Dear Next President,

There are many issues amongst teenagers today but the one that stands out to me is drug abuse. It is so easy for a teen to get addicted to over the counter prescription drugs such as adderall because of the level of development a teenager’s brain is at. It is also very scary how easy one can get prescribed pills. “Prescription opioid-related deaths increased by a whopping 114 percent from 2011 to 2015, most of them being young adults.” I believe that prescription drugs should have an alternate way to be obtained.

This kind of drug is very appealing to teens in high school or students in college. The initial feeling and effects of adderall or ADHD pills can be very addicting because at first the feeling is ecstatic and overflowing with energy. Your brain could be functioning normal or even great but being on these meds will always make you think it's better than it usually is. Students feel the need to do drugs that make them feel focused because it could be a time where exams are a big factor for stress. Research shows how the kids raise the dosage by a significant amount because they get addicted and think more will help.

It works like this, “while the nociception receptors provide some level of analgesia, which is the pain killing effect, the users of the prescription opiates are primarily enticed by the effects they have on the mu receptors. This group is responsible for the opiate pain killing property, the ability to induce physical dependency, respiratory depression, miosis (the constriction of the eye pupils), euphoria, and reduced GI motility which is the body’s ability to move food along the lower digestive tract.” If the process continues, addiction occurs.

People who are addicted feel overcome by the desire to have a drug. While the body’s physical response to withdrawal is painful and dangerous by itself, the psychological addiction is also a problem. “Since the teen’s brain is still developing, the addiction creates long lasting addictive channels in the brain making the teen more susceptible to addiction later in life.

Teachers, parents, doctors, and coaches are some of the people who would be in the counter argument category but they usually are kept from knowing these drugs are getting abused by their children, patients, players etc. Now, there is a group of people with a very strong and convincing argument in this category, past addicts. They know the exact experience and precisely what it feels like. Those people are now obviously against prescription drug abuse and they told their story about their experience with abusing drugs and how it made them feel terrible in the long run. From personal experience, I’ve known people who’ve been prescribed adderall and also people who’ve abused drugs. They definitely seem to act different from what they usually act like. They doze off often and when the drug starts to wear off, they get moody, irritable, hungry, depressed etc. Although, it brought their grade up a whole lot, but you usually notice that when you actually get prescribed.

In conclusion, prescription drug abuse such as adderall is affecting our teenager society negatively and over the counter drugs should be taken more seriously. A helpful solution would be to do something about the border between Mexico and the United States because research shows that almost all the heroin brought into the U.S. is from Mexico. This ties into the issue with immigration as well. But drug abuse is the main problem causing over 47,000 deaths in 2014. We all hope to see a change in this topic within the oncoming years of your presidency.

Sincerely,

Nolan W.