Marijuana: Fact and Fiction

- Kids when they're talking about marijuana call it grass, weed, mary jane, pot, dope, cannabis, reefer, sinsemilla, bud, and many other things.

- Weed is not safer than ciggarettes, like most people think it is. Because many of the harmful chemicals that are found in ciggs are found in weed as well. Weed contains 3-5 tar and carbon monoxide as ciggarette smoke does. It also could lead to respiratory problems, including bronchitis, high blood pressure which could cause heart disease. And many other things along those lines. Also because it's usually inhaled much deeper into the lungs and held 4-5 times longer than ciggarette smoke is.

- Researchers said that people who have been using marijuana for a long time could not even pay attention to information long enough to learn it. Young people that spend their life time high don't learn the skills they need to to be successful in life, which usually has a long-lasting effect on their lives.

- The more the years go by from people using it, the more addictive it gets. It's more potent today than it was back in the 1960's. So therefore today that makes it way more addictive. 120,000 people in the United States get treatment to fix their marijuana addict problem.

- People think that trying marijuana is the normal way to grow up. That's true, in the United States marijuana is the most commonly illegal used drug. 33% of americans over the age of 12 said having tried marijuana at least once in their lives. So 67% have not.

This topic has much interest to me personally because I think it’s very important for young teens to know what drugs can do to their future if they’re abusing drugs. This topic will interest me for 5-6 months because there is so much information out there about it in magazines, the news, internet, books, and other places. There’s always people getting busted with drugs, and getting sent to jail. Or people using drugs because they can and ruin what they have going for them. And if you look it up yourself there will be tons of things about why their bad and should be illegal. This topic will have an impact in my future and present day now because I’m learning about all the bad side effects so hopefully further down the road in my life I’ll know that drugs aren’t the way to go and play it smart. How many teens who have got busted for having drugs by the cops have gotten into a good college? What are the pros and cons of marijuana? What are the long-term and short-term effects of doing drugs? What’s the percentage of kids who use drugs in high school compared the kids who use drugs in middle school?

What I found out was happening with drugs is it’s effecting peoples future immensely. There’s almost a million different types of drugs out there in the world, and ‘club drugs’ are one of the most common ones heard of on the news and internet and places like that. Club drugs are mostly Ecstasy, Ketamine, Rohypnol, Speed, and GHB. They can lead to date rape, permanent brain damage, and chronic depression. Three articles I read about drugs were Better Not Ask, Phychology from the Students Resource Center. Another was Club Drugs: Little Pills, Big Dangers from Weekly Reader Publications. One more was The Effects of Crack and Cocaine from Get Smart About Drugs article. To summarize all three articles the main gist of the three was to send a message about the negatives and what could happen to you if you chose to do drugs. They were all from this year, 2009.

Places where I could go to find information on my topic is pretty much anywhere. As in the internet, news, magazines, books, and people, because drugs is a huge issue and everyone knows a little something about them. I think it’s going to be really easy to find new information and facts about my topic from all of those resources because like I said before it’s a huge issue. I took out two books from the library called The Truth about Drugs and Subtances Use and Abuse. From what I’ve read of them they both are very knowlegdeable and helpful with my topic. The first book The Truth About Drugs, just tells you how bad they are, what theyre used for and information like that. So that book should be a big help with all the little detailed background information that I need to gather.The other is more of the same thing, just with different drugs that you can shoot up, or more towards pills.

The first article Better Not Ask. Phycology Today was dated 2009. The second article Club Drugs: Little Pills, Big Dangers was dated 2008. The third article The Effects of Crack and Cocaine was dated 2009. So all of those articles are pretty up to date. In my own predictions of what I think might progress or change over the next couple of months is nothing, I think it’s going to be the same old same old. People getting busted for drugs, people dieing from drugs, and people having a lack of education because of drugs. I’d like to find out the percentage of kids who have a good education who don’t do drugs compared to the ones who do drugs then go back to get an education and succeed. My topic will eventually change over time because new things come up and happen with drugs. New drugs are made just little things like that.

Five things I could force my myself to think about and learn more about this topic is to research the questions I asked in the first paragraph. I don’t know If I could interveiw anyone yet, maybe I could interveiw someone who has had an experience with drugs and has had the future they always wanted, or the other way around. They’d be a great source of knowledge because they’ve experienced, they knew what happened and they’d be telling me straight up what the result was. I could visit a hospital or something related to one and just ask questions about how many people come in here because of drugs or something like that. I cannot observe anyone with the topic I chose. Because drugs are illegal and that wouldn’t be the smartest choice on my part anyways.