Teen Drug and Alcohol Use

Education:

Drug and alcohol use among teens is a problem in our country, and to fight this problem we need honest education, from both parents and teens, about not just what drugs do, but what certain drugs do. Saying “don't do drugs” or “drugs are bad” is one of the worst things you can say to somebody, because it leaves out tons of information. When people become parents they should be sure that their child is truly educated about the world around them. Schools don't tell the full story when it comes to drugs, alcohol, even proper diet and exercise. When schools teach information they go by a set of guidelines set by their superiors by the government

Permissions:
After everybody is fully educated the next step is to get an understanding on both sides. Now, prohibition in America works like prohibition from drugs and alcohol from parents, it doesn't work. Regulation does work, the United States saw that during “The Great Experiment” and Portugal saw its effects as well.1 Saying “yes, you can do this, don't do it around me and remember what can happen if you do this, I just don't wanna see you doing this” will make drug use not seem so exciting because risk is exciting and for thrill seekers, it's entertaining. When you lose risk, you lose some fun and people often do drugs because they're fun, not because they're depressed (though that does happen) but because there's entertainment with drugs, the same applies to alcohol. Strongly discouraging drug and alcohol use and regulating them (say, zero tolerance policy in the house) is the best thing our government can do for most drugs, this may also work in families as well.

Family:
Be sure that their entire family knows what is going on, not just mom and dad. If the kid gets arrested for having drugs or alcohol on them, depending on the situation, can make the teen feel really bad about what they did, especially if brought to shame by their family because of their own actions, especially if their household is very informed about the truth of drugs and alcohol, not those stupid propaganda filled commercials and billboards the government pays for (such as the ones about marijuana). The government lies, we all know that, the government has bad teaching tactics for its public and often, in its schools. To ensure teens know the best and honest information about drugs and alcohol, they should research the facts on all sides with their family so they can get truthful information about what happens when drugs and alcohol are taken, especially during teenage years. When it comes to families and drug use I know and have known people who started doing harder drugs, most of them being from strict and misinformed families. My friends that have family that are not extremely strict about drugs tend to now do drugs, at the most they would smoke marijuana but refuse to touch anything else as they know what truly happens when people do drugs.

In conclusion, the current method of controlling drug us among people, especially teens, is a failed method. In order for people to not want to do drugs they need to be educated about what happens and not be threatened by anybody if they do drugs, the only threat teens should face are the effects drugs and alcohol will do to themselves. If you're a parent and you're concerned about you kid smoking marijuana then support legalization. Legalizing marijuana has countless benefits and would make access to marijuana harder for teens. Most teens struggle to find alcohol but can walk down the street and buy some weed by someone.

Mainstream Media, the Corrupt Free Speech

Mainstream media is a phrase that has been brought up a lot lately, and a reason for this phrase being brought up a lot is due to the fact that lots of people are noticing how they do businesses. As more people use foreign news outlets such as RT (Russia Today) and AlJazera and American news outlets start to descend in popularity the people are starting to notice what information wasn't previously available to them and how the stories of the foreign news outlets tend to bring to light many things about the United States and its government that were previously unknown to American citizens. When it comes to politics, war, drugs, etc. American news sources tend to go one way. In politics they tend to support the American government, when it comes to war they tend to support going to another war (check out what's been going on with Iran) and when it comes to drugs the American mainstream media sticks on the side of keeping its current classification, even when representatives of groups such as NORML and SSDP are on the news segment and they give substantial reasons for the reclassification of drugs.

