Why drugs are now just a social norm

A few weeks ago I was aimlessly scrolling down my Facebook homepage when I saw a status by a year 11 girl complaining about how her “meth head friends” had “stolen her phone”. Naturally, given my boredom and the fact that this status had over 30 comments, I read them all.

I was shocked to discover that this girl and her friends have genuinely experimented with meth, weed and other drugs. It was then that I realised I - a teenager who has not experimented with drugs - am seemingly becoming a minority. Drugs have become a normal thing.

But is the reason for the common drug use that teenagers are becoming out of control in the modern era, or are they just easier to get hold of?

Personally, I believe that it’s the latter. It’s just too easy to get drugs.

Being a completely oblivious person to these things, I only found out yesterday that there were at least 3 drug dealers in my year of school, and more in the years below. That may not seem like many, but given that there were only about 300 (at most) people in the year, that’s 1%+ of them.

These are just those who sell illegal drugs, which may not be the major type teenagers take. Legal highs are also becoming common among teenagers as they are a way to get high but not break the law.

It has been revealed recently that the UK government is attempting to crack down on these legal highs by banning the sale of them, but surely these will just cause teenagers, and other users, to buy them illegally or just go for the traditional drugs like cannabis.

I think more should be done in order to warn teenagers against the regular use of drugs and especially hard drugs such as meth. But drugs should also be talked about openly. Shows such as Breaking Bad do show drugs and the money that can be made, but also have characters dying, ruining their lives due to them, which is much more effective than having an in-school lesson on why drugs are evil and bad.