CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
This research work is on the effects of Drug Abuse among University undergraduates in Nigeria. It appears that not only the use of drugs that create problems but rather their misuse. In other words the widespread use of drugs has not only turned our attention to the dynamics of drug use and its determinants but also made it necessary to weigh the impact of this process on social institutions and social charge in future generations.
Drug abuse according to Laver (1978) simply means the improper use of drugs to the degree that the consequences are defined as detrimental to the user and or the society. The World Health Organization (WHO (2006) also defined drug abuse as a “state” of periodic or chronic intoxication, detrimental to the individual and to the society, produced by the repeated consumption of a drug (natural or synthetic).
Drug abuse patterns include all aspect of drug usage by the youths ranging from how much, how often and what sort of drugs, where who, with, what circumstances and so on. The analysis of contemporary social problem has consistently proved more and more controversial because of the variables involve in their analysis, with the incidence of drug abuse, being of utmost concern to the abuser himself, his family, the government and the entire society in which he lives. This situation seems to have caused a lot of embarrassment to the government including most especially the damage done to the image of Nigerian abroad. It is obvious that custom officials in the United States of America and indeed the entire Nations of Europe subject the people of Nigeria traveling to their countries to a more thorough and embarrassing checks. This type of degrading and humiliating examination of Nigerians according to them is because they want to crack down on smugglers of which Nigerians are the chief suspects due to the hard drug trafficking posture exhibited by some greedy Nigerians.
Furthermore, Nigerian societies has defined some drugs as acceptable while others as not acceptable without reference to their effects on mental and physical wellbeing of t the of the users, for example, society considers the use of alcohol and nicotine as acceptable, hence those of them who take these drugs do so freely in public without fear of arrest or society stigma.
To the society as a whole, crime, promiscuity, armed robbery and other vices are all linked to drug abuse. Therefore this study is motivated by the controversy that surrounds the effect of drug abuse among University undergraduates in Nigeria.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Drug abuse in Nigeria in the contemporary time has become one issue that cast a gloomy shadow to the entire Nigerian society especially among University undergraduates. The height of drug trafficking in Nigeria was witnessed in 1985 under the military regime. During this period, it was mostly the University undergraduates that were caught and the first to be executed for drug offences under the “special tribunal (Miscellaneous Offences) Degree No. 20 of 1984. However, the abuse of drugs is not only limited to the University undergraduates as alien phenomenon is to distort its significance.