Teens and Drugs

By Kerel Cooper

Youth being on drugs is something that affects many of our peers. As a student in the city, it’ll introduce you to a lot of things from Marijuana to shrooms. This doesn't just affect the older teens anymore but now you'll spot the kids in the city and sometimes the suburbs of Rochester ranging from around 9-18 are affected with the influence of drugs. This happens when kids are raised around drugs, so they think it's okay to do them or do it to be cool and look older. Drug use within the family can disrupt attachment bonds and interfere with the establishment of secure relationships. In an article I read it said that this will start affecting a child's ability to form healthy connections later in life. On top of that, exposure to drugs during critical periods of brain development can alter neural pathways. Drugs also have the chance to give you brain damage.

This happens both inside of our school walls with kids sneaking products in to use in the bathrooms and outside with our students buying these products from dealers of the streets, relatives, or even making it themselves with their parents’ and/or friends’ full support. In an article I read dating back to 2020,  “782,000 adults aged 18- to 25-years-old used drugs in the last month. 112,000 or 8.31% of 12- to 17-year-olds report using drugs in the last month.”. This is important because if the numbers were this high just 4 years ago imagine how much it has raised ever since the pandemic ended and a half a generation of kids went 2 years with no guidance or role models. We should care because our youth is our future and if our future has the chance to become a bunch of drug addicts that can't go a minute without picking up a weed pen or eating a mushroom, we won't have a future to depend on. Ways we can tackle this problem is by making it harder to obtain drugs and the materials to make them while also bettering the neighborhoods and giving our kids mentors, they can communicate with in and outside of school. Another way we can tackle this problem is by Giving upcoming and current Parents classes on drugs and why they should prevent drug use and convince their students to stay away from them.