The negative effects of illegal drug use - Essay Example

The Negative Effects of Illegal Drug Use Teenagers are naturally curious, one of the reasons given for experimenting with drugs. They also tend to become bored easily and experience frequent emotional highs and lows, all potential factors in teenage drug use. Of all drugs, alcohol is most widely used by both adults and youths but illegal drugs are consumed by a sizeable number of persons as well who emanate from all social circumstances. Drug use increases the chance that students will become pregnant, contract a communicable disease, perform poorly in school and attempt suicide.

More than one-third of all teenagers who are sexually active state that they had been influenced by drug or alcohol use to do something of a sexual nature. Almost one-quarter of these teenagers reported that they had participated in unprotected sex as a result of drug or alcohol use. It is important to note that alcohol is a powerful drug and illegal to minors putting it into the illegal drug category with respect to teenage use. Teens 14 and under who drink or use drugs are more likely to be having sex at double the rate of those in this age group that do not.

High school teenagers that use alcohol are seven times more likely to have sex than their non-drinking peers. Older teens that drink are seven times as likely to have intercourse as non-drinking teens and those that use other drugs five times as likely. Drug and alcohol using teenagers are three and five times, respectively, more likely to have multiple sexual partners (Hartge, 1999). Teenagers experience more emotional fluctuations than do younger children or an adult which explains why the suicide rate is higher in that group.

Teenagers that use drugs and alcohol are more likely to attempt suicide. According to a study of teenagers that attempted suicide, alcohol and drug abuse was the most frequently shared characteristic. Of the teenagers that took their own life, 70 per cent were frequent users of drugs and/or alcohol. However, current research does not demonstrate that drug and alcohol use actually instigates suicide, just that these behaviors are connected.  Teenagers that experience emotional problems to a higher degree than others have a greater propensity to consider suicide and to use drugs.

(Shaffer et al, 1996). Illegal substances most frequently linked with drug-related fatalities include opiates such as heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and barbiturates. Alcohol, particularly when used in combination with harder drugs, is also linked with drug-related deaths. Cannabis and hallucinogens (i.e. L.S.D.; mushrooms) do not share this link. Heroin and other drugs that are injected into the bloodstream are often associated with the deadly disease HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus.

HIV causes AIDS, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Besides being spread from the use of shared, contaminated syringes, AIDS is also contracted by sexual contact, from transfusions by contaminated blood and in the prenatal stages from mother to baby. Prior to 1980, AIDS was not even part of the vocabulary but since has become a widespread epidemic that is incurable and fatal. Drugs are a problematic issue that has caused political and cultural divides among the nations of the world in addition to the societies within them.

The problem is too large for citizens alone to alleviate the situation. It will require governments to take a proactive role in altering legislation regarding the criminalization of drugs and by supplying treatment centers that are open to those that need it most. However, the political debate regarding drugs is usually based on emotion provoking rhetoric and not the facts or realistic solutions. Law enforcement has proved not to be an effective deterrence in drug use and have made the drug war less effective.

The evidence shows that stricter enforcement laws have led to the use of even more potent and more dangerous drugs. Works CitedHartge, John. (1999). “Teen Drugs, Booze, Sex Linked.” CBS News. Available March 9, 2009 from Shaffer, D.; Gould, M. S.; Fisher, P.; Trautment, P.; Moreau, D.; Kleinman, M.; & Flory, M. (1996). “Psychiatric Diagnosis in Child and Adolescent Suicide.” Archives of General Psychiatry. Vol. 53, pp. 339-348.