Substance Abuse in Modern Society, Substance Abuse Term Paper

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Substance Abuse

In modern society, substance abuse refers to a maladaptive pattern of using a substance that is unnecessary for health. It is not limited to mood-altering or psycho-active drugs (marijuana, alcohol, etc.), but is defined as any substance that is habitual, interferes with one's life, and causes a large range of dependencies within human culture. It is a public health cost and issue, and comes under a number of categories (Lowinson, 2005). In the Healthy People 2020 initiative, one of the goals is to "reduce substance abuse to protect the health, safety and quality of life for all, especially children." For this review, we will use Tobacco Addiction as a model.

Tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of disease, death, or disability in the United States. More deaths are caused yearly from tobacco use than any other substance abuse, motor vehicle injury, HIV, or murder combined (Anti-Smoking, 2008). Tobacco products are a controversial, but powerful, product in the contemporary world. Up to 1/3 of the global adult population uses some form of tobacco on a regular basis, yet it believed to cause over 5 million deaths per year. In developing countries, largely due to stricter laws and bans on advertising, smoking has leveled off -- however, in developing countries the number of active smokers has risen each year over the past two decades (Tobacco's Impact, 2007).

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The tobacco industry is highly competitive, with huge amounts of revenue determined by the smallest changes in market share. The tobacco industry is dominated by a few large firms; price competition may also be restrained, either by outright collusion, or more commonly through "parallelism" of pricing decisions (See: Mackay, 2006; "Tobacco -- The Industry Perspective, 2009). The intense advertising efforts of the tobacco industry lead to strong brand awareness and subsequently to a highly differentiated product that can demand a higher price than would be the case if the products were indistinguishable. Additionally the tobacco industry's revenues are highly consistent and stable, generally unaffected from booms or busts in the economy. Furthermore, the high fixed cost structure of starting a cigarette company (factories, marketing, and machines) enables them to compete on price if necessary to ward of competition (see: Health Consequences, 2007).

So powerful was the cigarette business, that even automobile manufacturers had to change their engineering to allow for cigarette lighters and ashtrays in cars and trucks. Advertising was booming, and by 1950, over 300 billion cigaretts were sold in the United States alone each year. In the May 27, 1950 issue of the Journal of the American Medical association, Dr. Morton levin published a controversial conclusion: smokers were statistically twice as likely to….....

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