Dear Mr. President,

Today in society, if you do not already know, there is a major problem with drug abuse. Drugs today are very easy to obtain, and to my knowledge kids as young as 10 years old have access to drugs. In my school, over the years, I have noticed that the number of students that use drugs has been steadily increasing. We need to find a solution fast, of course, before things get out of hand. More and more and more and more people will die if nothing is done.

Much of the research that I have done has been on prescription pills. Prescription pills are very easy to get, either on the streets or given by a doctor. In the article “Heroin in the Heartland” it was said that “three quarters of a billion pain pills were prescribed by doctors in Ohio in a single year”. Is this not a lot? Opioid addiction most of the time starts with doctors over prescribing pills for injuries. The addiction gets so bad that in the article “Anatomy of Addiction: How Heroin and Opioids Hijack the Brain” explains how “people become psychologically and physically dependent on opioids very quickly”. This statement shows that when people are addicted to something, they must have it, and will do anything to get it because they are so dependent on the drug. To solve this problem, doctors simply should just prescribe less, and if people need more then they will get more as needed. Doctors prescribing less pain pills to people will help the issue, but it will not solve it. It's very easy to obtain drugs off the streets as most people know.

Prescription pill addiction leads to heroin addiction, as heroin pills are a lot less expensive and also easier to obtain than prescription pills. Heroin is super easy to get addicted too, as doing it one time can get you addicted. The article “Addicted to Heroin: “I’m Literally Just Rotting” included a girl who is addicted to heroin and her addiction is so bad that it’s ruining her life. She dropped out of college, quit her job, and spends each day thinking about how she will come up with the money to buy heroin. I can guarantee that she is not the only person who is ruining her life as 2.5 million Americans are addicted to heroin. “The number of heroin users has doubled since 2007, and half of the first time users are younger than 26”. It should make you sad to hear this, as a lot of our future generation of people are just throwing their lives away. Heroin is not only very addictive but also super deadly. Just in Ohio, every week, heroin overdoses take the lives of 23 people. Not just in Ohio, but thousands of families across the United States have been devastated due to drug over doses. Imagine being in one of their shoes. How would you feel? No one should have to go through that, which is why a solution needs to be created. The solution will not completely stop drug abuse, but it will slow it down and save many lives.

Drug abuse ruins many lives and families. Drugs need to get harder to obtain for it is just getting easier and easier and easier to get drugs. I hope you think long and hard about this problem, for if this is not solved, thousands and thousands of people will begin to die and thousands and thousands of families will grieve for their loved ones they have lost. This problem will become so big that there will be no stopping it, so we need to kill it before it gets too large.

Sincerely,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Josh Lichtman