Students and Drug Use
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The concept of public schools is for our kids to have a safe environment to learn until they have enough skills to be effective in the work force. Over the past hundreds of years the model that teachers use to teach has changed but the basic fundamentals are still the same. Children read write and memorize things that will hopefully make them more appealing to a future employer. But in the over the past 50 years there have been some problems come up in the school system. “National data show that lifetime use among adolescents has steadily increased during the past 15 years, with the average age of first use of inhalants (12.3 years) occurring before first use of alcohol (12.6 years) and marijuana (13.5 years).”(McGravey, Canterbury, 4) At first it wasn’t anything big, kids were chewing gum in class, and talking out of turn. Now in the year 2004 we see everything from kids getting pregnant at a very young age to students having guns and mercilessly slaughtering their peers. The one thing that all of these problems have in common is that the students are not using good judgment and are not thinking correctly. A reason for this activity that has become common in the past years is drug use. Students are finding illegal drugs at their school and using them. These drugs can do anything from make you fall a sleep to going absolutely crazy and doing something that you would have never done if you didn’t have the substance in their system. This is why illegal drug use needs to be stopped from coming into the schools and why authorities should take special measures to ensure that they are kept out. They should be able to use any means necessary up to and including searching suspected students for illegal drugs and properly punishing them.
When kids are young they for the most part love to go to school, every day they come home telling mommy or daddy how much fun they had in school that day. For some reason as a child get older and older that zeal for school just seems to disappear. They no longer have fun in school and they don’t want to go back. Part of this may be due to the fact that as a child gets older their school work gets harder, but many other factors come into play as well when it comes to why children seem to loose their love for school. As children grow they have to deal with some things that might be really hard to a young child. In a public school setting or really any kind of school setting a child has to deal with bullies, peer pressure, trying to fit in and having the right friends. This can all lead to a child being miserable and feeling like there is no way to fix it. So if drugs are put into a situation like that one it is easy to see how they could be viewed as a way out. Depressants are an answer to this problem according to a study done by the University of Cambridge “Depressants work by depressing the central nervous system. They can therefore induce a state of relaxation or sedation as well as reducing the intensity of pain and of emotions such as fear, anger or anxiety.” This could be the answer to a student who is having trouble in school and just doesn’t care any more and just wants to let it all go.
Children are not only socially affected by illegal drugs they are mentally affected as well. A student who is on drugs is more likely to have bad test scores and there for the school is more likely to be viewed as not doing their job. There are many different problems with drugs. One of them is or course that drugs can cause bodily harm to a student by killing brain cells or just causing you to not be fully present. This can lead to students not feeling safe or becoming dangerous to other people. The effects of a drug may vary according to the mental state of the person taking it. The University of Cambridge says that “A strong mood-altering substance may trigger, or exacerbate an underlying emotional instability.” This basically says that a student who takes drugs can and probably will trigger something within themselves that is harmful to the students around them. It is a proven fact that a student’s performance goes down when they are under the influence of drugs or anything like that. With schools being put under the kind of performance demands that they are under it isn’t fair that they can’t do anything in their power to make the environment that they are in a safe one in which the students can lean and not be distracted by anything unneeded. School students have a lot of things on their minds like their next chemistry test; there is not reason that they should also have to deal with this sort of thing. Drugs have a huge negative impact on students and there is no reason that they should have to deal with them.
Another big issue that drugs bring to schools is that “According to the study, Malignant Neglect: Substance Abuse and America’s Schools, the costs associated with