27 March, 2008

Khadija Kamara, Freetown

Adolescence and Drugs

Today’s adolescents expect fast results, and dealing in drugs is part of that expectation. Millions of people find it impossible to get started in the morning without coffee or cigarettes, or to relax in the evening without a drink. It is little wonder that by their senior year secondary school, 80% of late adolescents have tried alcohol, 71% have tried a cigarette, and 42% have used marijuana.

Adolescents try drugs for many reasons of course; its prevalence for drugs in society is just one of them. Adolescence itself is a time of experimentation, and many adolescents explore substances as well as roles and ideas. Part of the attraction of illegal drugs such as cigarettes, marijuana, and alcohol, is that they are used by adults and if adolescents use them, they feel more adult.

Alcohol is usually the first drug adolescents try; many people do not think of alcohol as a drug because its use is so embedded in the context of everyday life, but it is a powerful of the control nervous system (CNS), it looses inhabitations and makes individuals feel more spontaneous. As the blood alcohol level rises, activities controlled by the central nervous system are increasingly affected.

Cigarettes contain nicotine, which is both a stimulant and a depressant.  Most adolescents who smoke start before they reach high school. About 22% of high school seniors smoke cigarettes frequently. Most adolescents who start to smoke have tried unsuccessfully to stop the use of cigarettes, and alcohol is associated with the use of others illicit substances. Marijuana is a mild hallucinogen that affects thought, perception, reaction time, and coordination, long term heavy use carries a number of potential health risks, of all illicit drugs marijuana is the most frequently used by adolescents. Marijuana has been found to affect the reproduction system both in males and females. In males reducing the number of mortality sperm and also females shortening the phase of the menstrual cycle in which conception may occur. This substance produces a high character with feelings of revelation and peacefulness a sense of heightened awareness of ones surroundings and of at the increased significance of things.

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