Do you
remember when marijuana used to be the most popular and main drug used among
teens? Well, according to the scholarly article, “Teen Prescription Drug Use”
more youth initiate drug use with prescription pain relievers than with
marijuana. In two recent studies displayed by the article, “5.2 million
respondents 12 or older had used prescription pain relievers nonmedically in
the previous month—a 10% increase since 2005.” As you can see, this is becoming
a huge problem. Many teens crave prescription drugs such as Xanax, Adderall,
Valium and Vicodin, and unfortunately these days it is not hard to get a hold
of these narcotics if they aren’t prescribed to you.
Abusing
prescription drugs can lead to serious health risks and addiction problems, in
which many people have unintentionally overdosed. I’m sure you all have heard
of stories of families losing their innocent child due to an “accidental” or
maybe even purposeful overdose of prescription medication. This can be traced
back to the physicians who prescribe these drugs, who often times misdiagnose
patients or give them too large of a dose of the medication. Many patients are
then prompted to sell the drugs or just give them to their friends who do not
need it. Obviously, doctors are not the only ones at fault here and are not the
only reason why this problem exists. No matter what, teens are still going to
have the option and gateway into misusing prescription drugs.
The best
technique that can be used to prevent teens from abusing prescription drugs is
to persuade them to not want too. If a teen does not have any motivation to pop
a Xanax when feeling stressed out, then the prevalence of this issue would
decrease. Teens must be exposed to the negative side of these harmful
narcotics, instead of only hearing about the relaxing and happy affects. This
is why I want to create a rap song directed toward a younger audience—anywhere from
the ages of 10-16—to expose the dangerous side of abusing prescription drugs.
Ironically,
drug use is a common topic used among rappers in their songs. For example, Lil
Wayne always talks about how much he loves mixing Codeine and sprite, which can
only influence his audience to want to do the same. Hip hop is such a popular
genre of music for teens, so I think it would only be right to create a song
they can relate to. In my song, I want to to tell a story. First, I will
explain a story about a teen who started taking Adderall for concentration
which led to the teen experimenting with other narcotics such as Vicodin and
Xanax. I will make it clear that him and his friends just did it for fun and to
feel the “high” but soon enough he found it impossible to stop. Then, I will
say one day he was found dead and show how devastated his family and friends
were. I also want to include all of the symptoms teens face during withdrawals
to persuade the younger audience to not want to get involved with prescription
drugs.
As for an
older audience, I was thinking about creating a series of Facebook posts from
different parents who have lost their children. These posts would be geared to
the parent’s friends/extended family and include the date/time of the memorial.
I would include how the death was unexpected, and some cases the child would be
prescribed the drugs and in other cases not. Aside from the Facebook posts, I was thinking of writing an email from a parent who lost their teen to overdose when she (the teen) wasn't even prescribed any drugs. The email would be to the teens friend's doctor who prescribed the drugs to the teen who sold the drugs to her friend (the one who died). Instead of attacking the physician, the email would serve as an eye opener to prevent cases like this from happening again. There would definitely be information in the email to make the doctor feel extremely guilty and want to reevaluate the amount of medication he is dispersing and the reasoning for dispersing. I just don't know if the email would fit the criteria, so please let me know what you think!
I think this is a very interesting perspective. I have definitely thought about a doctor's role in the increasing rate of teenage drug overdose. I can see how it contributes to your idea, but I think the main point you should focus on that best fits your genres of the rap song and the Facebook posts is the idea of the reasons the teens want and seek out the drugs. The drugs will always be somehow available, they kids just need the knowledge of their harm to resist the urge of buying them. How can you make sure you're using the best info for the genre you pick?
ReplyDeleteThe rap song idea is really cool. I think you can make a really cool WP3 with that. Following the pattern and conventions of a Lil Wayne or Drake song can help you stay within the genre. Facebook posts are also an interesting one. There is a very specific format of a Facebook post about losing a loved one as we saw with the Murder! (Rhetorically) exercise. You can look back at that for ideas.
It was really insightful and helpful the way you summarized the scholarly article you found. That way, it was easier for me to understand why you chose the genres to translate the article to and how you planned on doing it. The rap song is a really genius idea because not only does it really target a younger audience, but already rap songs often talk about drugs, but not in the way you plan on addressing the topic. Are you going to include statistics in your song? Or do you think that would ruin the whole rap genre that you’re using? With the genre directed to the older audience, I see why you might want to include the emails, but I think that you can still get that content in there by using just facebook. For example, you can have an argument between a parent and a doctor in the comment section of one or more of your posts. I think that both your plan for both genre translations are really creative and fit the topic of teen drug abuse because they all are in the pop culture sphere.
ReplyDeleteYou have a very interesting topic of choice for your WP3 if you do choose to use it. Throughout the first several paragraphs I got a lot of information about the accessibility and negative effects of drug use on teens, however I do not believe that was the focal point of this PB. This PB was supposed to give a detailed description of how you would make your two new genres tailored to a younger and older audience. When you were doing this towards the end you seemed to put more about the content you were going to put in there and less about its structure.
ReplyDeleteThe Chief is spitting some lyrics?! The Chief is busting out a RAP SONG?! Hellllll yeah! I’m going to start playing it during our future journal freewrites at the beginning of class.
ReplyDeleteIn all seriousness, the reasons you laid out before mentioning your new rap career are excellent reasons to transform the scholarly piece into something that can educationally reach younger populations and warn them about the real dangers of Rx abuse.
Re: your FB post idea, I mentioned this to someone else, but it’s relevant for you too—that’s definitely it’s own genre! In addition to the visual conventions, focus on how this genre plays out socially in the real world. I encourage you to really put yourself in the parents’ shoes and think hard about how this issue would really impact them. What “rhetorical situation” would they be in? Were there warning signs? Is it a problem in the school or community? Would the parents reply to her friends’ posts, and did one of them have a child who dealt with this too? I guess what I’m getting at is: when you’re assuming the role of “pretend” people, it’ll likely be a lot more realistic if you think about context, prior experiences, goals, assumptions, and the array of players involved.
Also, make sure you’re thinking about which “big ideas” or what “essence” of the scholarly piece that you want to tease out for each transformed genre—they don’t necessarily have to be the same thing.
Z
Wow this is such a cool idea, I am a little jealous. The topic is kind of intense/dark, which is cool/depressing. I thought it was great how you extracted the essence of the scholarly article in both an effective and interesting way. The essence seems to be the content, which makes sense, and makes it more interesting. Both of the genres, older and younger, seem to make sense in terms of the prompt given, as in they connect to the scholarly article in a meaningful way. Which is awesome. And both of them seem to be entertaining both to read and to write which is good for you I suppose. I really liked the older audience idea. It seems like a good place to write dramatically. Overall, I think that you picked a good idea that fits into the prompt nicely, good work!!
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