Marijuana has always been known as the harmless drug in common circles. With movies and musicians glorifying it, many youngsters have taken up on this habit. The young perception is that as the marijuana comes from a plant, it’s supposed to be benign. The situation is even worse actually. The usage of marijuana and being in a state of total inebriation for perpetuity is mistaken to a charming thing to do. Now, as kids in the any high school who are above the age of fifteen, mostly, have begun to come of age when it comes to sexual maturity. Some give in to peer pressure and convince themselves that one has to lose their virginity before they turn eighteen, or they shall be known as one of the un-cool and irksome lot. Even though sex education has been taught in high schools, and awareness has been provided, many students are oblivious to the sheer risk of having unsafe sex. Many believe that when a couple gets together and get high on marijuana, in their inebriated state, they lose sight of their responsibilities and have unprotected sexual intercourse. This is believed to be a leading cause for unplanned pregnancies among female young adults. This essay aims at giving more depth and insight into this problem.
Body of the Essay
Since time immemorial young kids were influenced by pop culture. Be it from movies, music or even sports. Kids look up to their heroes and aspire to be like them. Now this is a noble thing to do, generally. But this also leads to them excusing their bad behaviour. If one’s hero is achieving great things but he is a smoker, the child begins to believe that smoking isn’t really a bad thing to do. Now this childlike innocence stays with the kid when he’s a young adult of sixteen, only now his belief system is even harder to break as there’s a lot of misplaced ego around his sentiments. They become over smart and believe that they know everything they have to know about the world and society. This paper by Lewis (2013) entails about teenagers and the youth culture in great detail. Marijuana has been a part of the pop culture since forever. The peace and love movement on the sixties heralded by so many stalwarts of the music industry like The Beatles, brought psychedelia in the minds of the common folk as part of some neo political rebellion. The paper here by Elcock (2013) talks in detail about the psychedelic revolution in the sixties and their impact on society. In the next decade came Pink Floyd, who were immediately associated with marijuana, even though the band never actually endorsed it. Watching The Wizard of Oz whilst listening to the Dark Side of the Moon and smoking joints was regarded as an experience of a lifetime. As time went on, rock began to leave the pop charts and hip hop took its place. The torch of marijuana was passed on. If you YouTube any new music video, you’ll find that marijuana is either referenced in the lyric or it’s outright shown in the video. All of these things start to gloss a young impressionable teenager's vision and they start to believe that it is the right things to do no matter how many times your parents try to talk you out of it. As the teenagers go through puberty, their sexual desire increases. The government and the school system have issued sex education classes in their schools but in reality these classes are perceived as a joke and not taken seriously. Kids become irresponsible with sex and avoid using protection. These situations happen usually when they are either or in some sort of transcendental daze. The paper has correlated sexuality and puberty in a more deep way, Fortenberry (2013). If pop culture has been in a way responsible for the casual attitude of teenagers in handling with marijuana, sex has been affected in a similar. The idea of having sex in high school has changed from a maybe type of situation to an absolute necessity. To a point where kids often reprimand themselves or are chastised by their peers when they turn out to not have sexual intercourse during the course of their high school years. This idea of teenage coital action has been heavily endorsed in uncountable films. Now if these films had been of the artsy kind, they would have been witnessed by a few people. But as everybody in this capitalised industry know that “sex sells” such movies have been made constantly masquerading as party flicks and young adult comedies. This paper discusses in detail about this problem Gupta (2011). Now this essay isn’t meaning to say that such films are harmful to teenagers but it is trying to merely attempt to show how kids, especially impressionable kids fall prey to the deceit and lies of the message of these films and start to rank or measure their lives with or against a fictional unrealistic tale. The paper here by Simons et al., (2010) talks of the risk teenagers take whilst indulging themselves in taking action in committing unsafe sex whilst inebriated.
