Legal Prescription Abuse

Illicit and legal prescription abuse is an ongoing problem in the United States and it affects millions of people across the country. Many research studies have been conducted on the number of individuals who abuse illegal and legal drugs, from various cultures and social economic backgrounds, but much of the research has been found to be bias, stating it mostly affects minority groups and low income families. Substance abuse whether it’s used illegally or through prescribed medications from a person’s physician affects individuals across his or her lifespan starting in the utero. Drug abuse affects everyone pregnant women and un-pregnant women across the world as well as men and children. It does not matter what geographical area a person
“Based on the self-report data from this national sample of 2,613 women who delivered babies in 52 urban and rural hospitals during 1992” (Mathias, 1995). Based on the data, an “estimated 221,000 women who gave birth in 1992 used illicit drugs while they were pregnant” (Mathias, 1995). “Marijuana and cocaine were the most frequently used illicit drugs--2.9 percent, or 119,000 women, used marijuana and another 1.1 percent, or 45,000 women, used cocaine at some time during their pregnancy” (Mathias, 1995). To make a comparison from the number of pregnant women who abused drugs in 2008-2009, further research was conducted to find another national survey for the year 2013, where the study showed that “pregnant women ages 15 to 44 showed that 5.4 pregnant women were using illicit and legal drugs during her pregnancy”, and that “combined between 2012-to 2013”, data showed that “14.6 percent of women from the age of 15-17 years of age used drugs during pregnancy”, “8.6 women ages 18-25”, and “3.2 percent between the ages of 26-44 were actively using drugs during their pregnancy” ("Pregnancy & Substance Use | Drug War Facts," 2016). The sample that was conducted involved African-American, White, Latino women, and so on. Through
Drug abuse and addiction is a “very complex problem” with many “opinions”, and “argumentative research studies” as to how accurate their findings are and how those influences are perceived towards mothers. The “prejudice” amongst women who have taken drugs and gave birth to addicted infants is “mostly governed by medical misinformation”, and “governed by speculation”, due to the “bias judgement” (Paltrow, 2016). The battle and debates over whether drugs like cocaine being dangerous to all infants and their development has not been fully proven through research or facts, rather it shows that it expresses an opinionated discussion on how prenatal drug use will increase the risks of all the issues mentioned earlier in this paper, such as behavioral, and “cognitive development problems” later in early childhood and later in life (Paltrow, 2016). Many research articles have concluded that children born into drugs are more likely to follow suit, this is untrue. The research on the effects of cocaine and other medications and drugs have been questioned because these “finding are based on mothers who longer use drugs”, and are not focused on “rational scientific