decriminalize drugs Essay -- essays research papers

One the many controversies in our country today, regards the prohibition of illegal narcotics. Deemed unhealthy, hazardous, and even fatal by the authorities that be; the U.S. government has declared to wage a â€Å"war on drugs.† It has been roughly fifteen years since this initiative has begun, and each year the government shuffles more money into the unjust cause of drug prohibition. Even after all of this, the problem of drugs that the government sees still exists. The prohibition of drugs is a constitutional anomaly. There are many aspects and sides to look at the issue from, but the glaring inefficiency current laws exude is that any human should have the right to ingest anything he or she desires. The antagonist on the other end believes that by doing so chaos would result because of the ingestion of said substances. This purely speculation, and we have seen in the history of man that this has never occurred nor is there reason to believe it will happen this time. Many proponents of the current drug laws claim that legalization and/or decriminalization would in turn increase the number of drug users. If a drug is legalized/decriminalized, the price will fall and the quantity of demand will rise. The evidence from prohibition suggests we can expect two broad patterns of response if legalization occurs. First, there will be a small rise in consumption, which will take place to some extent across the spectrum of consumers. People who had never used drugs may choose to use them. Secondly, there will be a change in the nature of the drugs used and in the way in which they will be used. Specifically, there will be a move toward less intensive drug forms and less abusive patterns of use. When drugs are illegal, more damaging drugs drive out less damaging ones. In jurisdictions that liberalize their drug laws, this process will reverse itself. The evidence on this from Prohibition is unequivocal: as soon as repeal occurred, the consumption of hard liq uor dropped by more than two-thirds. In addition, there was a massive shift from higher potency liquor toward the lower-proof varieties of liquor. The vast majority of all people, addicts and alcoholics included, do not consume drugs as a means of destroying their lives. Nor do they consume them intending to become addicted to them. Abuse and addiction are the adverse consequences that sometimes occur when drugs are ... ...its goal and at this rate we as a nation will run out of money long before it does ever come close. The real tragedy of this situation are those who suffer, and those are the ones incarcerated. From the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1997 3 out of 4 state and 4 out of 5 federal prisoners may be characterized as an alcohol or drug involved offender. The percentage of those in prison for drug offenses was 54.8% in 2002. Prisons are overcrowding and it seems less money is being put into them. Prison sentences are being handed out everyday and the average length of those put in for drugs has doubled from 1986 to 1999. The rehabilitation of these â€Å"criminals† is almost nonexistent. The culture inside of prison hardly reinforces the recovery of the inmates, instead it breeds a criminal culture from which it s hard to escape. In conclusion, the government’s war on drugs has not been successful to date, and shows no sign of victory in the future. I think it that is about time we reconsider what values we hold high and take a second look at the damage that already has been done by the war on drugs. What it comes down to is personal freedom and the constitutional anomaly that destroys it.

Jillian Michaels Biographical Essay Essay

People tend to gain weight because they want to fill an emotional void. For many, this void get filled with food. Like a chasm, the void represents a deep hole that feels inescapable. Most people feel so insecure and weak, that the idea of losing weight seems insurmountable. Jillian Michaels, the trainer from The Biggest Loser, helps people overcome emotional obstacles that manifest themselves in their physical beings. Born in Los Angeles California, and raised in Santa Monica, Jillian carried around issues like that of any child. Devastated by her parents’ divorce, Jillian found herself struggling with weight problems in her early teens. At the age of twelve, Jillian weighed almost 175 pounds. Realizing Jillian’s weight problem, her mom signed her up for a martial arts class. Five years later, at the age of seventeen Jillian put her passion for fitness to work and became a personal trainer. Today, Jillian stands at 5’2†, and weighs about 125 pounds. Although petite, the rambunctious character shines through in her reality show The Biggest Loser. Oftentimes, Jillian screams, â€Å"Unless you puke, faint, or die, keep going!