Teen Drug Addiction: A Rising Epidemic in America

Recently drug addiction in the United States is at an all-time high, especially among teens. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that teens who abuse prescription drugs are twice as likely to use alcohol, five times more likely to use marijuana, and twelve to twenty times more likely to use illegal street drugs such as heroin, ecstasy and cocaine than teens who do not abuse prescription drugs. Forty five percent of drug overdose deaths, in teens are attributed to the abuse of prescription drugs. The illegal abuse of prescription drugs starts at home in a teen’s own bathroom. Most teens get the prescription drugs from their own medicine cabinet or their unknowing parents. With such alarming facts

Each of the text were chosen to appeal to the pathos or logos of the parents and grandparent of teens and young adults. My first text is an image made to look like a pill bottle. On the label of the pill bottle it says that 90% of drug addictions start in the teenage years. It also says that 16% of parents believe that using prescription drugs to get high is safer that street drugs. I transformed the image by recreating the pill bottle on my poster. Instead of the bottle being a two dimensional image I created a three dimensional figured. The three dimensional figure is a model of where parents could potential dispose of prescription drugs safely. I used the statistic from the picture as an example of what parent believe about prescription drug use. This then opened up the topic of health, giving me a chance to explain health facts about the abuse of prescription drugs to disprove what the audience believed about drug abuse. My second text is a chart that shows the abuse of prescription drugs in teens versus the abuse of other drugs. This resource presents the percentage overall use of some popular prescription drugs and popular street drugs. I transformed the text by changing its median. By adding it to the poster I removed from its online origins and transformed it into print. The chart was useful in conveying my exigency because it visually compares street drugs to prescription abuse. By providing this it gives the audience a chance to process the impact of