Now, to a lot of people this isn't really news but every American mainstream media sources has some kind of censorship to it, weather it's politicians that want to look better or the government wants to hide something, it's there in some form and controlled by the rich and the government. Here's an example of my experience with mainstream media censorship. I was on Facebook and there was a post about the presidential elections. Twice I posted a comment on how mainstream media outlets such as MSN/MSNBC should be ignored and that people should do their research on the Republican nominations, both of those posts were removed. I made another post explaining how MSN violated my first amendment rights, they removed it along with other posts explaining how mainstream media was a poor choice when it comes to getting your information. Another example is how Ron Paul won the popular vote on the US Virgin Islands, the American mainstream news said Mitt Romney won the popular vote, when in fact, he didn't. It was Dr. Ron Paul. And my final example, marijuana. Over the decades marijuana has been demonized and hated by the American government. When a positive study about marijuana is done it's never the American mainstream media that reports on it, they only report things that are negative. I remember reading an article on MSNBC's website about how a kid died from smoking K2 (they called it “synthetic marijuana”) and later studies (ignored by American media of course) showed that it was the PEZ dispenser's melted plastic that killed him, not the K2.

All in all, American news is almost, if not, just as bad as news outlets in North Korea and China (the state run news companies), the information is one sided and going to another American news source will have only a change in politics, the information will still be censored and blocked from the American people. I highly recommend getting away from American news, the only American news I trust is the local news when it comes to the weather as it's pointless for the government to block out that information from the people. If you're ready to open your eyes to a new level of information I recommend Jl Jazeera, RT, NTDTV (mostly Asian news though), and Guardian News. There are many more great censorship free sources for information out there, you just have to look for them.

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Prohibition Encourages Drug Use

Though it's quite obvious how that when a substance that's easy to obtain is made illegal which causes that drug's use to go up, it's kind of hard for some people to find all the sources. I'm gonna explain to you five examples on how prohibition has made a substance that was once legal, that was made illegal, has promoted its use.

Alcohol Prohibition
Yes, most of us know of alcohol prohibition. It started in 1920 in the United States, long story short it failed. But how could prohibiting a substance that was once legal make it more popular? There are many reasons for that. One reason for that is that when a substance is made illegal it's more daring for many people, it's exciting at first and when most people get into drinking they tend to enjoy it more and more. Alcohol poisoning also went up 400%. Another reason is that alcohol was found to have medical benefits, you could get medical alcohol. Alcohol is so engraed in our culture that you simply cannot get rid of its use, it's impossible. No matter how many people you arrest, how harsh the penalties are, how much money you pour into the effort, it simply doesn't work. Sound familiar? Eventually the government caved in and made alcohol, once again, legal.

Marijuana Prohibition
Everyone that knows even just a little bit about marijuana knows that alcohol prohibition and marijuana prohibition go hand in hand, they're extremely similar. The difference: it's a different substance. Unlike alcohol as lots of people know, marijuana has never killed a single person in history, and its use dates back to about 8,000 years (some estimates show as far back 10,000 years). THC has a potential to cure cancer, protect our environment, provide millions of jobs, but to make this short, it does tons of good. Ever sense marijuana prohibition kicked in marijuana use and potency went up while in some states, as marijuana use goes up, alcohol use goes down. You see where I'm going with this? Good.

Michigan makes K2 illegal
Ever sense Michigan has made K2 illegal I have been seeing use among people sky rocket. It was kind of cool at first and then people started to learn more about it and more people tried it, people didn't like it. When it became illegal here I've been smelling it as I walk down the street, even more gas stations sell it than before because if its demand! It's very hard to regulate as K2 can be made up of many ingredients, you can even make it in your own home easily with the stop at a store or two.

Salvia made illegal in Michigan
In 2010 Michigan made salvia illegal, its use was quite low as people liked to smoke marijuana here more than anything, well, they still do. Now that salvia has been thrown into the underground market you can go to a marijuana dealer's house and ask for it and you'll have about a 40% chance of getting it. Anyone of any age can now obtain it, you used to have to be 18 or even 21 to buy it at most stores, depending on store policy.

Portugal makes all drugs legal in 2001
Portugal for a while had a major heroin problem, they had about 400,000 users of the drug. Now, in case you don't know, for the size of Portugal that's a huge number of users. In 2011 Portugal reported that heroin use went down by over half, pretty impressive huh? I wrote an article on Portugal's drug legalization here.

