus 464 for the whole 2006. (Girfanov,2007). The first reason of the drug abuse among teenagers might be changes in family circumstance. It can include parents’ lack of supervision. As Thompson (n.d.) states, lack of family supervision over the child can be a cause of his/her drug abuse, meaning that if parents do not have proper discipline, the child can be exposed to drug usage. Also, Singha (2010) states that if parents give children an opportunity to do whatever they want especially in such critical teen age, it will result that teenagers will do whatever they want and will wrongly construct the personality. Another reason for drug abuse among teenagers is loneliness or depression. According to Singha (2010), such factors as pressures from the peers, family problems, education pressure and first-love relationships can encourage teenagers to start using drug. This phenomenon is self-explanatory, because in such vulnerable age everything is perceived so sensitively.