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Fact 3: Illegal drugs are illegal because
they are harmful.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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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