Drugs are a One Way Trip

Drugs are a One Way Trip
Drugs are the most serious challenge faced by modern society. It is a dangerous assault that has consequences for everyone, but it is especially the young – our most precious resource - who are affected. In Spain there is a campaign against drugs directed at young people of school age telling them of the danger. With the slogan, “Drugs- Are you going to play with them?” the public service campaign appeals to a sense of responsibility among teenagers in the hope of creating a “culture that rejects drugs.”
“Drugs are illegal because they are dangerous,” said Antonio Maria Costa – the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime – in a press conference. The office released a 2008 report on the effects of narcotics, and Costa has given lengthy testimony and given evidence of the destructiveness of psycho-active substances such as marijuana and the false assertion that it ameliorates the suffering of those with HIV/AIDS or cancer.
British reporter Nicky Taylor of the BBC decided to inject herself with the active ingredient of marijuana or cannabis to experience for herself the effects on those who smoke it. Taylor fell into a state of terror after taking the drug. She was so frightened that she could not bring herself to leave her chair and experienced some of the worst moments of her life. This was done in order to find out what the drug’s consequences are on the brain; she wanted to know if she would go mad.
It was thus that she went to The Netherlands and work in one of the taverns where legalized cannabis is sold and consumed. After smoking a particularly strong variety of cannabis called “skunk”, Taylor set herself the task of trying to assemble a piece of furniture from a kit. While under the effects of two puffs of marijuana, Taylor said that she was “totally hopeless when it came to assembling the cabinet." She added, “I felt so spaced out that I ended up passing out on the sofa with the cabinet still in bits around me. The drug totally destroyed my ability to think." After a month of smoking weed every day, Taylor said “I felt as if my mind had been turned into treacle and nothing made much sense to me anymore.”
Using drugs brings on this kind of mental and physical break-down and transforms a momentary high or paradise into a prolonged and unbearable Inferno. Drugs are a one-way ticket to nowhere.

Author and journalist Clemente Ferrer has led a distinguished career in Spain in the fields of publicity and press relations. He is currently President of the European Institute of Marketing.
clementeferrer3@gmail.com