The issue of drug abuse among American teens
As soon as most people hear the word drug, the immediate thought is to not pay attention and be close minded about the whole topic. In today’s world, any substance can be turned into a drug, anything from glue all the way to a can of Lysol. The abuse of drugs by teens is astounding and seems almost impossible to stop. How can teens not do drugs when they are put explicitly in their faces by the news, media, sports and entertainment? When heroes such as Barry Bonds have accusations made against them and on a weekly basis a new movie star is sitting in a court room it is almost as if a drug phenomenon has swept the nation. Drug usage in teens is an extremely important topic with many unanswered questions, but how to stop drug usage in teens is an even more crucial subject. I propose that the government legalize all illegal drugs and combine them into a category with drugs that are already legal, but being abused. With this, drugs can have a high tax put on them so that teens will not be able to purchase these such drugs. On top of that, the worries of having drugs spiked with other substances that might be more harmful to teens would diminish if the government was patrolling the drug.
It seems that drug use is increasing each and every year and teens are being more accustomed to going to parties and smoking pot or snorting coke. In 2003, the University of Wisconsin held a survey of sixth graders up through seniors in high school. The survey was about illegal drug use and cigarette smoking. It compared the year 2003 with the year 2002 and stated, “Illegal drug use and cigarette smoking among sixth through twelfth graders increased slightly during the last school year compared with the year before, says a survey released Wednesday”(Wisconsin State Journal). This is evidence of drug usage in teens steadily increasing with each and every year. According to the private study by Pride Surveys, “Nearly one-fourth, or 24 percent, of these teenagers reported using illegal drugs- marijuana, cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens and others- at least once in the 2002-2003 school year, compared with 22 percent the year before”(Wisconsin State Journal). Society seems as if it is in a downward spiral when nearly a quarter of teens between sixth and twelfth grade have done a hardcore drug at least once within the past year. This is very surprising that one in every four teens abuse drugs.
With my proposal, teens would have a much more difficult task of possessing drugs. The tax could be three to four times more than the cigarette tax and would make it seem pointless to use these drugs anymore. This proposal would also help boost our economy, with extra revenue from taxes paid on these drugs, many major benefits can be obtained. With extra tax money, government can focus on putting more money in to our lacking educational system by building more schools and putting teachers through a more rigorous testing phase that would ensure that only the best teachers would be allowed to teach the youth of tomorrow. More importantly, with this proposal, deaths via drugs would drastically decrease as no foreign substances would be allowed to enter the drug.
With all these reasons you may ask why American people have not insisted on the legalization of drugs?The reasons are pretty basic for why the American people have not come in a flurry to put my proposal into effect. First, because the government would be legalizing drugs, it would make it okay for teens to do drugs. My answer to this is that teens are going to abuse drugs anyways, no matter what kind of slogan the government shows them or what they are taught in school, so why not make it safe for them to do it and control the amount issued and received. Teens are abusing legal drugs as well as illegal drugs. A heavy drug that has just come about in the past few years goes by the name OxyContin. This pill is mainly issued to cancer patients with extreme pain. In an article printed in The Charlotte Observer, Detective Chad Moose talks about the range of people who abuse this drug by saying, “Dealers are usually selling out of a house. We’ve gotten dealers selling to anyone from elderly people to kids in school”(Wootson). Legal drugs are not only being put to use by teens but also by the elderly and any person who wants a quick fix. Also, dealers are making thousands of dollars in profits on the black market and doing so tax free. Why not come to reality and start taxing these drugs so the government can be ma make some money off of the use of drugs?
Obviously another reason why the legalization of drugs has not had many people jumping on the bandwagon is simply out of moral issues. It is not right to take drugs and I do not think any parent would want their teen to feel otherwise. Legalization would show teens and Americans that drugs are promoted by the government and that it is alright to consume and use these drugs. It is not possible to change one person’s beliefs but maybe if they thought about it hard enough it would be possible to argue that with the legalization of drugs crime in our nation today would decline. With people no longer being shorted out of money and addicts not having to go to the nearest crack house to bash the windows in and steal drugs, a lot of violence in the world today would be cut out.
Government has tried many solutions to stop drug use and with each one it has failed. With moral issues at stake, the only way to keep drugs away from teens is to drastically tax and legalize them. Under this new proposal, violence and crime will decrease, drugs will be made by medical experts which will make them much more safe and the tax profits will benefit this nation greatly. What else could one ask for ?