Health Campaign Strategy for Substance Abuse in Teenagers

Running head: HEALTH CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 1
Health Campaign Strategy
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HEALTH CAMPAIGN STRATEGY 2
Health Campaign Strategy
Substance abuse is disadvantageous, particularly in teenagers. The youth are at risk since
drug use has several negative effects. Socially, substance abuse makes the youths to misbehave
therefore contributing to immoralities. These include societal vices like sexually transmitted
diseases precisely HIV/AIDS, armed robbery among others. Conversely, substance abuse makes
teenagers have financial constraints. It makes the addicted persons use a lot of money to buy
drugs. It is important to note that drug usage leads to health deterioration eventually leading to
death. This paper evaluates substance abuse especially in teenagers and the needle exchange
program which is a health campaign strategy. It will also focus on both cultural and ethical
considerations in regards to its implementation.
A needle exchange program, NEP, is an essential social service which enables IDUs
(injecting drug users) to get hypodermic needles at a reduced cost. The strategy is founded on the
philosophy of ensuring harm reduction. Notably, harm reduction focusses on minimizing risk
factors especially for diseases like hepatitis as well as HIV/AIDS (Bachman et al., 2014). A
needle exchange program provides all the necessary equipment at no cost. Furthermore, the
program necessitates service users to be responsible and subsequently return utilized syringes so
as to receive other new ones.
The rationale for selecting the needle exchange program is because it has several
benefits. NEPs support the well-being as well as the health of persons who utilize drugs.
Additionally, this is done through empowerment, education and awareness. NEPs also consider
recreational drug usage particularly in teenagers as a critical health concern and neither condone
nor condemn the practice (Weinmeyer, 2016). Needle exchange programs also facilitate harm
reduction. Harm reduction starts with the notion that it is not rational to assume that the youth