If you want to handle drug abuse, you have to know where it occurs. We may have preconceived ideas about who in America uses drugs and where the drugs are used, but until you actually get the hard facts, backed by evidence, it’s impossible to know where to direct your efforts in educating young people from using drugs in the first place or treating addicts after they have already become dependent on drugs. Narconon Arrowhead is committed to doing everything needed to both prevent and treat drug addiction, so it examines whether drugs are used more in urban or rural areas and what drugs are used in each type of area.
Drug Use in Urban Environments
The stereotypical image of urban drug use is shady drug dealers on every corner and young and old people alike getting drunk at bars and clubs. While it’s true that people living in urban areas do abuse alcohol, it is actually used at higher rates and is responsible for more drug rehab admissions in rural areas. In urban areas, cocaine and crack are actually more responsible for more admissions than in rural areas.
Part of the reason for this may be simple availability. Hard drugs like cocaine, crack and heroin are not usually produced inside the United States. They are created in other countries and shipped into America. When these drugs are transported, their destinations are usually highly populated urban areas. The drugs are quickly distributed to street-level dealers so that they can sell the highest amount of product in the lowest amount of time.
Rural areas don’t use these drugs as much because it is simply less profitable for drug pushers to sell them there. When you have much fewer people per square mile, as you do “out in the country” it simply isn’t worth the time for many drug pushers to try to sell there.
Drug Use in Rural Environments
The largest percentage of drug rehab admissions in rural areas are for alcohol abuse. Alcohol is a legal drug that is easily available throughout the country. Adults can buy in in almost every store, and young people can get older friends, relatives or even strangers to acquire alcohol for them. When a drug such as alcohol is legal, there is also much less of a taboo in using it or even abusing it.
Rural areas tend to be more religious than urban ones, and many people that live in these rural areas will be raised to try to stay away from illegal drugs. Despite this, drinking alcohol is often allowed or even encouraged. Drinking beer “with the boys” in the South tends to be something of a cliché, but it’s also extremely common.
Monitoring Drug Rehabilitation Results
Narconon Arrowhead is a drug rehab center that treats Americans from every area of the country. It doesn’t matter what a person is abusing, Narconon Arrowhead will be able to help that person get permanently sober. One of the reasons that the center is so successful is because it does not graduate clients and then just send them out into the world never to be checked on again. Narconon Arrowhead employs a system of monitoring outcome results for all graduates.
The center collects many ways of contacting a graduate via phone, mail and email in order to keep in touch with the graduate throughout the months after he has left the center. Narconon Arrowhead ensures that the graduates are staying sober and helps guide them through any potential desire to relapse. By doing this, the center keeps graduates on the path to permanent sobriety.
Sources:
Samhsa.gov: A comparison of rural and urban substance abuse treatment admissions http://www.samhsa.gov/data/2k12/TEDS_043/TEDSShortReport043UrbanRuralAdmissions2012.htm
PRWeb.com: Narconon Arrowhead Announces Curriculum Based on Outcome Monitoring Results http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/12/prweb11426325.htm