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Gabriel Ordonez Professor Raybould-Rodgers English 514 25 July, 2011 Posting to social-networking sites can be risky. Pick another risky behavior that students engage in, and to infirm readers, explain why students engage in that behavior. If you like, you can also discuss the effects of the behavior. Reasons under Cannabis According to Tara Parker Pope, 40 percent of high school student have tried marijuana. This statistics come from a survey of 4097 high school students in the State of Connecticut. Another report from Monitoring the Future (MTF) reported that, in colleges, almost 50 percent of the U.S. college students reported using marijuana at least once, and 20 percentof them were current users of the drug. (Table 1)According to Encyclopdia Britannica, the marijuana is a drug that comes from the cannabis plant, and it is used as a recreational drug and a medical drug.The marijuana is one of the most common drugs used by students, and according to the UNs World Drug Report, cannabis is the worlds most popular illicit drug, and it remains the most widely consumed drug worldwide with a global annual use estimated between 2.9 and 4.3 percent of the population aged 15-64.It is important to understand what drives so many students to use such drugand what the long and short term effects of cannabis are in humans.Many students use marijuana because of curiosity, peer pressure, or personal problems; however marijuana creates many problems such as the gateway effect,damage to a persons nervous system, and health problem.

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First of all, the main reason why students opt to use marijuana as a recreational drug is because of curiosity and experimentation. They want to know how it feels to be high or under the influence of the drug. These kids might feel like they live a boring life or feel some kind of emptiness inside. These students feel pressure from their friends who encourage them to try the drug, and this kind of pressure usually starts at parties and any place where teens hang out. They want to fit in school, so they try the drug. A teenager girl named Destanie posted on the web site so i know better than to do them, but my friends are pressuring me to do them I have recently started smoking, cigarettes and weed. All my friends do it and a majority of my school does it, so I tried it and now I love it. She was being pressured by her friend and finally gave in, risk of bronchitis, increased heart rates, blood pressure and depression of the immune system. Another reason why students decide to use drugs like marijuana is because they are victims of domestic violence. Many kids who feel they live in a very hostile environment at home start using drugs like marijuana because they see the drug as a way toescape from their troubled life. Amy Hoover says in her article Cause of Drug Addiction that people turn to drug use to cope with problems in their real lives.In spite of the fact that these students know that the effects of drugs will wear off and reality will come back, the temporary feeling of relaxation and comfort is enough reason to use it. If a family member is an addict, drug addiction becomes more acceptable to the student.Destanie mentioned on her post that her mother has been using drugs since her mother was 17 years old, and this fact probably helped Destanie see drug as more acceptable. One of the most worrying effects of marijuana is its gateway effect. The gateway model was developed to explain a number of statistical sets that showed a correlation between the use of marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco, and the use of so-called harder drugs (heroin, cocaine,

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LSD, etc.) in adolescents. (Brooks Wilhelm, 2006). According to Wilhelms studies, one of the effects of marijuana is it might lead user to use harder drug. The studies also show a relationship between alcohol and marihuana. Drug addiction, generally, does not start with drugs like cocaine or heroin instead but with marijuana. Wilhelm explains that a study in New Zealand showed that out of 1265 teenagers and young adults between the ages of 15 and 21, less than 1 percent used a hard drug before they used marihuana, but those who were using the drug more than 50 times a year were more likely to move on to use harder drugs. All this evidence indicates that the gateway effect of marihuana is very likely to happen to students if they start using marijuana. Another effect of marijuana is that it can damage to a persons nervous system and brain.But, before talking about the effects of marijuana in our brains, it is important to talk about cannabinoids receptors in our brains. According to Paul M. Gahlinger, in 1992, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem discovered a nerve receptor in our brains that is specific for cannabinoids, the main chemical and psychoactive compound found in cannabis plants. These receptors are common in our brain and they are mainly found in our cerebellum, our basal ganglia, and our hippocampus.This last one, according to Gahlinger, is where many scientists believe that memories and the ability to learn new things are stored. Studies in Hebrew University have shown that THC, a kind of cannabinoid, suppresses the activity of hippocampus cells, hindering their ability to store memory and to learn temporally. This means that if a student is using marijuana while he or she is in school, this student will have problem learning things or remembering what he already learned. Other problems caused by marijuana are risk of bronchitis, increased heart rates, blood pressure and depression of the immune system.Mahmoud A. Elsohly states in his book Marijuana and the Cannabinoids that despite that marijuana is not a very toxic drug (the amount

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of marijuana required to die from an overdose is 40,000 times bigger than what a regular marijuana user consumes), the drug damages# the immune system cells and it decreases the resistance towards bacteria. In addition, he also explains that marijuana is associated with cardiovascular problems, this includes increased heart rate, supine blood pressure (blood pressure when lying back), and orthostatic hypotension (when blood pressure falls rapidly after standing up or stretching). (Wilhelm 239) Lung problems are also assonated with marijuana, especially the increase symptoms of bronchitis. When someone uses cannabis, it is likely that he or she might end up with poor lung function. Continuing with the study, Elsohly add that marijuana smoking may predispose individuals to pulmonary infections. When the effects of marijuana in the immune system and the respiratory system are combines, the result is suppression of cell-immunity by THC placing marijuana users at risk to inflection and cancer. Destanie is a great example of a teenager that used marijuana. Friends can lead someone into the wrong direction. Parent could influence the behavior of his or her child and that curiosity could be a bad influence of teens. Many kids in high school and college started using drugs to be able to fit in the society where most students think that using drugs is acceptable. Student can be influenced by the wrong people.The effects of marijuana are dangerous and might lead young teens to become addicted to harder drug if the addiction to weed is not treated. Marijuana will damage their brain to the point where they will have learning and memory problem.Some students might end up have health problem like cardiovascular, respiratory, and immune system diseases. Marijuana is a drug will probably not kill someone through an overdose but it will kill him or her by deteriorating the body. The effects of marijuana can be dangerous and this is why parents need to encourage their children to avoid any contact with it. It is important to teach them

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that getting high has a price to pay, and that price is too high if one puts the benefits and costs in a balance.

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Cited Work Destanie."Stories on Drug Addiction - About Us | Drug Addiction Stories & Info." Drug Addiction Stories | Quality Stories on Drug Addiction Blog Articles.Narconnon Rehab. Web. 14 July 2011. ElSohly, Mahmoud. Marijuana and the cannabinoids. New Jersey. Humana Press Inc. Print Gahlinger, Paul. Illegal drugs: a complete guide to their history, chemistry, use and New York. Penguin Group. January 2004. Print Hoover, Amy. Causes of Drug Addiction.Love To Know. Drug and Alcohol Addiction Recovery.N.d. Web. 14 July 2011. Parker-pope, Tara. "Marijuana Use in High School Students - NYTimes.com." Health Wellness - Well Blog - NYTimes.com.New York Times.Web. 14 July 2011. Table 1: Trends in Lifetime Prevalence of Use of Various Drugs for Eighth, Tenth, and Twelfth Grader. Monitoring the Future. Monitoringthefuture.com. Web. 14 July 2011. Wilhelm, Brooks. The Marijuana Gateway Effect.Health PsychVanderbilt.Vanderbilt University. 2006. Web. 14 July 2011. World Drug Report 2010. Rep. Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2010.UNODC. Web. 14 July 2011. and abuse. 2007.