USING ILLEGAL DRUGS HURTS THE WORLD

After the countless, monotonous lectures and educational pamphlets
I've received over the years, I like to think of myself as pretty
well-informed when it comes to illegal drugs. I've heard all about
the effects of cocaine, marijuana, LSD, methane and speed. I know
grades drop, concentration diminishes and relationships suffer. I
even have a brief notion of how some of these drugs work at the
neuronal synapse level.

In other words, I know how drugs would affect me if I chose to take
them. This is the goal of the bulk of education about illegal drugs,
especially in high school. Adults (parents in particular) want kids
to know how horrid life will become for the addict if they begin
consuming. The information people receive about drugs mainly
concentrates on the effects on the individual.

The effects on the rest of the world are largely left out.

What happens to the countries that grow and export the cocaine, the
opium, the marijuana? Just like what happens to any heavy drug
addict, drugs infiltrate countries like Afghanistan and Colombia at
every imaginable level.

The drug industry impacts drug-producing countries economically.
Currently, illicit drugs are in demand, and this is reflected in the
amount of drug money that enters drug-exporting countries. Many of
these countries' economies are even built around or supported by
the drug trade: much of Jamaica's economy would collapse if they
discontinued the growth and export of marijuana. In other countries,
laundering drug money is a major issue. Also, since
illegally-attained money cannot be taxed, a small percent of the
population (the Mafia) often becomes uncontrollably rich while
honest, rule-abiding citizens struggle with poverty.

Take a look at most of the major drug trafficking countries in the
world such as Bolivia, Brazil, China, Ecuador, Haiti, India,
Nigeria, Pakistan and Vietnam, and you'll understand how deeply the
drug trade is entrenched into their political and judicial
systems. Dirty dollars and Euros are tossed around by drug
lords all over the system; with them, they influence the passing of
laws that favor the trafficking of narcotics. They bribe lawyers,
judges, witnesses and law enforcement agencies.

If you were to buy a ounce of coke, you'd be funding, among other
things, international terrorism, paramilitaries, guerrilla armies,
the Mafia's private armies, wars, revenge murders, abductions and
the displacement of millions of innocents. The message that we most
often get from anti-drug education is that drugs will destroy your
own life. Very few times will you run across an educator that will
stress the number of others you'll take down with you.

For you, drugs might be a form of Friday-night recreation or the
object of rebellious curiosity. Just remember that for somebody
else, drugs are the difference between poverty and wealth, between
corruption and integrity. For at least one person in the world, the
choice you make at a party in Rochester, could mean the difference
between life and death.

Andrea Villarraga is a sophomore at Lourdes High School.