Student Frequently Asked Questions

Posted by Tony Bylsma on June 24, 2010 under Drug Abuse Prevention Education | 2 Comments to Read

Here is just a sample of the FAQs from classrooms.

How many drugs are there?

There are hundreds of thousands of substances we’re aware of which can be called drugs. That would be anything from aspirin to some root that is ground up to make tea for it’s mood altering qualities. New drugs are being developed or discovered every day.

Is marijuana a drug?

A drug is a substance, other than food which creates changes in the mind or body of the person who ingests it. It doesn’t matter whether the drug is smoked, sniffed, drunk, injected or eat it. If it isn’t food and alters the functions of the body or mind, it is a drug.

Obviously, marijuana is a drug by definition.

How long does it take to become addicted?

I have had people tell me they became addicted after only one use of a drug. That is pretty frightening, but let’s take a look.

Technically, it isn’t possible to become addicted to a substance you’ve only used once. But part of drug addiction is the powerful urge to use the substance of your addiction over and over again. That longing for the high or whatever the feelings were from that first use of a drug can occur after only one time.

Can a person who only uses drugs on the week ends be addicted?

Addiction is a slippery word. One thing is sure, though; a person can definitely become dependent on a drug that he or she only uses on week-ends. This could be especially true of alcohol. Drinking at parties and clubs on the weekend can become very habitual.

And addiction is progressive, so getting stoned on the weekends can quickly become getting stoned all the time.

My father and his father were alcoholics. Will I be one too?

The fact that your father and grandfather were alcoholics does NOT mean you must be one too. Your choices are your choices, not dad’s or grandpa’s

But you should remember that children of alcoholics are statistically more likely to be drinkers themselves. Just being around drinkers and alcohol can lead young people to drinking. But even then, the choice is theirs. The choice is yours.

When will they make marijuana legal?

I don’t believe that marijuana will ever become legal in the U.S. The biggest killers of all drugs are legal, tobacco and alcohol. I don’t think that congress will bever be led that far astray.

Why don’t they make alcohol illegal, if it kills so many?

They tried to make alcohol illegal, it was called prohibition. From 1920 to 1933 it was illegal in the U.S. to make or sell alcoholic beverages. It did not stop people from drinking. All it did was make more gangs.

The answer is not to have more laws, the only possible answer to the drug problem is to have more drug awareness education.

How young was the youngest person who entered you center for addiction?

This is an easy one. In the early 1980s, I had a 12 year old girl enter my facility in St. Louis. She was addicted to heroin and she had been caught wandering the streets of Brooklyn, New York at 3:00 AM, looking for a drug pusher she’d heard about. A few days later she entered treatment in St. Louis.

The girl’s parents didn’t even know she had was using drugs, much less had a drug habit. That is probably due to the fact that they were away working constantly and were not even home the night she was busted. There was a sitter sleeping on the couch.

How can weed be a drug?    It’s natural!

Marijuana is natural. It’s a plant and it grows like almost any other plant. In fact, most of the drugs that we know of, and there are many thousands of drugs that have been discovered or developed, are indeed, plants.

So marijuana is completely natural.         But smoking it is NOT natural!

There is nothing natural about taking a plant, drying it, rolling it up in paper, then lighting one end and inhaling the smoke from the other end! This is an entirely unnatural act. There are many poisonous chemicals in marijuana smoke, and none of them belong in your body.

And eating weed isn’t natural either. Marijuana is not food. You could eat oak leaves and that wouldn’t make them food!