SMART ARTICLE ON DRUG USE

Every teacher, parent and friend of a teenager needs to cut out and
display your Dec. 29 article titled "Downey's case shows power of
addiction" by Kevin Lamb of Cox News Service (BayLife).

The article reports on current medical research demonstrate that using
drugs robs you of your full complement of lifetime pleasure.

The charges and rushes and elevated sensations that drugs lend come
from the reservoir of all your chemical ability to experience pleasure
- - - your preset allotment, as it were.

The drug-heightened brain burns out the brain's one and only pleasure
center. Cocaine and speed were listed as two of the drugs that do this
brain-altering. Our biological clocks go slowly at first then speed up
- - -- that is why, when we are 40, we still think the biggest chunk of
our life was spent in childhood. Teens are excruciatingly aware of
each moment, out of proportion to the event's significance on their
timeline. Later, time will fly for them; emotional investments will be
more maturely made and hold greater promise; high school will fade
into a little slice of their lives, very small compared to childhood
and adulthood. Teenagers need to get themselves through their actually
short-term hurdles without trying drugs so that they get through not
as some depressed shell of their former selves.

Don't rub out your future experiences of well-being, the good feelings
you would have after a satisfying day's work or contemplating a pretty
sky or getting an unexpected hug from your child - be savvy. Drugs are
unnatural substances that do unnatural numbers on your brain forever.