Abstract

The social problem the researcher is trying to investigate is how easily the youth in rural and urban areas are able to access alcohol and tobacco. Historically, both rural and urban areas have experienced a wide spread behavior of underage youth being involved in drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco. Averagely, teens as young as 10-15 are already involved in episodic heavy drinking that has adverse effects in their health and social life. Such early onset use of alcohol and tobacco expose these victims to multiple health problems such as unsafe sexual behaviors, violence and motor vehicle crashes.

The research method in this study is use of survey. Four regional school districts were used to administer a survey of 445 sampled youth from 30 different communities in the central region of the United States. The survey contained demographics and a 30-day measurement about the points of access of alcohol and tobacco. The study referred to Census Bureau (2010) to differentiate a rural region from the urban one. For a region to be considered urban, it must have over 2500 residents. Any region below such population was considered a rural region in the research. Data was collected through an online form that was protected and the link was provided by school districts who subsequently shared with sampled respondents. Since the collected data was collected as part of drug prevention community outreach project, purposive sampling was used to determine appropriate respondents. The research also uses secondary sources like peer-reviewed journals to substantiate several claims that have been dis0cussed throughout the research.

The findings of the research showed that both youth from rural and urban regions had no significant difference in points-of- access of alcohol and tobacco. While dissecting the results to determine specific findings on both tobacco and alcohol, the findings showed that urban youth (27.4%) reported a higher rate of tobacco consumption compared rural youth (26.8%), which shows there was no significant difference. Conversely, there was a significant difference in alcohol with urban participants (30.2%) more likely to have consumed alcohol in the last 30 days while rural participants recorded 21.3%.

According to Komro and Toomey (2002), alcoholism is persistent public health problem. Recently U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ahs established that  underage drinkers are on the rise. Subsequently, many youths have been seen dropping out of school while others are inolved in crimes with capital offenses. This research shows that the youth are more likely to access drugs among other narcotics with ease in their neighborhoods. Astonishingly, 88% of 12th grade scholars indicated that they can get alcohol very easily with little restrictions (Williams, et al., 2018, p. 2). Others also indicated that they are able to purchase from commercial stores with little restrictive obstacles. This shows that parents are not making enough effort to educate their children about the dangers of drug abuse. Additionally, this research indicated that the vast majority of youth in who were able to access these materials are more likely to consume them yet the public authorities have put restrictions to access some of these materials and their consumption.

Educating the youth is one of the strategies that the researcher would recommend to solve this problem. In this case, the youth should be educated about health and social problems that tobacco and alcohol are associated with. Developing a high school curriculum that targets to educate underage youth to refrain from taking alcohol will be beneficial. In addition, policies should be introduced to fine alcohol and drug sellers heavily so that they avoid selling such substances to young children. Using family strategies can also help to address the problem.  Family attributes including as parent-child relationships, discipline methods, communication, monitoring and supervision can help to influence the use of alcohol and tobacco among the youth. Due to pressures of economic demands, many parents are engrossed in their career duties and spending little time with their families. As a result, they have freedom to test any form of drug substance that come their way. To address this problem, parents should be compelled to know the whereabouts of their children, especially when they are offsite to reduce chances of accessing alcohol and tobacco.  Parents are advised to improve their relationships with their children using positive reinforcement and listening to their needs effectively. Strengthening family bond will provide consistent discipline that is essential in making a young youth to make the right decisions.

References

Williams, R.D., Housman, J.M., Evans, J.L., Bishop, J & Ray, V. (2018).   Urban and Rural Adolescents’ Points-of-Access for Alcohol and Tobacco. J Community Health 43, 406–411. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-017-0438-.

Komro,K & Toomey,T. M. (2002). Strategies to Prevent Underage Drinking. National institute on Alcohol abuse and Alcoholism, 26(1): 5-14.