In some recent studies it was found that unprotected sex came as a result of alcohol and drug abuse in teenagers and young adults. Four different models were used to study it. After effects of every one of the four relapse models demonstrated that weed use was related with unprotected sex. Teenagers who utilized more cannabis when all is said in done just as explicitly in sexual scenes in the 30 days going before detainment detailed more elevated amounts of unprotected sex. Furthermore, pot use in the last scene was identified with the event of unprotected sex amid that scene. In addition, aims to utilize weed in future sexual scenes were related with aims to have unprotected intercourse later on. Risk is being entertained by young adults. Their naivety is being exploited and they are being a false sense of accomplishment and pride. They are starting to forget that there are grave consequences to their actions. And when things take for worse they have no idea how to handle that situation in a calmed manner and act like emotional fools and do actions that boast of irrationality and are considered moronic. In another study that is even more recent there have been statistical analysis made on identifying classes in entering freshmen that pertain to conjoint alcohol and marijuana use, this paper here, Haas et al., (2015).
University life can be a lonely life. Being away from your loved for a considerable amount of time might put an individual, especially a young individual in a situation where they find themselves as desperate, desperate to seek out company. Any sort of company. Such situations often lead to kids mingling with greyer circles and voluntarily participating in drug abuse just so that one could people around them. Heavy episodic drinking and cannabis use are few of such examples. Now a repetition of such activities has seen leading them to individuals taking part in sexual intercourse without the use of any sort of protection. The paper here, Moure-Rodriguez et al., (2016) is a study on these.
Fortunately, not all is lost. Many youth oriented programs have been conducted by various organizations in their objective of creating awareness of the risk of unprotected sexual activities. There have been research conducted on it, like this paper right here Schwartz et al., (2010).
Individuals who every now and again use cannabis are probably going to have intercourse all the more regularly, another investigation proposes. The scientists found that the ladies in the investigation who said they hadn't utilized marijuana in the previous year detailed that they'd had intercourse a normal of multiple times in the earlier month. Ladies who reported utilizing cannabis in the previous year announced that they'd engaged in sexual relations all the more as often as possible, a normal of multiple times in the earlier month. The results have been deemed similar for men as well.
Conclusion of the Essay
This essay has made solemn efforts to explain detail about how irresponsible drug abuse correlates to unprotected sexual activities amongst high schoolers or university freshman. The essay talks about the evolution of the psychedelic movement that took place in the sixties from which one might believe the romanticism of drug abuse also took place. Later this essay pondered on the impact of popular culture, culture found in magazines, music and movies, on the impressionable youngsters of the society. The essay further discusses how the capitalist society won’t stop using sexual desire as a commodity to attract people who tend to be young and tend to be naive. It further mentions how loneliness might make someone desperate for company and how seeking of company desperately might lead and have led many to taking up drug abuse which has also resulted in many dealing with unplanned pregnancies because of unprotected sex. The psychology of idol worship being responsible is also been discussed. In the end, it has also been discussed how youth programs and events have been conducted to create awareness of such things.
Bibliography
Fortenberry, J. D. (2013). Puberty and adolescent sexuality. Hormones and behavior, 64(2), 280-287.
Elcock, C. (2013). From acid revolution to entheogenic evolution: Psychedelic philosophy in the sixties and beyond. The Journal of American Culture, 36(4), 296.
Haas, A. L., Wickham, R., Macia, K., Shields, M., Macher, R., & Schulte, T. (2015). Identifying classes of conjoint alcohol and marijuana use in entering freshmen. Psychology of addictive behaviors, 29(3), 620.
Moure-Rodriguez, L., Doallo, S., Juan-Salvadores, P., Corral, M., Cadaveira, F., & Caamano-Isorna, F. (2016). Heavy episodic drinking, cannabis use and unsafe sex among university students. Gaceta sanitaria, 30(6), 438-443.
Simons, J. S., Maisto, S. A., & Wray, T. B. (2010). Sexual risk taking among young adult dual alcohol and marijuana users. Addictive Behaviors, 35(5), 533-536.
Lewis, J. (2013). The road to romance and ruin: Teen films and youth culture. Routledge.
Gupta, K. (2011). “Screw health”: Representations of sex as a health-promoting activity in medical and popular literature. Journal of Medical Humanities, 32(2), 127-140.
Schwartz, S. J., Phelps, E., Lerner, J. V., Huang, S., Brown, C. H., Lewin-Bizan, S., ... & Lerner, R. M. (2010). Promotion as prevention: Positive youth development as protective against tobacco, alcohol, illicit drug, and sex initiation. Applied Developmental Science, 14(4), 197-211.