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I have been in high school for three years now, and all I
really need to ask is, "Where’d the good clean fun go?"
I’m not referring to standing on the lawn chucking huge metal
darts at each other, either. In this day and age, it feels
as if society is telling us that to have fun we have to use
drugs. What people usually don’t realize, though, is that
drugs are not just acid or ecstasy. Caffeine, alcohol, and
tobacco are also defined as drugs due to the fact that they
alter your body’s natural processes. Another startling fact
is that more than 60% of teens admit to the fact that drugs
were sold, used, or kept at their schools. When did we hang
up our baseball mitts and put our board games in our closets!?
So at this point, we know drugs are a problem in the lives
of teenagers and young adults in today’s society. So my question
is what are we going to do to change this?
By all means I’m not suggesting that society needs to conform
to some 1950’s, Disney Movie creation where everything looks
like it’s taken a few Prozac. The cold hard truth is that
everyone has problems, and we cannot just go on acting like
they are not there. To put every single person who has ever
used a drug into a box as a failure or bad person would be
like putting every blue-eyed blonde-haired man into a box
labeled Nazi! We all know drugs are not something to be approved
of, but what people need to see is that everyone creates their
own actions due to something that has happened to them, or
something that they have seen. It’s an endless cycles of chain
reactions that snowball until someone intervenes, although
there is a better alternative.
I have been a member of a club called STAND & SERVE for the
past year, and one thing they have taught us about is Primary
Prevention. Primary Prevention is where you go and figure
out why these chains of events have happened, and to stop
them from their roots. It can be related to the likes of weeds.
If you leave one, it will continue to spread like a plague,
but if you pluck it out, it’s gone for good. The best part
for the penny-pinchers in the government in this day and age
is that it costs about four times less than intervention.
So, hypothetically speaking, if intervention were to cost
four-million dollars a year, primary prevention would cost
one-million a year. If you ask me, that’s better.
This is the 21st century, we have come a long way, and we
still have a long way to go. As a society, we need to work
together to help people who use drugs to cover up inner pain,
or events in their lives that have hurt them. We need to be
more accepting, even if it means being kind to those who we
dislike. Some people may never comprehend why one would even
consider using drugs, but sometimes it’s just the mere act
of kindness that can change one’s life, so open up your minds
America! Wake up and smell the coffee! We have problems; it’s
just time to start accepting them.
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