Drug Awareness For Teens

By Marcelino Acosta, December 6th 2024 

How drugs can affect teenagers while they are in high school.  These effects can be having poor grades, memory loss, and poor social skills. Long-term effects could be heart disease, high blood pressure, and sleeping disorders. They could also be making risky decisions while they are taking drugs. 

Most common causes for teens taking drugs are wanting to fit in, to feel good, to do better, and to experiment how it feels to take drugs. Most common drugs are alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana. 

Physical signs for drug use are frequent sicknesses, nosebleeds, weight loss, vomiting, and exhaustion. Behavioral signs could be changed relationships, loss of interest, secret behavior which could be locking the door to their room, and high energy boosts followed by a long sleep period. 

Mental health risks also can occur while having drugs such as depression, personality disorders, and suicide thoughts or attempted suicide. 

Utah laws state if you are a teen and caught with drugs you could get your driver license suspended for 1-2 years. They could also be taken to jail for up to 6 months and up to a $1000 dollar fine or up to 1 year with a $2500 dollar fine, or 5 years and a $5000 dollar fine. If one person is caught holding drugs for somebody else both people can be taken to jail. 

These would all be recorded and be put into a record for the person. This could cause trouble in the future, they would get problems like jobs not wanting to hire them, driver's license being taken for up to 5 years. 

Drug prevention could be support by the user's family, and medical help. Treatments could be therapy, rehab programs for a week, and motivational enhancement therapy which is teaching skill needed to avoid drugs. 

Let's raise awareness for our students at east high! 

Addiction hotline: (877)-600-5954