The Effects Of Drug Use Essay, Research Paper
Maybe some of us have a good idea that the illegal drug business is still huge but covered somewhere among the “black” economy markets. After all the numbers one could hear tossed around, I am afraid that the sad truth could be, that no one really knows just how huge this business might be, how many people die, how much blood money has been made and than laundered into legal businesses. It is terrible to imagine how many subways and basements come to be “the places for being in the clouds”. According to the National Drug Prevention League drugs are an object of the fastest growing trade, except the Internet.
Some of you might share my opinion that it is a billion-dollar industry that takes a comfortable place in our society.
Drugs have always been with mankind as we seem to carry an inherent need to consume mind altering substances. Many people, who didn’t use drugs before, know only that “that thing” can make them feel in a strange way. But drugs could harm people when using them. It is not a secret that the consequences could be severe for the users. It is essential that people are educated at a very young age and presented with the appropriate social re-enforcers to understand that there are viable reasons that drugs are dangerous – they destroy lives. Drugs affect people’s thinking, awareness and senses.They have huge effect on people’s physical and mental health because of the chemical reactions they provoke in humans’ bodies. They lead to hallucinations, hearing voices, suspision and a feeling of “everyone is out to get me”. Also they make most of the organs in your body disfunction, poison blood, kill brain cells and finally, in most cases, kill the person that abuses them.
Hallucinations can make people experience things that aren’t real. Probably drug users are looking exactly for that “escaping the reality” for a while. Don’t you think that until now, modes of life have been based on the material slavery of the masses? Does our society offer us a different life than working all day long and going home to get some rest for the next working day? Maybe not, and maybe that is why people who are using drugs do believe drugs are the magic formula that leads someone to a world totally different from the boring every-day life.
There is a clich? that says – “People have the strange instinct to break every rule once it is established”. When I went to Holland 3 years ago, I found that the government had established some rules that were quite strange for me at first. In 1976, Holland decriminalized marijuana possession. From that time on one can go into a retail shop and purchase small amounts of marijuana. This could be one of the reasons why Holland has a low level of heroin use, a low level of cocaine use, much lower than most of the other countries do. What actually happened was that the marijuana became the filter, preventing harder drug use.
But do people of our society really know where the drugs are going to and who are their greatest consumers? It is a pity that one of the easiest places to find some drugs could be in schools. Students who turn to more potent drugs usually do so after first using cigarettes and alcohol, and then marijuana. Maybe there are some people who know that drugs transform schools into marketplace for dope dealers. However, students who continue to use drugs learn that drugs can make strange things with their thoughts and feelings, and the greater a student’s involvement with marijuana, the more likely it is that student could begin to use other drugs in conjunction with marijuana. When talking about night parties, I got used to seeing guys smoking marijuana as imperturbably as they drink their beers. Can you think about somebody you know who has taken drugs in front of you? Here, the bad thing could be that you might have seen at least one person taking drugs freely.
“This is a family problem”- some could say. And according Dan Check’s book ” The Success and Failure of George Bush’s War on Drugs” the problem is coming rather from the family than somewhere else. Maybe the society has to rely on the family, as being the strongest entity in its structure to solve the huge-spread drug problem that exists. But here, the weird thing is that parents can’t really see the symptoms of drug addiction in their children. And it is a “public secret” that the gap between parents and kids is getting bigger and bigger. I don’t want to imagine what the difference between parents and children could be in the next generations. But parents shouldn’t wait until they think their child has a problem. Many young people in treatment programs say that they had used alcohol and other drugs for at least two years before their parents knew about it. Maybe their parents should begin to talk earlier about the effects of alcohol and other drugs use and keep the lines of communication open all the time. Isn’t it better to let your child know that you are concerned, and that you can work together to find answers of these so important questions? It is really harder to stop drug use among children once it is there. Most of the times, after students get involved with drugs, they start to sell them or begin to steal from family, friends, or employers in order to buy the next dose.
Determining the consequences of harder drug use could help the new generation stop using them. Maybe facing the answer of this question will make people think about the real price they are paying when drugs are involved. Along with “escaping the boring reality”, the teeth rot out, the appetite is lost, and the stomach doesn’t function properly. The gall bladder becomes inflamed and eyes and skin turn yellow. In some cases, membranes of the nose turn a flaming red and breathing becomes difficult. Oxygen in the blood decreases, bronchitis and tuberculosis develop. Good traits of character disappear and bad ones emerge. Sex organs become affected too. Veins collapse. Nerves snap. Imaginary and fantastic fears blight the mind. Sometimes complete insanity results. Many times, death comes much too early. Such is the torment of being a drug addict and such is the plague of being one of the walking dead bodies. The statistics show that in the period 1994 – 1999 the rate of death caused by “hard-core” drugs use has increased with 6%.
Maybe the answer for preventing humans and most of all the young people from taking dope is hidden somewhere among all these questions that are hard to be faced by the society. Who is responsible for this to happen? And who is really interested in preventing the dope disaster? Is there something that can be done if we, the human beings, do not realize the importance of the dope problem?
Drugs have made a tremendous impact on American society over the past thirty to forty years, yet many Americans are ambivalent regarding their opinions relating to drugs in terms of decriminalization, availability, impact on society, and mental and physical health impacts.
The public – namely children – must still be informed of the negaive consequences of drug use.
Check, Dan. “The Success and Failure of George Bush’s War on Drugs”,
http://turnpike.net/~jnr/bushwar.htm.
Drug and Alcohol Recovery Network, http://www.darnweb.com/darnFrame.html
National Drug Prevention League, http://www.health.org/pubs/strafact/straight.htm#marijuana
National Institute of Drug Abuse, http://www.nida.gov/Infofax/marijuana.html