I'm fed up of Gurning Teenagers

Honestly, I am very confused. I can't tell if the general public are aware of how readily available drugs of all classes are to teenagers and younger. Do people even care? There seems to be very little done to discourage them after the Junior School DARE programmes. Personally, this bothers me because of the immediate dangers associated with many of these drugs and the long-term health problems they can cause.


I know people who have smoked cannabis from the age of 11, have been shown MySpace pictures from the huge scene of middle class teenagers (13+) who frequently enjoy pill parties watched as GCSE students are expelled for dealing marijuana in school and wondered how people in my year at school (then 14, 15, and 16 year old) could possibly get away with growing weed in their own homes. The school, and clearly their parents, did nothing to stop this due to, at least in the school's case, having no idea this was even going on.


From what I see, it is not the “chavvy” teenagers who use these more dangerous drugs. Not the state-funded cast of Shameless we would like to believe need drugs to help them deal with their crime-filled lives. But bored 'scene kids'. Trendy clothes. Posing in MySpace photos. Taking class A drugs, especially ecstasy. They even deal to one and other - most are well off enough to be able to afford to buy the drugs in bulk from dealers and sell to friends and other teens.


I have seen pictures of parties where, without exception, literally everyone has taken ecstasy. These are mostly 13, 14, and 15 year olds. Without meaning to sound like I exaggerate, there were in excess of 100 of them, crammed into a friend's house for a night of hard partying. And no wonder these drugs are so popular - each hit of the clearly impure drug is around £2 and people take as many as 15, just for the kicks. But what else is in them for the price to have sunk so low? You can say this is an isolated incident, but to me, this screams naivety on behalf of the police and parents and a failure of the education system. If this happens in my reasonably quiet suburb of a 500,000 strong city, what happens elsewhere?


While ecstasy may be the drug of choice, I know for a fact that I would have no trouble, even years ago, acquiring any drug. Ketamine or speed (£10 for half a gram), cocaine, heroin, LSD (£5-£10 per tab), mushrooms (£20 for 30-40), weed (only skunk is available), pills (anywhere from £1.90-£3). Everyone knows someone who knows someone and with instant messaging, MySpace, Bebo, Facebook and mobile phones a must-have for all teenagers, contacting that special someone is becoming easier and easier.


The reasons behind this phenomenon?

1. Boredom – the classic “what else is there to do?” is the answer from concerned friends.
2. Ease of access - It's quicker to meet up with a dealer and buy drugs than invest in a fake ID, get someone else to go into a shop and buy alcohol for you or to risk being 'ID'ed yourself.
3. Cost - Compared to the price of alcohol, which the government seem so keen on raising, drugs are relatively cheap, and all teenagers are capable of calculating a cost-benefit ratio.
Which is more 'value for money'?.
Which lasts for longer?
Which is stronger, feels better, is new, exciting, and seems safe (because EVERYONE does it...)?

It's not hard to see why teenagers subscribe to the ecstasy-ridden subculture of the middle class scenster. But what can we do? What should be done?

Get kids off the streets, of course, maybe by encouraging exercise and thus endorphins through less artificial routes. We need tougher policing on drug dealers. How can that car which keeps parking outside Domino's Pizza have gone unnoticed for so long when so many people hop in and out of it on an almost daily basis, exchanging money for skunk?
Don't lie to children. Don't tell them drugs will kill instantly. Don't exaggerate their effects. Don't contradict statistics that are easily found on the internet. One look at the presumptuous, laid-back, fact-based Frank.com can contradict many things teenagers have been told in the past by paranoid parents about the extreme dangers of drugs which, because of the common teenage superiority complex, will lose them all faith in what they have been told and, in many cases, translate as: drugs can be safe if used properly. This may be true. But it is not what our government believes, yet I know so many people who ignore the illegality of drugs based on this philosophy. This isn't right when the general consensus says they are wrong.

Apologies for the drama but I'm fed up of pictures of gurning 14 year-olds on MySpace, I, for one, am not enjoying it . . .

Any thoughts?

- The Headtwister x