DRUG AWARENESS

There are two forms of drugs that people use for different purposes, one that is legal and one
that is not. The legal drugs are called medicines. These are used to prevent, alleviate or cure a
symptom, ailment or disease state. It is a product produced and regulated to have a positive medical
impact on patients. On the other hand, illegal drugs are the exact opposite. It may give a person a
positive or negative effect on a patient but mostly bad.

For example, the drug, heroin, people used this to feel an intense excitement and happiness as a
short term solution for depression. However, the chemical substances found in heroin has a highly
addictive content that makes people want to have it more causing it to be life-threatening. These drugs
are the ones overly used by many people in the society. To name a few: marijuana, shabu,
methamphetamine, heroin and etc. are illegally abused in our country. Not only that, drug users has
already reach to the extent that they medicines become drugs of abuse just for them to be high.

Over drug consumption is a wide spread problem throughout the citizens of this nation,
especially the youth. Drugs can affect a person’s life in many different ways, however due to drug
addiction and the psychological effect, drugs do to people, it somehow makes it hard for people to stop
or withdraw from doing drugs. They do not like to withdraw because drugs make them feel calm and
energetic, it gives life to them. Due to this continuous loop effect among drug addicts, drug- related
crime is already considered a norm in the Philippine society.

President Duterte is known for his vow in his campaign to eradicate illegal drugs in just three to
six months. He was elected as president on 2016 and until now, after a long two years of his service, the
numbers of drug users still remain the same, only the number of people dying multiplied. Oplan
Tokhang is clearly not working. President Duterte’s murderous “drug war” have resulted more than
12,000 drug suspects, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2018.

He has claimed in some of speech that I heard of that the continuous use of drugs would “shrink
the brain”, making users “no longer viable as human beings in this planet”. This is actually true however
in my opinion retribution is not the only option here. This people are already not in their right mid.
They need help. As he government, they should help these people come back to their normal lives.
Help them to be human again. Rehabilitation is hard but it is a long term solution compared to killing
them for the sake of ease of removal.

This is what this seminar is all about, drug awareness. I believe that the main reason why a lot of
our fellow Filipinos is inclined on the intake of drugs because they don’t know what these drugs really do
to them. They need to know that drugs are like backstabbing friends that is only good in the first part of
yourfriend but later on slowly puts you down or kills you.

I also believe that most people who do drugs are the urban poor. They have a lot of problems in
their lives. They want to feel good, they want to stop feeling bad or sometimes they are so desparated
so they take drugs to do well in school or at work. Drug awareness helps people realize that drugs is
never a solution to our problems.

As a student, I can contribute to this movement by being there for a friend in need, may or may
not he or she be vulnerable to drug abuse. For at the end of the day, as someone once said, all things
are poison and nothing is without poison , only the dosage takes a thing not poison.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/18/philippines-dutertes-drug-war-claims-12000-lives