Hi dear,

can you help me to finish this assignment with good quality and be on time please?

t  e research and critical thinking to describe a contemporary drug use issue, including legislation, policies, messages, attitudes, affected populations and prevalence of use.t

There is a example of the assignment attached.

A. Drug Use Issues 

Choose a current issue in the news or new or proposed legislation regarding a drug discussed in Chapters 1-4.  For example, the city of San Diego decided to allow both cultivation and distribution of recreational marijuana. In another example, the federal Department of Health and Human Services is investigating why insurance companies make opioids more accessible than other pain treatments by making opioids less expensive.

Use what you learned from the article/news report, from Chapters 1-4 in your textbook and from at least two additional academic sources to answer the following 8 questions. You need to obtain information from your additional sources to be able to answer these questions and not just use the one article you chose.  

1. ARTICLE/NEWS REPORT: Give a very brief summary of what the article says.

2. MESSAGES:   

A.What messages is this article/report giving?  

b. What conflicting or mixed messages are being given about this issue to the public?

3. RESTRICTIVE LEGISLATION: What restrictive legislation or policies exist regarding this issue? (Cite your source)

4. ATITUDES: What are the present-day attitudes related to this issue? (Cite your source)

POPULATIONS: See handout below on how to report on populations. (Cite your source)

a. Does this issue have a greater impact on certain population? 

b. Which ones (age, region, ethnicity, socioeconomic level or other)? 

5. PREVALENCE: What is the prevalence of use of this substance (most recent year available) in your city or state? You will need to look up the prevalence. See handout on how to report on prevalence, below. (Cite your source)

6. VIOLENCE: Is this substance associated with violence or crime (pharmacological, economically compulsive or systemic – see pages 38-39 of text book)? (Cite your source)

7. OPINION: What is your opinion on this issue and why? (For example, do you agree with the proposed legislation or policy change? What do you think about increasing or decreasing access to the substance?) You do not need any citations here but you may include them if you want.

FORMAT: Use these headings to make sure you don’t leave anything out (See sample post)

1. ARTICLE/NEWS REPORT:

2. MESSAGES:

3. RESTRICTIVE LEGISLATION:

4. ATITUDES:

5. POPULATIONS:

6. PREVALENCE:

7. VIOLENCE:

8. OPINION:

Sources: 

· Because this is college, you need to use at least TWO academic sources: from government reports or scholarly/peer-reviewed journal articles. This will give you experience doing academic research. You can use the course textbook or other sources as additional sources, but they will not count as one of the two required sources.  Read the handout (below) on scholarly sources.

· Use the NU library to find your sources. If you don’t know how, contact the NU library for help. 

· Use your OWN WORDS (e.g., do not cut and paste from an article). 

· Do NOT use any quotations.  Paraphrase (use your own words) to report the information.

· Use in-text citations. Write the source of your information at the end of the applicable sentences using APA 6th edition format.  This will give you practice using APA to cite references. 

· List all the references in APA 6th Edition format at the end of your post in a References list. 

NOTE: If you are new to APA, I recommend that you use an online citation builder such as APA Style Central http://apastylecentral.apa.org.nuls.idm.oclc.org/ or the NU library database to automatically format your references correctly. You can also get help from the Writing Center https://nu.mywconline.com/ and the NU library on how to use APA to cite references. 

READ THE DISCUSSION RUBRIC BEFORE YOU START. COMPARE WHAT YOU WRITE WITH THE RUBRIC. READ THE SAMPLE POST BEFORE YOU START.

IMPORTANT: Do NOT submit your first draft. First, read what you wrote out loud. Check for:

– Missing words or letters

– Missing or misplaced periods, apostrophes, commas 

– Incomplete sentences

– 2 or more sentences strung together that should be made into separate sentences

– Putting something is past tense that should be in present tense or vice versa

– Plural words that should be singular or singular words that should be plural

– Making the verb and subject match (plural or tense) 

AFTER you make these corrections, then post your discussion. 

Then post 2 responses to other student posts, at least 5-6 full sentences long. You do not need to include any citations in your responses, but you can if you would like. 

HOW TO REPORT ON PREVALENCE AND POPULATIONS: 

Those of you who are not majoring in public health may not have had experience reporting about prevalence or populations.  When you are asked to report the prevalence of use of a certain drug, it means something specific. You will need to look it up.  Below are some sources where you can find this information. 

For statistics on drug, alcohol or tobacco use in your city, county, state and region, or nationwide:

· The University of Michigan Monitoring the Future Study http://monitoringthefuture.org – Results of an annual survey of adolescent drug use appear in mid-December of each year.

· The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) http://samhsa.gov

· Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/drug-use-illegal.htm

· Healthy People 2020 – Healthy People 2020 (select the topic area of interest, e.g., substance abuse or tobacco.)- https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/data-search/Search-the-Data#topic-area=3500

What is Prevalence?  https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/what-is-prevalence.shtml

· Prevalence is the proportion of a population who have a specific characteristic in a given time period.

How is Prevalence Estimated?

