FREE ESSAY ON DRUG ABUSE

DRUG ABUSE

Drug Abuse
Drug abuse affects all of us in our daily lives. It ruins families and destroys
relationships. Teens especially are prone to drug abuse due to immense peer pressure,
everyday stress, and depression. Marijuana use is on the rise everywhere, and with
marijuana comes the harder drugs, making drug abuse an important and critical issue in
the world today. There are many issues on different drugs but one sticks in our mind,
marijuana. The push for legalization of marijuana has increased over the years and now
even being used for medical purposes. This leads one to think that legalization is merely
a decade or two away. Justice John McCart agreed that the drug was relatively harmless
but, he added, that it was not up to the courts but the government to change the laws on
pot. 
Governments wage wars on drugs and seem to fail, who can stop all the drugs in the world
from getting into your son or daughters hands, not many people.
Drug cartels sometimes run like invisible needles, pumping drugs into North America like
heroin in the bloodstream. The money being spent on fighting this war on drugs seems to
be to no avail as drug statistics have sky rocketed over the last couple of years. In
1996 44.9% of twelfth graders use marijuana, that's up from 23.9% in 1991. 
Eighth grade marijuana users have increased by 12.1% from 1991 to 1996, a substantial
enough climb to raise concerns about. Drugs are getting easier and easier to get at a
younger age these days. A whopping 21.2% of eighth graders also abuse inhalants (glues,
aerosols, and solvents), these are very dangerous substances to inhale, sometimes causing
permanent brain damage. Are messages not getting through to the kids of the future that
drugs lead to a dead end in life. 
Sports stars, which are role models for today's youth are constantly being caught with
illicit substances. One case in point is the NBA's rookie of the year, 76ers guard, Allen
Iverson was recently arrested for possession of a handgun and marijuana, is this the kind
of person we really want our kids looking up to. Being at the top has its price, which
many actors and sports stars seem to take as a free right to abuse drugs and get away
with it. 
Drugs are a plague on a society that already has enough problems on its hands. Overdoses
are now filling up emergency rooms, costing taxpayers millions. With marijuana on the
verge of legalization one must conclude to one simple question, is it worth the fight
against marijuana or should the government legalize it? The government can legalize
marijuana and make billions of revenue from the tax they could add to it, this would help
our economy and deficit. On the bad side marijuana will be even more readily accessible
to our youth, like a pack of cigarettes for instance, thus creating a more drug dependent
society. Scientific evidence points to the abuse of marijuana leads to, 75% of the time,
the use of harder more harmful drugs. Legalize pot and you might as well legalize all
other drugs because they're going to be in demand as the marijuana smoker desires a
better high.
An addiction to something is more or less an abuse of something, people must learn to
think of the consequences of their actions before they decide to take on a substance.
This is our best bet on safeguarding our youth from these drugs. Drugs do not solve
problems, they create them. As long as drugs are out there no one will go untouched from
these silent killers.