Save your seeds, unleash the love!

Now, this may sound like something stupid that someone would post on YouTube (in fact, it's all over YouTube...) but this thing, I believe will make a major impact.
You see, when there was alcohol prohibition people were making the alcohol in these hidden places, it wasn't grown like marijuana is as alcohol is well, not a plant. In case you don't know this yet, hemp is most definitely a plant and unlike most plants, can grow almost everywhere. Think of it as grass (no pun intended). There are many stoners out there who smoke, weather it's mids or chronic, most stoners have a few seeds laying around for whatever reason. Now that we have that out of the way, let's set a goal.
Our goal is to save our seeds and on 420, unleash the love! Throw/plant your seeds EVERYWHERE! From the sides of roads to a vacant house to those woods, and let them grow! If this is done all at once in every major city and many small towns, law enforcement will have such a tough time getting all the weed cleaned up that they'll have to do something about it. When you try to get rid of something at such a high scale it tends to backfire on you. Weather more money has to be spent on law enforcement or people start to accept the fact that the plants are everywhere and that they're not causing any harm, either way, something (most likely something positive) will happen.
The choice is up to you, are you willing to take a small risk to throw/plant your seeds on 4/20 and help change our laws and daily lives in countless positive manners or will you continue to hide safely in your homes away from society?

Big Pharma

Yes, most of us know who that is and most of us don't like them. Marijuana legalization advocates tend to know a thing or two more about pharmaceutical companies than the average person. Why would we know more about these evil bastards? Simple: we know how dangerous pharmaceuticals can be. Between 1999 and 2006 about 65,000 people have died from opioid allergic reactions, this is not counting any other pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceutical death is on the rise as the companies expand their market. As time goes on more and more pharmaceuticals are prescribed to patients One reason for this is the fact that pharmaceutical companies tend to give 'bonuses' or 'incentives' for prescribing their drugs to patients, even if those drugs are not needed. Many of these drugs are known for being dangerous and many of them shouldn't even be on the market. These drugs are so dangerous that they're one of the reasons why medical marijuana was set up by so many states in the past year. With a total death toll of zero, marijuana is one of the safest drugs for treating countless health problems. With that fact big pharma has its reasons to pay off our politicians to ensure marijuana is illegal. Big pharma isn't the only one that wants marijuana to be illegal, it's private prisons as well. Private prisons make most of their money from people who have been arrested on marijuana charges.
Main source: NORML

Federal Crackdown On Medical Marijuana

Over the past few months the federal government, as well as certain sectors of state governments, have been attacking marijuana with some of the oldest excuses and propaganda sense the start of prohibition. These senators and representatives have been cracking down on medical marijuana saying how it promotes violence and drug use among people when in fact, medical marijuana states have no increased amount of drug users and areas where medical marijuana dispensaries have a lower violence rate as well as a lower crime rate in general. For the past few months California's Melinda Haag has called for a state wide crack down on medical marijuana. She's calling for less dispensaries in California and forcing dispensaries to close of they're "too close" to a school, park, or church.
California isn't alone, recently the federal government announced they will send letters to dispensaries within 1000 ft of schools and will give them 45 days to move or terminate operations in those areas.
In a nut shell, the federal government is stepping up their raids which as you know, affects thousands of patients and prevents them from obtaining their medicine.

