Thursday
Marijuana: A Bad Choice
I come from a fairly small yet diversified city in Southern Illinois. I'm finishing up my final semester in high school, and like many seniors, I'm practically counting down the days to graduation. I spend my free time shopping, watching movies, going to basketball games, or eating out with my friends. Like most teens I know, I've argued with my parents over curfew, I've fought with them over why I wasn't allowed to go to certain places, or why I wasn't allowed do certain activities. The thing is, now that I'm almost 18, it’s becoming time for me to have to make my own decisions. I have to start deciding myself how late to stay out, where to go, who to hang out with, and what situations I'm capable of handling. When I have the ability to make these decisions myself, and not have to ask for permission, there will be far less consequences for my actions. I won't have my parents calling me asking me why I'm late, or having to worry about calling them when I leave somewhere to go somewhere else. When there are fewer consequences, and less chances of getting in trouble, I think that in general people are willing to do a lot more things.
This generalization I've made, about people willing to do more things when there are fewer consequences, I believe also holds true for this concept of legalization of marijuana. The problem is, is that many of us are willing to believe false information about how marijuana is harmless, how its not as bad for us as some of the other drugs, and probably the biggest one of all, how everyone is doing it.
I know that several of you think what I'm about to tell you is a huge exaggeration, that I'm just trying to scare you. I understand, I used to think that the situation may have been over-dramatized to scare people. The truth is, maybe it's time for us to be a little scared. Marijuana is not a harmless drug. The use of marijuana has been linked to all kinds of dangerous damage in our bodies, especially teenagers. Use of marijuana, before the brain is fully developed, can cause an enormous amount of damage to the brain, and nerves connected to the brain. Marijuana has also been shown to cause mental diseases. Also, marijuana is extremely addictive. Many teens do not realize how addictive it is until its too late for them to quit on their own. Over half the teenagers in drug rehab today are there because of marijuana addictions. Many of us want to believe that marijuana is not as bad as crack, meth, LSD, and countless other illicit drugs, but in many cases the people who are on crack and meth started with marijuana. The big thing we want to believe is that it's okay because people say everyone else is doing it. We want to believe that everyone else is doing it, but that none of the bad consequences will happen to us. In reality, thousands of teens die from the use of drugs every year. There's nothing in the world stopping it from being you, unless you simply abstain from drugs. In fact, there is a huge increase in the number of teenagers who are abstaining from drugs in the past few years. With the actual effects that marijuana has on individuals, I can't see our society today be a functional self-sustaining society if the legalization of drugs occurs. |
