THE NATURE OF DRUGS AND TEENS

I'm guilty. I admit it: I take ibuprofen at school.

I am just scared that when the drug dogs come around, they do not find
me and haul me away, confiscating my secret stash of perfectly legal
drugs which, at the age of 17, I am perfectly capable of taking
without the school nurse's help.

However, maybe I should not be worried. After all, the dogs have yet
to catch the kids who come to class stoned nearly every day.

While interviewing the police officer stationed at my school, he
turned the tables and asked me a question similar to this: Given an
hour and $100, how sure are you that you could find marijuana to buy?

My answer: About 90 percent sure.

How about cigarettes?

My answer: Eighty percent.

Despite the fact that marijuana is illegal, I am more certain that I
could find pot than tobacco.

It is not that I am a bad kid, or a stoner. I have never smoked,
injected or ingested any illegal substance. I have never even had a
drink at a party. Even among the rest of the so-called good kids, I am
a rarity. Many of my friends have smoked pot; fewer have smoked a cigarette.

That I am able to say with 90 percent certainty that I could find
marijuana should scare you, because it means the billions of tax
dollars spent annually by the government to curb teen drug use is not
being put to good use.

At my high school, there are drug searches fairly regularly. Teachers
close the doors to their classrooms, so students generally have no
idea it is going on. These searches scare me because it seems that, as
a student, I am guilty until proven innocent.

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education courses we took in elementary and
middle school did not scare most kids off, and that is what they were
meant to do. They were not meant to educate, but to scare.

Looking back, I can even say that DARE did nothing to help my friends
"say 'no' to drugs." Using drugs is not just about giving in to peer
pressure. My "good kid" friends who have experimented with marijuana
and alcohol come from good homes, participate in after-school
activities and seem to have a great deal of self respect.

However, marijuana, unlike cigarettes or alcohol, is not severely
addictive. My friends who occasionally smoke weed never talk about
craving it. However, my friends who smoke tobacco do crave their next
cigarette. To some kids, marijuana may seem like the safer drug.

Alcohol and marijuana cause mental impairment, but it is alcohol, the
legal of the two drugs, that most causes violence.

Furthermore, DARE has not scared teens away from such drugs as cocaine
and methamphetamine. A friend told me she walked into a bathroom at a
party and saw kids snorting cocaine. The National Drug Intelligence
Center ranks methamphetamine as the primary drug threat in Colorado.

According to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana
Laws (NORML), more than 650,000 Americans are arrested annually on
minor marijuana possession charges.

Obviously, something is wrong with the system.

While I do not believe that drugs are harmless to society, I see no
better option to controlling the drug trade and cutting down on tax
money spent to curb drug use than to legalize what we currently
consider to be illegal drugs.

As an unregulated industry, the government receives no tax money from
the drug trade. However, as a regulated industry, the government can
tax drug sales and production. Furthermore, the government would be
able to regulate the production, ensuring purity and the safety of
those who manufacture the drugs.

According to the 2004 Monitoring the Future youth survey, which is
conducted for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the teen smoking
rate has been decreasing steadily for years. One reason is education
on the true nature of drugs. Instead of programs like DARE, which work
only to scare students, educational programs share the truth about
drugs such as tobacco. Alcohol needs to receive a similar treatment,
because, from what I have viewed, it is the most popular substance
abused by teenagers. Just like any drug, it can be overdosed on and is
addictive.

Note: Kathryn Chinn is a senior at Grand Junction High School.