· To estimate prevalence, researchers randomly select a sample (smaller group) from the entire population they want to describe. Using random selection methods increases the chances that the characteristics of the sample will be representative of (similar to) the characteristics of the population.

· For a representative sample, prevalence is the number of people in the sample with the characteristic of interest, divided by the total number of people in the sample.

                         # of people in sample with characteristic

Prevalence  =  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

                              Total # of people in sample

· To ensure a selected sample is representative of an entire population, statistical ‘weights’ may be applied. Weighting the sample mathematically adjusts the sample characteristics to match with the target population.

How is Prevalence Reported?

· Prevalence may be reported as a percentage (5%, or 5 people out of 100), or as the number of cases per 10,000 or 100,000 people. The way prevalence is reported depends on how common the characteristic is in the population.

· There are several ways to measure and report prevalence depending on the timeframe of the estimate.

o Point prevalence is the proportion of a population that has the characteristic at a specific point in time.

o Period prevalence is the proportion of a population that has the characteristic at any point during a given time period of interest. “Past 12 months” is a commonly used period.

o Lifetime prevalence is the proportion of a population who, at some point in life has ever had the characteristic.

How is Prevalence Different from Incidence?

· Incidence is a measure of the number of new cases of a characteristic that develop in a population in a specified time period; whereas prevalence is the proportion of a population who have a specific characteristic in a given time period, regardless of when they first developed the characteristic.

· Researchers may study incident (new) cases of illnesses to help identify causes and prevent additional cases. Incidence is often reported for infectious diseases.

I want to point out an excellent example of reporting on prevalence from one of the Discussion 1 posts:
 

The following is a good example of how to report on prevalence:

MDMA is most commonly used by teens and young adults, although the overall percentage of the population who have used in their lifetime is relatively small.  In a 2002 study, 80-82% of 10th-12th grade students said that they did not condone the use of MDMA, and ~9% of 12th graders had used the drug in the past year (Landry, M., 2002, p. 164, 166).  Recent numbers suggest that this rate has dropped significantly, with the 2016 NIDA survey reporting that only 2.7% of 12th graders had used the drug in the past year.  In 2014, approximately 17 million people over the age of 12 reported using the drug in their lifetime (NIDA, 2017)

HOW TO REPORT ON POPULATIONS: (see example below)

MDMA is used mostly by young adults between the ages of 18-25, and is more commonly used by Whites than Hispanics or Blacks. While at its peak in the 1990’s and early 2000’s it was thought to be used predominantly by men, some studies found that women were more likely to use the drug in certain geographic regions (Wu, P. et al.).  It is frequently used at electronic music festivals (raves) and in the nightclub scene, and research shows that it is more commonly used by homosexual men and women than heterosexuals (NIDA, 2017).  Between 1980 and 2000, MDMA was mainly used by middle-class Whites, with the western United States showing the highest usage; however, due to increases in availability, other demographics appear to be catching up (Bahora, Sterk & Elifson, 2009).

ACADEMIC SOURCES

An important step in writing a term paper or in completing many assignments includes finding information in periodicals. In general, information in periodicals is more timely, current, and up-to-date, than information in books. When professors and/or librarians speak of the periodical literature, they may use several different terms, such as, magazines, serials, or scholarly journals.

In order to look for the right kind of information in the right places, you first need to understand the assignment. Does your professor want you to look for papers in scholarly journals, or will recent articles from substantive, general interest or popular magazines be more appropriate? Once you understand the assignment, you need to know how to distinguish one kind of periodical literature from another. Here are some rough guidelines:

• A serial or periodical is any publication that appears at regular intervals (weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually) and is intended to continue indefinitely. Magazines, journals, newspapers, yearbooks, proceedings, and indexes are all serials.

• Magazines are commercial serial publications intended for any of a wide variety of readers. Some magazines provide news and general information to a popular audience, while others are aimed at professionals in various fields.

• Newspapers are commercial periodicals that are issued daily, weekly or biweekly, featuring cover age of news and current events as well as opinion and advertising. Newspapers seek to inform, explain, influence and entertain readers. Some papers such as the New York Times, USA Today or the Gainesville Sun target the general public, while others aim for a more defined audience.

•              

Scholarly vs. Popular Periodicals

GEORGE A. SMATHERS LIBRARIES

August 2007

Journals, or scholarly, scientific journals, are periodicals generally published by an institution, professional association or learned society, and contain articles that disseminate current information on research and developments in particular subject fields. Before an editor of a journal publishes a manuscript, the editor and a team of specialists on the journal editorial board examine the manuscript carefully, to be sure that the article will contribute to the knowledge of the field. Because of the rigorous evaluation process, these publications are also referred to as refereed or peer-reviewed journals.

Sources of information

For statistics on drug, alcohol or tobacco use in your city, county, state and region, or nationwide:

· The University of Michigan Monitoring the Future Study http://monitoringthefuture.org – Results of an annual survey of adolescent drug use appear in mid-December of each year.

· The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) http://samhsa.gov

· Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/drug-use-illegal.htm

Healthy People 2020 – Healthy People 2020 (select the topic area of interest, e.g., substance abuse or tobacco.)- https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/data-search/Search-the-Data#topic-area=3500