AN ASSESSMENT ON THE EFFECT OF MASS MEDIA IN CREATING AWARENESS AGAINST DRUG ABUSE
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Mass media have been a major agent of socialisation and tool for social change especially now that people depends on message from mass media. The potential power of the mass media help solve social problems. Television, Radio and Print Advertising can entice people to buy a wide range of products and services, newspaper messages and advertisement influence our ideas, values and behaviour.
According to conventional wisdom, it could be possible to use mass media to get people to act on behalf of their own health and well-being or to do right things. Based on this assumption, since World War II, the Federal, State and Local Government, private foundations and other non-governmental organizations have sponsored hundreds of public services campaigns to promote social rather than commercial “goods” (Delong & Winsten, 2000).
It is not surprising then that prevention advocates would look to the mass media as an important aid in addressing the problem of high-risk drinking in society. Some advocates have pushed for reform or other restrictions on alcohol advertising. Others have sought to influence entertainment producers to end the glorification of high-risk drinking in newspaper, magazine, television and in the movies (Montgomery, 2009). More recently, prevention advocates have produced a small number of media campaigns designed to change students and youth knowledge attitude and behaviour.
Most media campaign focused on college students drinking which have been campus based, using a mix of posters, flyers, electronic mail messages and college newspaper advertisement. More recently a few regional, state and national media campaigns have begin to address this issue as well.
However, the history of the human race has also been the history of drug abuse. In itself, the use of drugs does not constitute an evil. Drugs, properly administered, have been a medical blessing for example, herbs, roots, bark leaves and plants have been used to relieve pain and help control diseases. However, over the past few decades, the use of illegal drugs has spread at an unprecedented rate and has reached every part of the world. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report (2005), some 200 millions people, or 5 percent of the total world’s population aged 15-64 have used drugs at least once in the last 12 months this implied 15 million people more than the 2004 estimated. The report goes on to say that, no nation has been immune to the devastating effects of drug abuse. According to the World Drugs Report (2005), the use of illicit drugs has increased throughout the world in recent years.
The report further states that a major world trend is the increasing availability of many kinds of drugs to an over widening socio-economic spectrum of consumers. The report argues that the main problem of drugs at global level continue to be opiates (notably heroine) followed by cocaine for example, for most of Europe and Asia, opiates continued to be the main problem drugs, accounting for 62 percent of all treatment in 2003. Reports from a total of 95 countries indicated that drugs seizures increased four-fold in 2003, and more than half of these were from Cannabis. A report released by the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) in 2004 estimated that 3.3 to 4.1 percent of global population consumes drugs, but more worrisome is that according to the UNDCP executive director, those who are hooked are the younger generation.
Every country in the world, developed or developing incurs substantial costs as a result of damages caused by substance abuse (World Drug Report, 2005). The world health organization (WHO), estimates that 1.1 billion people, representing a third of the world population above the age of 15 years, use tobacco principally in the form of the cigarettes. of these smokers, 800 million, 700 million of them males, live in developing countries (WHO, 2004). The solution described above is true in developed countries that have been experimenting with such drugs for a long period. However, developing countries are not exempted from the dangers all countries, Nigeria inclusive, are vulnerable. It has been noted that Nigeria is one of the developing countries in Africa that has lately been experiencing rapid increase in production, distribution and consumption of multiple drugs of dependence (Acuda and Tambo, 1983; World Health Organization, 1995, Daily Nation, March 2, 2006).
