ABSTRACT Addictive drugs are all around us and they have become a part of our lives. The issue of drug abuse is of critical importance, global, and difficult to solve. Typically, drugs are categorized as tolerated or not tolerated by society, and more or less risky. It is vital, therefore, to know the attitude of public to the issue. Lots of drug abuse causes have already been revealed, just like the reasons why some users develop addiction while others do not. In all probability the abuse of drugs or the addiction development cannot be put down to a single background factor. Everything will depend on personality traits of the individual, on his or her environmental conditions, and on specific effects of the drug. Since I take much interest in these issues, I have chosen for my thesis the subject of Public awareness of drug abuse issues in the District of České Budějovice. I investigated what people knew about drug abuse at the District where I live; their opinions of drug abuse; whether they believed that drug abuse deteriorated social position of an individual; whether they believed it boosted the rate of crime; if people were informed about facilities assisting recovery from drug addiction within the District of České Budějovice; and, last but not least, whether they suspected what drugs could come in their way here. The thesis aimed to examine what people knew about the drug abuse issues in the České Budějovice District. This objective has been met. Fifty three percent of respondents were found well informed on the subject, while the remaining 47% lacked the information. The survey was to prove or disprove hypothesis that the public was unaware of organizations providing help to drug addicts - the hypothesis was not confirmed since 51% of respondents were informed about the relevant organizations and 49% were not. Another hypothesis predicted that the public could not tell the illegal drugs from the legal ones - it was not confirmed as the public was found sufficiently informed. The hypotheses expecting the public to believe that drug abuse drives crime and deteriorates the addict's social position were confirmed by the bulk of respondents living in the District of České Budějovice. Ninety nine percent of the respondents believed the drug abuse pushed up the crime rate and 95% were of the opinion that it affected the addict's social position. As follows from the survey, the public in the České Budějovice District was relatively well informed of the drug abuse issues, though the differences encountered between awareness and unawareness of the subject were just minor. I intend to release the thesis as an information source for the general public(in the form of brochures, internet publications or periodicals); moreover, I want to offer the results to organizations engaged in the drug abuse treatment and to students of the University of South Bohemia to serve as training material. The public will find a wealth of important drug-related information in the paper, while the addiction treating organizations will be prompted to fill the gaps still existing in information available to the general public.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:nusl.cz/oai:invenio.nusl.cz:49098 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | KOZLOVÁ, Lucie |
| Source Sets | Czech ETDs |
| Language | Czech |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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