Our National Drug Use Report Card

It is no secret that drug abuse affects each and every one of us on a daily basis.

What may be unknown is how the hidden costs of drug use affect you directly.

Consider what you pay in taxes. Also consider that our government appropriates billions of dollars to fight the "War on Drugs".

You also pay property taxes which trickle down to your local area.

In such ways, we all provide financial support for services such as paramedics, firemen, police and so forth.

When someone overdoses on drugs or gets arrested because of drug sale or use, the people who are called to handle them are what we call "first responders" -- paramedics, policemen etc.

Their salary is paid by you and me.

Understanding this, we can "grade" ourselves regarding our success in fighting the drug problem.

Since we are all paying money to fight the problem, yet the problem continues to escalate, we should ask ourselves, what can we do to get our "grades" up?!

It is up to each and every one of us to improve our country's drug use report card because our first responders and government allocations aren't cutting it! Here are some statistics to illustrate that.

Emergency room visits have always been a good gage used by government to monitor drug abuse trends and activity across the country.

Understanding that, consider the following:

SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) reported 670,307 drug-related visits in hospital emergency departments nationwide, a nearly 30% increase from the 518,880 reported in 1994.

DAWN provides information about some of the health-related consequences of drug abuse in the United States, including representative estimates of drug abuse-related emergency department visits and drug mentions for the United States and for 21 metropolitan areas.

While there have been signs of overall marijuana use drop in some age groups, the number of emergency room drug mentions on marijuana use increased 37.2% from 1999.

And there's more. According to data from the 2004 National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)

110 million Americans age 12 or older (46% of the population) reported illicit drug use at least once in their lifetime
15% reported use of a drug within the past year

8% reported use of a drug within the past month. (our population is around 298,444,215 as of July 2006, so this is 23.8 million)

Data from the 2004 survey showed that marijuana and cocaine use is the most prevalent among persons age 18 to 25.

That is a bad national "report card"!

If your kids came home with a poor report card, what would you do to ensure they got the assistance they needed to get their grades up?

Similarly, what do we, as concerned citizens, need to know and do to get our grades up regarding the drug problem? How about some homework?

A Concerned Citizen Homework Assignment:

1. Get your copy of Marijuana The Myth DVD
2. Immediately sit down and watch the segment "Why Kids Take Drugs"
3. Next watch "Why Parents Are the Last to Know"
4. Then watch the main feature, "Marijuana The Myth"
5. Then email me the answers to the following questions:

A) Why do kids take drugs?
B) Why is it that parents are so often the last to find out about their kids' drug problem?
C) What is it that causes people to want to smoke Marijuana?

Of course, improved grades call for a reward. Once you have completed your "homework" and sent back your answers to the above questions you'll receive our Drug-Free Goody Bag which contains a special t-shirt, poster and other goodies!

So don't wait. Contact Donna Miller at Friends of Narconon and get your Marijauna The Myth DVD today. If you already have the DVD, just do the homework assignment and send me your answers and we'll send you your Drug-Free Goody Bag!

CALL: 1-800-882-6862.

Sincerely,
Robert Hernandez, CCDC*
President, Friends of Narconon, Intl.
*Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor

P.S. Sponsor a school. Click here (or copy and paste into your browser):
http://www.friendsofnarconon.org/drug_education/school_sponsorship_program/

Make a donation right now. Click here (or copy and paste into your browser): http://friendsofnarconon.org/

©2007 Friends of Narconon, Intl. All Rights Reserved. Narconon, the Narconon logo, and the Narconon "Jumping Man" logo are trademarks and service marks owned by Association for Better Living and Education International and are used with its permission.