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The Thoughts of the Youth in Turkey on Drug-fighting Policies
JOURNAL OF YOUTH RESEARCHES
In Turkey, where the proportion of young population is very high among the countries
within the similar income category, the drugs and the problems arising from use of
drugs increase and become dangerous day by day. Drug use eradicating the familial
union, which is the basic dynamics of society, and the number of addicts living depen-
dent on those harmful things among the society reveal the extent to which the danger
has reached. In this context, the development and improvement of the public policies
applied in the field of fighting against the drug problem is of great importance for all
segments of the society.
Today, states and certain international organizations develops and implements vari-
ous public policies in order to be able to cope with the problem. There are a number
of public policies developed also in Turkey in the field of combating the drug prob-
lem. However, the existence of developed public policies solely by the states or pub-
lic institutions is not considered sufficient. The ability to effectively fight against that
problem and the success of current public policies are closely related to the level of
citizens’ awareness about the policies, and their way of perceiving on those policies.
That is because, success on the public policies not adopted by citizens is achieved
very difficult, and “those who are elected have the final word on the decision about
the public policies” (Kutlu, 2006: 14). In this regard, it is very important to determine
how the young perceive the issue of drugs and detect their awareness level about
drug addiction and also formulate effective public policies or adapt them accordingly.
It is seen that the concept of “public policy” is dealt with and defined in many different
ways and with different perspectives in the literature. It is difficult to take a generally
accepted definition that is agreed upon in this context. Dye (1992) defines public po-
licy as “anything that political power (the state) prefers to do or not to do” (1992: 2).
Anderson (2010) argues that a definition of “what governments choose to do or not
to do” is sufficient, while it is not enough for making a systematic analysis of public
policy; for that reason he mentions the necessity of a more precise description. The-
refore, he describes the concept of public policy as “a sequence of aimed actions
or inactions developed by state organs and public officials, followed by an actor or
actors in relation with a particular issue or problem” (2010: 6-7).
On the other hand public policy analysis might be defined as; “identifying public prob-
lems, proposing solutions for those problems, selecting one of those proposals as a
solution alternative to be implemented by using a number of criteria, implementing
the selected solution and evaluating whether the problem identified in the first stage
in solved, and repeating the same process by redefining the problem if not solved “
(Yıldız, Babaoğlu and Şahin, 2016: 135).
