Influence of Gender in the Use of Recreational Drug Abuse.edited (1).

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a. Definitions i. Gender and sex Sex is defined as the characterization of someone as male or female on basis of features in biology or morphology (Becker et al., 2017). On the other hand, gender i... s referred to as a social organizations system with prescriptions that are set and alleged to progress from characterization based by biological sex. In simpler term, gender are differences laid on basis of culture roles set for male and women (Nida, 2020). Many scholars from social and natural sciences have shown that engagement in addictive behaviors and adverse effects of addiction depict sex-gender differences. The researchers believe addiction is caused by integration of biological, environmental, and social cultural factors. i) Recreational and Illicit drugs The main drug abuse that leads to addiction are categorized into two broad categories: recreational and illicit drugs. Recreational drugs are those drugs used commonly with friends3 for pleasure in formal or recreational places like night clubs and informal settings like in the streets or at home (Darcy, 2018).On the other hand, illicit drugs are those unlawful drugs like marijuana that are prohibited by federal laws, and abuse of drugs prescribed for medication (Nida, 2020). a) Statistics According to statistics from NIDA, about 19.5 million women from age 18 and above have used illegal drugs and about 8.4 million women over age 18 have misused prescriptions drugs for the past one year. Since the year 1999 up to the year 2014, the number of females diagnosed with opioid use disorder have increased by four folds. The abuse of tobacco by women when they are expectant have led to death of 1015 infants’ mortality death from the year 2005 up to 2009 (NIDA, 2020). An estimate of 7-12% of women appears to abuse alcohol less compared to 20% alcohol abuse by men. However, the degree to which women becomes addicted to alcohol is higher than that of men. When it comes to cocaine use among women, research shows that 1.8 million of women in United States intake alcohol, and an estimate of 39.5 % in the present decade are females. According to research report by Becker et al (2008), about 51.5 % of age groups ranging from 12-17 years old were women, for age ranging from 18-25 are 42,0% women and among those who use cocaine and above 26 years old were 38.8% women. Therefore, the rate of addiction in drug abuse phases is more prevalent in women than in men. In a research study conducted in Irish, the statistics gathered shows that Irish men have having a higher tendency drugs than Irish women. A niche exists between men and women from Irish when it comes to use of illegal drugs in their lifetime from the age group cohort of 25-34 years old, with an estimate of 53.6% of men using the illicit drugs than that of women with 34.5 % (Darcy, 2018). Additionally, statistics shows that in the year 2017, over 7000 women and nearly 10,000 men succumbed from opioid prescribed overdose (NIDA, 2020). [Show More]

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