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A Brief History of Hemp/Marijuana

Marijuana/hemp/cannabis, whatever you would like to call it, has been used for about 10,000 years. Some of the first fabrics were believed to have been derived from dried hemp sometime between 7,000 and 8,000 BC in Europe and Asia.
At around 6,000 BC hemp seeds were believed to be used as a common food in China and by 2727 BCE cannabis is used in China for medicine for treating a variety of health problems and is later grown in a large scale for food and fiber.
By 1500 BC the Scythians traveled through Europe and Asia and are weaving cannabis into cloth. Between 700 and 300 BC, Scythian tribes had elevated the plant's status and cannabis seeds were used as offerings in tombs for royalty.
From around 1200 to 800 BC, cannabis is known as "sacred grass" in India, being one of the 5 "sacred plants" in the Arthava-Veda text. It was also used as an offering to Shiva, a major Hindu deity.
Between 500 and 600 BC the Jewish Talmud mentions the euphoric properties of cannabis.
Around 500 BC Gautama Buddha (563-483 BC) survived off of eating marijuana seeds and leaves as a primary food source. The hemp plant is also widely spread out from around 500 BC for the next 400 years throughout the sub-continent.
Carthage and Rome struggle for political and commercial power over hemp and spice trade routes in the Mediterranean Sea around 300 BC.
In 100 BC the Chinese make paper from cannabis and mulberry.
Roman surgeon Dioscorides names the cannabis plant sativa and describes many medical benefits of cannabis, he also writes a guide for farming cannabis in 100 AD.
Between 900 and 1000 AD, cannabis is smoked in the Middle East, often to Muslims who were not allowed to drink alcohol.
In 1000 AD 'hempe' is added to the English dictionary.
Moslems uses hemp for making paper in 1150 AD, it becomes the most popular method for making paper for the next 700 years.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus sails to the new world (North America) with hemp sails and introduces the hemp plant to North America.
In 1564, King Phillip of Spain orders hemp to be grown throughout his empire, from modern-day Argentina to Oregon.
In 1619, farmers in the new world are required to grow marijuana by law, this is also the first law in the new world that involves the hemp plant. It could also be used to pay taxes.
In 1776, the American Declaration of Independence is written on paper made from hemp.
In 1797, George Washington grows hemp as a primary farm while Thomas Jefferson grows hemp as a secondary crop.
In 1840 medical cannabis is sold in the United States in pharmacies.
In the 1800s, Australia survives two famines by eating hemp seeds and leaves as primary food sources.
The Sultan of Turkey gave marijuana to the U.S. as a gift in 1876 and by 1880 Turkish smoking parlors opened all over the Northern U.S.
In 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in the U.S and the FDA was formed. This was the first law to to have any government oversight over drugs.
In 1908 Henry Ford made his first Model T with parts made from hemp plastic, the vehicle also ran on hemp ethanol, the hemp plastic's impact strength was 10 times stronger than steel.
Cannabis prohibition begins in the U.S. in 1919 in California when the state outlawed hemp to be used for medicine.
In 1919, El Paso band marijuana, mostly to control the Mexican population there as migrant workers from Mexico smoked marijuana after a hard days of work. The people of European decent didn't approve of their customs.
In 1928, the recreational use of marijuana is banned in Britian.
In 1935 Compressed agricultural fibreboard is invented in Sweden.
In 1937 the Marijuana Tax Act forbids marijuana farming in the U.S.
1996: California becomes the first state in the country to legalize medical marijuana, Canada later legalizes medical marijuana in 2003.
In 2010, California holds the vote for Proposition 19 which would legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana throughout the state. After the Republican party fed a bunch of propaganda to the public (EX: saying a bus driver could smoke pot while driving and showing a picture of a crashed school bus) the vote didn't pass.
In 2011, Barney Frank and Ron Paul introduce H.R. 2306 which would ultimately remove marijuana from the controlled substances list. Many months later, it yet has to have a hearing. It hasn't had a hearing yet because Lamar Smith (R-TX) (the one who also wants to censor our Internet) isn't allowing the bill to have a fair hearing.

Even though the world's history with marijuana is amazing and this plant saves lives and has been doing so for thousands of years, we all still struggle in our efforts to legalize cannabis and will continue to do so until either the governments that prohibit it collapse or until the rich corporation owners and bribed people of congress cut the shit and let us use this amazing plant.

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Most used sources: Brainz, HempHouse