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Fact 3: Illegal drugs are illegal because
they are harmful.
There is a growing
misconception that some illegal drugs can be taken safely—with
many advocates of legalization going so far as to suggest it can serve
as medicine to heal anything from headaches to bipolar diseases. Today’s
drug dealers are savvy businessmen. They know how to market to kids.
They imprint Ecstasy pills with cartoon characters and designer logos.
They promote parties as safe and alcohol-free. Meanwhile, the drugs
can flow easier than water. Many young people believe the new “club
drugs,” such as Ecstasy, are safe, and tablet testing at raves
has only fueled this misconception.
Because of the
new marketing tactics of drug promoters, and because of a major decline
in drug use in the 1990s, there is a growing perception among young
people today that drugs are harmless. A decade ago, for example, 79
percent of 12th graders thought regular marijuana use was harmful; only
58 percent do so today. Because peer pressure is so important in inducing
kids to experiment with drugs, the way kids perceive the risks of drug
use is critical. There always have been, and there continues to be,
real health risks in using illicit drugs.
Drug use can be
deadly, far more deadly than alcohol. Although alcohol is used by seven
times as many people as drugs, the number of deaths induced by those substances
are not far apart. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC), during 2000, there were 15,852 drug-induced deaths; only slightly
less than the 18,539 alcohol-induced deaths.
Ecstasy
 Ecstasy
has rapidly become a favorite drug among young party goers in the U.S.
and Europe, and it is now being used within the mainstream as well.
According to the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, Ecstasy
use tripled among Americans between 1998 and 2001. Many people believe,
incorrectly, that this synthetic drug is safer than cocaine and heroin.
In fact, the drug is addictive and can be deadly. The drug often results
in severe dehydration and heat stroke in the user, since it has the
effect of “short-circuiting” the body’s temperature signals
to the brain. Ecstasy can heat your body up to temperatures as high
as 117 degrees. Ecstasy can cause hypothermia, muscle breakdown, seizures,
stroke, kidney and cardiovascular system failure, as well as permanent
brain damage during repetitive use, and sometimes death. The psychological
effects of Ecstasy include confusion, depression, anxiety, sleeplessness,
drug craving, and paranoia.
The misconception
about the safety of club drugs, like Ecstasy, is often fueled by some
governments’ attempts to reduce the harm of mixing drugs. Some
foreign governments and private organizations in the U.S. have established
Ecstasy testing at rave parties. Once the drug is tested, it is returned
to the partygoers. This process leads partygoers to believe that the
government has declared their pill safe to consume. But the danger of
Ecstasy is the drug itself — not simply its purity level.
Cocaine
Cocaine is a powerfully
addictive drug. Compulsive cocaine use seems to develop more rapidly
when the substance is smoked rather than snorted. A tolerance to the
cocaine high may be developed, and many addicts report that they fail
to achieve as much pleasure as they did from their first cocaine exposure.
Physical effects
of cocaine use include constricted blood vessels and increased temperature,
heart rate, and blood pressure. Users may also experience feelings of
restlessness, irritability, and anxiety. Cocaine-related deaths are
often the result of cardiac arrest or seizures followed by respiratory
arrest. Cocaine continues to be the most frequently mentioned illicit
substance in U.S. emergency departments, present in 30 percent of the
emergency department drug episodes during 2001.
Marijuana
Drug legalization
advocates in the United States single out marijuana as a different kind
of drug, unlike cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. They say it’s
less dangerous. Several European countries have lowered the classification
of marijuana. However, as many people are realizing, marijuana is not
as harmless as some would have them believe. Marijuana is far more powerful
than it used to be. In 2000, there were six times as many emergency
room mentions of marijuana use as there were in 1990, despite the fact
that the number of people using marijuana is roughly the same. In 1999,
a record 225,000 Americans entered substance abuse treatment primarily
for marijuana dependence, second only to heroin—and not by much.
At a time of
great public pressure to curtail tobacco because of its effects on health,
advocates of legalization are promoting the use of marijuana. Yet, according
to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Studies show that someone
who smokes five joints per week may be taking in as many cancer-causing
chemicals as someone who smokes a full pack of cigarettes every day.”
Marijuana contains more than 400 chemicals, including the most harmful
substances found in tobacco smoke. For example, smoking one marijuana
cigarette deposits about four times more tar into the lungs than a filtered
tobacco cigarette.
Those are the
long-term effects of marijuana. The short-term effects are also harmful.
They include: memory loss, distorted perception, trouble with thinking
and problem solving, loss of motor skills, decrease in muscle strength,
increased heart rate, and anxiety. Marijuana impacts young people’s
mental development, their ability to concentrate in school, and their
motivation and initiative to reach goals. And marijuana affects people
of all ages: Harvard University researchers report that the risk of
a heart attack is five times higher than usual in the hour after smoking
marijuana.
 
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