What effects does drug,physical,sexual abuse or harm have on the wider community?

Answer 1

No simple answer.

But here's a few thoughts. Drug abuse leads to crime, mostly theft to pay for the drugs. Because drug dealing is illegal it leads to gang warfare as dealers stake out territories. Which in turn leads to fear among ordinary residents, and those who can (usually = those with more money) get out of those neighbourhoods so it widens the geographical separation between the poor and those who are 'getting by Ok '.

Physical abuse is connected to the general tolerance for violence in society as manifest in war, computer games, movies, and in violent policing and in a few countries they even still kill ("execute") people as an official punishment. It is a circle of cause and effect in which officially approved violence (such as war) encourages unapproved violence (such as daddy beating up his kids) which encourages approved violence (kids become soldiers and torture other people's soldiers).

Sexual abuse.... there is no tolerance for it in society at large, indeed a read of almost any day's popular newspaers will tell you that paedophiles, rapists and people who do other sexually expressed harm are hated by the general public. So I would suggest that its effects on the wider community are less than those of violence. Nevertheless: vulnerable people feel scared of it out of all proportion to its actual incidence (e.g. old people staying at home after dark; women choosing to go round in pairs to reduce the risk of rape). People who want to help other people (by running a counselling service or a social club or an outing for the elderly or a children's do, for example) have to fill in long complex forms to get police-checked before they are allowed to, so that the public coming to their door can be reassured that the helper is not a sexual abuser in disguise. People who have been sexually abused more often than not feel low self-esteem and get themselves abused, if not sexually again then in other ways because they don't think of themselves as worth standing up for (eg consumer exploitation by rip-offs). (Other people also feel low self-esteem, sexual abuse is by no means the only stimulant to that!)

The existence of both violence and sexual abuse fuel attitudes that "might is right", and "men are more powerful than women and adults than children". Power, even power vgained by force, is therefore esteemed and love less esteemed. Contrast countries (Norway? Japan?) where these twin horrors are less prevalent and sensitive people are more appreciated.

If there were no physical abuse, imperialism (such as the occupation of one country by the army of another) could not happen, people would learn to see all as their sisters and brothers.

Answer 2

some junkie burgled my house, nothing to take so he wrecked the place, scumbag, even when he was caught he was given rehab, should have let him go cold turkey in jail.

Answer 3

It causes a lot of depresion.

Answer 4

All sorts - of residual effects.

Sash.