† As these words echo through the gym, Jillian Michaels gives out beatings to her contestants, weighing in at almost four hundred pounds, these people allowed themselves to become morbidly obese. Glued to a couch for years, you might, in fact, mistake these people for a bouncy house. In one day on The Biggest Loser, they go from zero movement to full-fledged cardio vascular activity. Using erratic techniques such as plyometrics, boxing, and circuit training, weight gets shredded by the pound. Most might say that Jillian Michaels comes off as intimidating and mean, mainly because she enjoys screaming at people and watching them drop like flies. Like a drill Sargent, Jillian Michaels yells at her contestants as if they were soldiers. Her scream, shrill and blood curdling, encourages and motivates. These contestants, basically on the edge of death, put their lives in the hands of Jillian Michaels. She only yells because she cares and wants to help these people save their lives. Exercise, especially on the Biggest Loser, holds considerable importance. However, Jillian finds it crucial to also eat healthy. While you do burn calories exercising, you can just as easily eat right through them. Jillian, of course, uses her own life as an example for how people should eat and live. Eating mainly organic, she doesn’t see the need to feed our bodies harsh preservatives and chemicals, such as Taco Bell. In many health magazines, Jillian also talks about portioning. She says as long as you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. Although difficult, it definitely can be achieved. While considered uptight and neurotic, Jillian does, however, show a compassionate side. She pushes everyone until they break, or until their emotions start to bubble over. Latching on like a leach, Jillian starts to focus on the source of the problem. It is a reoccurring theme that obese people gain weight due to psychological factors. Well aware of this, Jillian uses it to her advantage. She finds the issue that made these people gain weight in the first place, and then helps them accept it. By discovering the original problem, these people start to better understand themselves. Jillian helps them realize why they gained weight, and this allows them to prevent it from happening again. Many people hire a personal trainer to get their butt kicked; or maybe to push them farther than they thought imaginable. With two reality shows, six books, and multiple fitness videos, we can conclude that Jillian Michaels is here to help. Jillian stresses the idea of exercise and healthy eating, while also encouraging the idea of therapy and clearing up your past. At first glance you might say that Jillian comes off as a simple TV character who doesn’t really care about anyone but herself. However, after thorough digging, the love Jillian shows for humanity becomes apparent. Finding drive or desire to exercise sometimes proves to be difficult. With Jillian Michaels’ help, you will find the support and inspiration you need to get off the couch and start moving. Making the world better one over weight person at a time, I hope to one-day give back to the world as much as Jillian Michaels.

The Effect of the Octopus Watch on the Task Completion of Self-Care Skills in Children with Autism - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 6 Words: 1903 Downloads: 10 Date added: 2019/02/14 Category Medicine Essay Level High school Tags: Autism Essay Did you like this example? Independence is the ultimate goal for the majority of individuals in our society. For many, this goal is attained sometime between 18 to 30 years of age. However, for other individuals, such as those diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), full independence may never be attained; the aim then becomes to minimize the dependency on caregivers and providers. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "The Effect of the Octopus Watch on the Task Completion of Self-Care Skills in Children with Autism" essay for you Create order According to Shattuch, Narendorf, Cooper, Sterzing, Wagner and Taylor (2012), about 80% of adults with autism live at home and only 6% have paid jobs. These statistics are alarming, clearly indicating that greater efforts are needed to design and use effective interventions that teach long-lasting functional daily living skills to individuals with disabilities. Functional living skills are those necessary to be an independent and productive individual in society (Hong, Davis, Neely, Ganz, Morin, Ninci, Boles, 2017); they include a variety of skills, from toileting and personal care to grocery shopping, banking and social skills (Ayres, Mechling, Sansosti, 2013). Given some of the core characteristics of ASD, such as repetitive and stereotypic behaviors, deficits in language and communication skills, and poor attending skills, individuals with autism heavily depend on others to accomplish daily living skills (Hong et al., 2017). According to Hume, Loftin, and Lantz (2009) there are three particular factors of ASD that hinder the acquisition and maintenance of skills: prompt dependence, initiation, and generalization of skills. Prompt dependence refers to learners relying on their instructors or caregivers to help them complete a task (even after they have already learned the task) (Mays Heflin, 2011). Initiation refers to the lack of motivation to initiate different tasks, such as chores, homework or even social interactions and, again, reliance on others to get started; Last, generalization refers to the individual’s ability to demonstrate learned skills with untrained stimuli and people, as well as in untrained settings (Hume et al., 2009). Hume et al. (2009) also reviewed three