Dear Prescription Drug Abuse Group,
I think you guys had a great topic and I think you guys could write about the abuse of prescription drugs in professional sports. I think a magazine article would be great for this topic because it could reach a lot of people magazines such as ESPN and Sports Illustrated. You guys had a ton of research on how addictive these drugs are and how poorly they are monitored and I feel like this research could be applied very easily to the professional athletes being given these drugs and abusing them both during and after their playing career is over. The use of a magazine article would be great for conveying these facts in a short yet powerful manner and could be accompanied with pictures of famous addicted athletes and testimonials. In addition, most young athletes would be able to read about this abuse and better prepare for it and learn how to avoid it. The fact that young athletes always read these articles would make it so your magazine article could reach a lot of people and a lot of people would see and learn about this serious topic. John Olson Dear Jocelyn,
I would love to see you write about personal experience with drug abuse in the form of an interview because I found the account that you touched on in your presentation extremely compelling. The interview medium speaks so loud to the audience because we can actually hear the despair in their voice and it pulls the listener/observer into the story. Even your brief account about your friend who is struggling with prescription drugs, via text message, was gripping and I couldn’t hear or see any of the messages. Personally, I have never talked with someone who is battling drug abuse but I can only imagine how captivating it would be through speaking with them and hearing of the adversities they live with every single day. As one of your audience members, I know listening to an interview with a prescription drug abuser would force me to become empathetic towards their situation which is exactly the purpose of the unessay. The big difficulty with an interview is making it interesting. From a production point of view, the best way to do this is to have high quality audio and suspenseful breaks to let the listener digest the pieces of the story individually. You can’t go too fast in an interview, especially if it’s only audio, because it is very hard to follow. On the contrary, you can’t move so slow that it becomes boring and non-climactic. There is a trivial balance that you will have to find to create a dynamic interview that really draws the audience in. Combining a good production with an engaging interview will generate a passionate composition of what it is to live with prescription drug addiction. - Dawson Matthews Dear Prescription Drug Forum Group,
Let me start this off by saying I loved your presentation! It was well delivered and you all taught me so much about the prevalence of prescription drug abuse in our world today. There was so much that I didn’t know about this issue, and I am glad you all enlightened me! With that being said, I think there is a way that you can twist this subject into a new medium that will make it even more impactful for the audience. I think that you should write about prescription drug abuse in a short story. As a member of your audience, I was struck by the story that Jocelyn told about her friend who regularly abused prescription drugs and almost went too far with them. This made me realize just how much of a struggle this is for many of our peers, especially in college, and I think it would be interesting to explore that struggle on an individual level. In this short story, you could write about a college student who feels pressured to do too many things at once. She is overwhelmed with everything on her plate, and she is completely lost as to how she can manage it all in such a short amount of time. In a moment of desperation, she steals her roommate’s Adderall tablets and pops a couple, and the effect that the drug has on her is a good one, for she finishes everything efficiently. A week later, she runs into the same situation, and she figures another couple pills won’t hurt her, so she takes them again. Pretty soon, her weekly Adderall intake is daily, and she finds that she can’t function when Adderall isn’t in her system. I would end this story in one of three ways: 1) She could OD on the drugs and die, 2) she could OD and be rushed tot he hospital and wake up and realize how terribly she has been abusing the drugs, or 3) she could turn to her best friend from home and admit what she has been doing to herself, and her best friend could advise her to seek out the health center for some support. I think that a short story is a perfect medium to address this issue in because it hits really close to home. The girl in the story is a lot like us. She is not a bad person, nor is she a slacking or irresponsible student, but she has a lot going on an doesn’t know how to cope with it all in a healthy way, so when desperate times call for desperate measures, she sees no other option than to turn to drugs. We all have been in a situation like this before and most likely will again in our college career, and it is important for us to remember that drugs are not the answer to our problems. Again, congratulations on an excellent presentation. Best of luck on your unessay! Annie Stanger Group 1, I think you could easily argue the high levels of prescription drug use among college students inside a magazine article because of the low awareness of this topic among your audience and because the usefulness of the facts and statistics behind the argument would be greatly improved within the format of a magazine.
Arguing that prescription drug abuse is a serious problem among college students would be a compelling argument for a few reasons. First of all, it was one of the most interesting parts of your presentation to me, and I believe to my fellow students. Since I am a college student myself, this topic is especially close to home. I have only a few experiences with people who have used these kind of drugs, and I realize just how much they can affect the lives of these students. The drug use clearly affects me and my friends, making this topic essential and compelling. Secondly, this topic is not very well known. I think the other students and I agreed that the presentation was so interesting because most of the information was totally new to us. I did not know most of the facts or reasons behind the students who abuse these drugs, so the presentation was very enlightening. Considering how much the topic affects my age group, it is important that students like me learn about the dangers posed by these drugs. A magazine article would be perfect for this argument. This argument is largely based on facts and statistics, which can easily be presented in a magazine. Graphs and pictures are essential for a good article. Furthermore, sidebars would be great for the side stories that your group incorporated into the presentation, from the survey you did here at Gonzaga to studies across other colleges. Obviously, in writing the body of the article, one would have to make sure to be concise and to the point because there is no room for fluff in those types of articles. Lastly, magazine articles are a great way to make a strong and bold point - a statement that jumps out at the reader. Your argument would be perfect for that because its purpose is to emphasize the horrors of prescription drug abuse to the audience, who are hopefully fellow college students. Overall, considering how compelling your group’s presentation was, I don’t think you guys would have any problem making a strong argument about prescription drug abuse within a magazine article. Good Luck! - Damon George A statement laid out by President Barack Obama and a CDC study “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Surveillance Summary” both relate the idea of opioid abuse in society today. The CDC study revealed the prescribing rates for opioids twice as often as stimulants of benzodiazepines. The study also found that “In most states, opioid prescribing rates peaked in either the 45–54 years or the 55–64 years age group”. President Obama made a statement on October 23 2015, laying out his plan to tackle the growing opioid abuse in the US today. “Rite Aid will train 6,000 pharmacists on naloxone use over the next 12 months, and expand their naloxone dispensing program to additional states, according to the Obama administration”. This along with his plan to increase the number of health care advisors registered with their state prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMP’s). The step that President Obama is currently taking will allow for a tighter control of the PDMP’s and awareness of the danger of opioids to young teens.
Loren Bonner and the column Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly both come up with ways to monitor the use of prescription drugs. Bonner's article gives a report of eight different "states that submitted complete 2013 data to PBSS in time to be included in the report." She found that more drugs were being prescribed then the person needed and concluded that prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) can help figure out if a person is misusing their drugs. Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly focuses on New York and their prescription monitoring program (PMP). According to the column "access to prescription narcotics - whether by legal or illegal means - has quadrupled in the past decade," mostly due to the fact that physicians only have to report certain narcotics within 45 days. Overall, both articles state the problem, people misusing prescription drugs, and give a pretty simple solution, ways to monitor the drug prescription better, to solving the problem.
~ Jocelyn Pitlick Stricter prescription monitoring proposed in New York. (2012). Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly, 24(4), 4-5. Bonner, Loren. "CDC: Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs Can Help Reduce Misuse." American Pharmacists Association. APhA, 20 Oct. 2015. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.. |
English 101Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2015
Categories
All
|