Dear Future President,

Drugs and drug abuse is a large problem in the United States. There are people getting addicted to narcotics, such as heroin, younger than the age of 25. Former straight A students begin to sell their bodies just to feed their habits. ABC news in their article Addicted to Heroin states “...the relatively low price tag on heroin -- as little as $10 per dose -- can push young users to try the drug they never would have used otherwise.” One reason it would be easy for an addict to feed their habit is because the drugs cost very little to buy and once you get a “taste” for the drug you keep going back for more and would do anything just to get your hands on the drug, even if it means prostitution. If you were to raise the price more to make narcotics more expensive, even as a prescription, there is a chance that people will be less influenced to attempt to purchase these harmful drugs.

While on the topic of prescription drugs, in places around the United States such as Staten Island in New York City, New York, it is highly likely that a fair amount of the population uses prescription drugs legally, and it is safe to say that the small population of illegal users have a high number of overdoses. As a personal observation, this may be so because much of the population lives middle to lower class lives. Prescription medicines are easy for people living in these lives to grasp. Some of the people may assume that it’s ok to use the drugs repeatedly, while others know it’s wrong and continue to do so because they simply don’t care enough to attempt to stop. I refer back to the effort to raise prices to emphasize the fact that this could be a fairly effective solution.

There are many cases in which people who seemingly had a future ahead of them, or had already found a good career, are taken by drugs. For example, Tyler Campbell, a college football player who was drafted to the Chargers, and his experience with pain killers that ultimately caused him to lose his life. According to Campbell’s family his addiction began with painkillers ultimately ending in heroin. This football star had no idea what hit him until it was too late. After the death of Tyler Campbell, one of his teammates died shortly after. Campbell’s families’ eyes were opened to this whole world of drugs, quickly realizing that this same situation was occurring with different families in different places. Many Americans today tend to believe that if you’re going through a rough patch in life, drug usage is the way to go. For those of us with disabilities, this could be true, but even then it’s not necessarily true.

My point is, drugs such as heroin can hurt you worse than you think. Narcotics such as heroin are easy for someone to get hooked to and it could start with an addiction to prescription medicine. Even though prescription medicine can be helpful but also dangerous and can still be overdosed. Even though they aren’t nearly as powerful as the narcotics of today’s world, it’s a good idea to emphasize proper medicine usage. So, dear future president, if you have any way of helping, could you find a way to lower the amount of drug users?

Thank you, Sincerely,

J.M.