intervention strategies that have been effective in increasing independence in individuals with autism: Self- monitoring, individual work systems and video- modeling. These interventions are believed to be successful because they all focus on shifting stimulus control from continuous adult prompts during tasks to alternative stimuli. In self-monitoring, the individual learns to discriminate and record the occurrence or absence of a particular target behavior. In this intervention, the stimulus control remains within the individual; that is, the learner is the one who attends to his own behavior and determines if the behavior meets the requirement for reinforcement. When teaching self-monitoring skills (i.e., ability to monitor one’s own behavior) in individuals with autism, four steps are followed: (1) creating an operational definition for the target behavior, (2) determining reinforcers, (3) choosing a self-management method or device, and (4) teaching the learner to use the selected method (Hume et al., 2009). This strategy has been effective in changing a variety of behaviors seen in individuals with ASD. For example, when monitoring their own behaviors, individuals have improved on-task behavior (Callahan Rademacher, 1999), reduced stereotypic behavior (Koegel Koegel, 1990), increased pro-social beh aviors (Morrison, Kamps, Garcia, Parker, 2001), and, most importantly for the purpose of this study, increased the performance of daily living skills without prompts from the caregiver or provider (Pierce Schreibman, 1994). With self-monitoring, the learner has greater autonomy and responsibility, which reduces the dependence on prompts from others in their environment (Hume et al., 2009). Similarly, an individual work system is a teaching strategy that highlights visual supports and focuses on reducing the recurrent need for teacher prompts and feedback and increasing independent functioning (Hume et al., 2009). In individual work systems, the learner practices mastered skills in a visually organized setting. In this setting, the work system transmits four pieces of information: (1) the target task the learner is supposed to complete, (2) how much work the individual needs to do, (3) how the learner will know when he/she is finished with the task, and (4) what to do once the task has been completed. This strategy uses a left-to-right system where the learner completes all of the activities placed on their left and then moves them to the right (i.e., the finished pile) as they complete them. In this intervention, the stimulus control shifts from the caregiver’s or provider’s prompts to the visual stimuli presented. Video modeling is another visual strategy that promotes teaching different skills with minimal prompts from others. This is the third intervention reviewed by Hume et al. (2009). With video modeling, the individual learns a skill by imitating the behavior modeled by another person in a video. This technique is appealing to individuals with ASD because it helps them attend to relevant information required for the task while blocking out distractions. Furthermore, watching videos is a pleasurable activity for most individuals with ASD (Hume et al., 2009). One strategy not mentioned by Hume et al. (2009) that has also been effective in promoting independent skills and reducing prompt dependency is the use of visual activity schedules (VAS) (Koyama Wang, 2011). This approach utilizes visual cues to teach the learner a sequence of activities or tasks independently (McClannahan Krantz, 1999). The purpose of activity schedules is to give the learner a visual cue of what will come next in his or her schedule. The visual cues are pictures, photographs or textual prompts related to the task. For example, an image of a sink would signify it is time to wash hands and an image of a bed would represent time to go to sleep. Parallel to the interventions mentioned earlier, stimulus control can be transferred from the caregiver or provider to the picture. Once the learner masters responding to the picture cues alone, the pictures can then steer behavior in the absence of a caregiver (Koyama Wang, 2011). Outcomes of existing research have shown that people with disabilities can learn to use picture cues so effectively that they can even follow successfully multiple long behavior chains (e.g., washing hands, brushing teeth and then dressing). These results are significant because they indicate that VAS can be a useful strategy in reducing prompt dependency in individuals with disabilities, while promoting independence. Furthermore, activity schedules are not limited to particular ages, intellectual functioning or diagnosis and can be adapted and individualized for all persons (Koyama Wang, 2011). A review of the literature by Knight, Sartini, and Spriggs (2015) examined 16 studies to determine if visual activity schedules can be considered an evidence-based practice. Interventions are believed to be evidence-based when they have consistently shown to be effective in at least five research studies, three geographical locations, and with a minimum of 20 participants (Knight et al., 2015). Based on the studies reviewed, the authors determined that visual activity schedules meet the criteria to be called an evidence-based