Final Speech - Makiah Graham

72,306. (Seventy-two thousand, three hundred and six.)

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 72,306 people died of drug overdose in the year 2017. Now I know what you’re thinking. It’s their fault. They did the drugs, they brought it upon themselves. They should have just… stopped. But it’s not that easy. 

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So, let’s talk about addiction. The first thing you need to know is that it is a disease of the brain, and anyone can acquire it. Addictive drugs - like heroin, cocaine, or even prescription opioids - can affect a person’s “reward circuit”; this means that they cause the release of a large amount of dopamine in the brain, causing a person to experience euphoria. So, yes, a person does consciously make the initial decision to consume a drug, for the “high,” and then they repeat this behavior because of enjoyment. However, this repetition causes an adaptation of the brain. Once a drug has been used so many times, a person builds up a tolerance- the brain inhibits its ability to produce as much dopamine, which means that the high they experience is lesser than the high they felt the first time they took the drug. This leads to the person consuming more of the drug at a time, to try to match that first feeling. With the continuous decrease in the brain’s ability to produce dopamine, the person experiences less pleasure from things in their daily life, like love, social activities, or food. So now, the only thing that can make this person happy is, you guessed it, more drugs.

Now, onto the problems that stem from drug addiction. The first is overdose. Any ordinary person can become addicted to drugs. People with families – mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives and children – people who will miss them when they are gone. In fact, I have experienced this type of loss first hand. In April of this year, I lost my uncle to drugs. He used to be such a happy person, and he could make anyone around him feel the same way. But then he fell in with the wrong crowd, and he got hooked on drugs. He became meaner, and many of his relationships with our family were damaged because they tried to get him to stop. We wanted to get him professional help, but he said he couldn’t afford it and he would quit on his own. He tried really hard to quit and did incredibly well for a while, but then he relapsed. About a month after his relapse, he died alone in his bathroom. My family was crushed. Now, I don’t want you all to feel like I told you this story for pity or to make you all feel sorry for me. I told you this to put it into perspective. You remember that number I told you at the beginning of my speech? 72,306 people died in America last year from overdose. If each of those people just had 2 people who cared about them, that’s 144,612 people in this country who no longer have a loved one in their life.

But overdose isn’t the only problem that comes with drug addiction. According to the Journal of Nervous and Mental disease, people who are addicted to drugs are more likely to commit crimes. Why? You may ask. Well, one ounce of cocaine can cost anywhere from 6o to 100 dollars, and other drugs can even be more expensive than that. How do they make the money to support their habit? Well, they go rob a store, or steal a purse, and then they get arrested. Overall, this drug abuse costs the nation 271 and a half billion dollars a year on lost work productivity, costs related to crimes, and health care.

Now, how do we solve these problems? Two things: prevention and treatment. Prevention starts in early childhood. By teaching a child successful coping and adaptation methods, and raising them in a happy and healthy environment, they will be set on a positive path in life and less likely to turn to drugs for any reason. Prevention keeps the problem from ever happening in the first place, but how do we help our current problem? Well, currently, treatment centers are funded by the government, but not enough. The thing about treatment of addiction is that no single thing works for everyone, however I believe if the government can place more funding into the treatment of drug addiction, its overall costs related to drugs will decrease, because if more people have access to help, less people are committing crimes and being less productive at work.

Drug addiction is a major problem in the United States. It takes people away from their families and it takes money away from our government, and it must be stopped. Thank you.