According the Office of Supplied Studies, in a study done in 2001 (cited at bottom), an alarming percentage of US citizens are drug abusers. The reality isn’t that they all die from drug addiction. Another study done on DrugWarFact.org explains that only 17,000 people die from drug abuse yearly. This same study pointed out that about 3 million people in the US have serious drug problems.
So we have all the studies, but what do they mean? Drug abuse doesn’t kill? The reality is that drugs may destroy your life easier than end it. What you do is see the reality behind addiction. I see it as something that destroyed my life. I watched it destroy others. This piece is more a road map than a path to healthy living. It just points out what you need to know.
Understanding:
Drugs don’t kill everyone, but they do destroy many lives. The proof is simple, or seems simple-the US government has been at war with drug abuse for decades. Someone, somewhere cares about how youth lives are being destroyed.
Seeing the Reality:
The reality may be you won’t die. However, couldn’t it be said that even the basic addictions can kill you, if not immediately, but eventually? When a heroin addict uses a needle, and then passes it on, what pictures of AIDs do you see? It’s not lecture; it just means more than dieing. Your life changes as you watch the destruction.
Watching the Destruction:
It might destroy your life. You may not die: you may become homeless or insane, you may get a vicious disease, or you may lose all relationships. What matters is playing this tape all the way to the end. You will need to take action on your own soon.
Taking Action:
Taking action is about putting down the drugs. It’s a philosophy many of us can use: choosing to make the right choice. Youth addiction may be paramount, because more and more drug addicted teens are growing up in a world where you can buy a bag of weed for the price of two movies.
Making a Choice:
It’s still up to you. It’s a choice. What matters isn’t lecture, philosophy, or opinion. The drug addiction reality may seem far away. It won’t happen to you. It doesn’t kill that many people every year. Drugs only rob people of their careers, their health, and their family. The drug addiction reality is that too often people forget, only to be reminded when something bad happens.
Sources:
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Association, <http://www.samhsa.gov/index.aspx>
Drug War Facts, http://www.drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm#illicit
The best information i have found exactly here. Keep going Thank you
I thought this site dealt with pot so what has this article to do with pot? Pot has never killed anyone or given anyone Aids. Pot is not a drug, it’s a herb. Like many herbs used medicinally it has positive and negative qualities and is not for everyone.
Prohibition of pot works as well as it did for alcohol. NOT!
Thousands of people every year die due to prescription drugs and alcohol abuse. Many more die from legally sanctioned drugs than all illicit drugs combined.
An exhaustive search of the literature finds no credible reports of deaths induced by marijuana. The US Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) records instances of drug mentions in medical examiners’ reports, and though marijuana is mentioned, it is usually in combination with alcohol or other drugs. Marijuana alone has not been shown to cause an overdose death.
Source:
National Academy Press, 1999), available on the web at http://www.nap.edu/html/marimed/; and US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, “In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition” (Docket #86-22), September 6, 1988, p. 57.
(Average 1982-1998): According to Canadian researchers, approximately 32,000 hospitalized patients (and possibly as many as 106,000) in the USA die each year because of adverse reactions to their prescribed medications.
Source:
AMA, 1998), Nov. 25, 1998, Vol. 280, No. 20, from the web at http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v280n20/ffull/jlt1125-1.html, last accessed Feb. 12, 2001.
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(2000): “The leading causes of death in 2000 were tobacco (435,000 deaths; 18.1% of total US deaths), poor diet and physical inactivity (400,000 deaths; 16.6%), and alcohol consumption (85,000 deaths; 3.5%). Other actual causes of death were microbial agents (75,000), toxic agents (55,000), motor vehicle crashes (43,000), incidents involving firearms (29,000), sexual behaviors (20,000), and illicit use of drugs (17,000).”
(Note: According to a correction published by the Journal on Jan. 19, 2005, “On page 1240, in Table 2, ‘400,000 (16.6)’ deaths for ‘poor diet and physical inactivity’ in 2000 should be ‘365,000 (15.2).’ A dagger symbol should be added to ‘alcohol consumption’ in the body of the table and a dagger footnote should be added with ‘in 1990 data, deaths from alcohol-related crashes are included in alcohol consumption deaths, but not in motor vehicle deaths. In 2000 data, 16,653 deaths from alcohol-related crashes are included in both alcohol consumption and motor vehicle death categories.” Source: Journal of the American Medical Association, Jan. 19, 2005, Vol. 293, No. 3, p. 298.)
Source:
Mokdad, Ali H., PhD, James S. Marks, MD, MPH, Donna F. Stroup, PhD, MSc, Julie L. Gerberding, MD, MPH, “Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000,” Journal of the American Medical Association, March 10, 2004, Vol. 291, No. 10, pp. 1238, 1241.
Personally, I believe sites like this pander to the stupidity of the average north American sheeple and are in it to make a buck.
Keep pouring money into a failed drug war and send the cops after peaceful laid-back marijuana users while the Mexican cartels invade north America and laugh at how law enforcement runs around picking the low-hanging fruit while they bribe, coerce and kill their way to massive profits.
Not to mention Big Pharma. They’re no better than the cartels other than they are legally permitted to poison and kill thousands to protect their profit margins.
“17,000 people die from drug abuse yearly.”
So, how many people die every year from guns? How about car accidents? How many people do we kill in foreign countries every year? So, should war, guns, and driving be made illegal? Of course not. The same argument can be applied to drugs. While they are of course bad, it’s better to have them legal because that way the people who have them aren’t automatically criminals under the law. People who abuse drugs need medical attention and rehab, not a prison sentence. Prohibition has failed. The drug war has failed. Time for a new strategy.
“Someone, somewhere cares about how youth lives are being destroyed.”
Bull.
If they truly cared about the youth
we would take these illegal drugs out of the hands of drug dealers
and put them in the hands of licensed people
people who have to abide by the law
it is a fact that kids can get weed easier than cigarettes or alcohol
why is this you may ask
because alcohol and cigarettes are regulated
the people selling it can loose their license if they sell to minors
nothing happens to the drug dealer for selling to a minor.
The only PROVEN way to keep drugs away from kids is to legalize them
That’s amazing. It used to be that sites, TV-PSA-spots, slogans, etc. like these were what we would be frightened of (at least that’s what they wanted). Now when I peruse the net I see far fewer than 5-8 yrs. ago, especially compared to ‘98′ and prior. But what I actually pick up is a sort of Jurassic feeling. Like one is a Brontosaurus, another is a Stegosaurus and maybe a site or two in a Barney T-rex suit. Come on, get w/ the latest research and future research which lies just ahead by notable institutions such as the AMA here recently(many states & countries are taking a much different approach to the absolute LIES we’ve been fed from the gov’t and sites such as this one. Stop the Lobbyists, Big Pharma, Big Alcohol and Big Tobacco from standing in the way of our personal God given rights… especially when used medicinally!