practice and can be used to maintain, expand and generalize a variety of skills in multiple settings. Further, their results suggested that VAS can be used to (1) teach on-task behavior and appropriate transitions, (2) decrease latency to begin tasks, and (3) decrease the need of prompts during transitions. Similar to the results of Knight et al. (2015), in a literature review by Koyama and Wang (2015), they found that activity schedules increased engagement and on-task behavior. They also suggested that one reason why disruptive behaviors may decrease with activity schedules is that as individuals allocate more time on on-task behavior less time is allocated to maladaptive behaviors. One caveat they discovered from different studies is that when the researchers removed the activity schedules, on-task performance declined to baselines rates. However, as soon as they represented the activity schedules, performance increased back to post-treatment levels. This finding is important because the mode of presentation may have higher significance than we think; in other words, the way in which the visual schedule is presented to the individual (e.g., binder, book, Velcro strips, or portable device) may be a crucial variable in determining the success the individual will have with following th e schedule. Due to the previously mentioned deficits observed in individuals with autism such as stereotypic behaviors and poor attending skills, activity schedules that require the individual to carry a binder or book with multiple pictures may be cumbersome. In a situation where the child loses one picture from the schedule or misplaces the entire binder, then he/she will not be able to follow independently the activities scheduled in his day. Thus, other devices that are easier to carry and can be easily accessed may be better alternatives to individuals with attending deficits. In the last years, a couple of studies have embedded activity schedules within different portable devices including a tablet and an iPod touch (Brodhead, Courtney, Thaxton, (2018); Carlile, Reeve, Debar, 2013). For example, Brodhead et al. (2018) evaluated the effects of using a visual activity schedule embedded within an iPad to vary the play across different applications in three children with autism (age range 4-9). The activity schedule was a six-slide presentation created with the keynote application (similar to PowerPoint). The first page showed the participant’s name and the second through the fourth page depicted two pictures on each slide: one of a timer application and one of the application they had to play during that slide. The fifth slide showed the picture of the YouTube application and a timer, and the sixth slide said, â€Å"The end.† Brodhead et al. (2018) used manual guidance to teach each participant how to follow the schedule and did not provide any praise or tangible reinforcers during teaching sessions. Nonetheless, they programmed the YouTube application to be at the end of each sequence to potentially serve as a reinforcer for the completion of the previous three tasks. Results showed that all participants varied their play from one application during baseline to an average of four applications during treatment. In the same way, Carlile et al. (2013) taught four children (ages 8-12) with autism to independently organize their spare time by using a visual activity schedule embedded within an iPod touch and in the absence of a supervisor or reinforcement. The researchers added five pictures (of different activities) to the photo icon on the iPod touch, and the participants followed the schedule in the order of the pictures. Similar to Brodhead et al. (2018), Carlile et al. (2013) used manual guidance to teach the participants how to complete the activity schedule; however, they faded prompts using a progressive-time delay procedure instead of using graduated guidance. They also used nine different levels to fade the proximity of the experimenter and thin the schedule of reinforcement from FR-2 (i.e., reinforcer delivered after every two correct responses) to no reinforcement at all. Before the intervention, none of the participants were able to correctly follow any of the components in the ac tivity schedule provided on the iPod Touch. After the intervention, the percentage of correctly completed components increased from 0% to an average of 95% in all participants. The percentage of intervals scored on-task also increased for all participant from an average of 15% to an average of 90%. Both studies, Brodhead et al. (2018) and Carlile (2013) demonstrated that activity schedules were effective in increasing on-task behavior, the percentage of correctly completed steps and improving independence altogether. To date, there have not been any published studies examining the use of activity schedules embedded within a watch to increase the task completion of self-care skills in children with autism. Thus, the present study will assess the effect of the Octopus Watch on the task completion of three self-care skills in four children diagnosed with ASD. The dependent variables will include the latency and duration of completing tasks and the percentage of correctly completed activity schedule components in the absence of a caregiver or provider.