Essay, Research Paper: Drug Epidemic

I read this question and immediately one answer came to mind, yes we are in the midst of a drug epidemic. Drugs seem to be a huge problem to this present date. You can walk down any side street in New York City and buy pot or several other drugs. I would call that an epidemic. Everywhere you look you see the issue of drugs being brought up, and the topic of legalizing certain drugs. Is this just another phase the United States is going through or are they really thinking about legalizing pot? Legalizing pot would make people open to a drug, I don't know if everyone understands. This is a drug. An "illegal" drug at the moment. It kills brain cells and can lead to more dangerous side effects, such as addiction. I can see if the government wants to legalize it for medical use, but then people are going to be making up excuses to use pot as a medicine.
Some people may look at drugs as a symbol to our society or our way of life for "troubled" people. However, when I look at drugs I see poverty, alcohol abuse, death, overdose, and crimes. It seems as those drugs eventually leads to all of these circumstances. Drug use can bring along a lot of other things that this country doesn't need and it's unfortunate that people are so stuck into their rut of drug dealing or drug taking. Everyone in this nation has the right to choose their lifestyle and how they want to live it. It's just a matter of choosing the right path and following the correct trends. I've had many chances to do drugs, but I refused because I saw all the stereotypes of druggies and I didn't' want to be a part of that. Drug use seems to be something that has been going on way before my parents were even born. People wanted to take drugs to make them feel good and to get themselves "high". This was popular then and seems to be growing in popularity now. You see people on television and on the movies and they're smoking pot or snorting coke. This seems to make them look rich and glamorous, but Hollywood doesn't show the other side of drug use. The side that makes people overdose and die.
It seems as though other countries don't have as big of a drug problem as us. Our country seems to take the gold for every standing in drugs and crime. Unfortunately these aren't events at the Olympics. Other societies don't have problems like we do and we need to start following in their footsteps. Maybe legalizing marijuana would help decrease drug use, but how do we know for sure? Our government needs to think of a game plan and stick to it because more and more drugs are being made accessible by people. There are a numerous number of drugs that I could have my hands on right now, but I don't want that. We need to start looking at other societies


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