tobacco2
tobacco3
inhalants1
A crack addiction is more expensive than a heroin addiction because addicts need another high within minutes of using crack.
"Space blasting" or "space basing", mixing crack cocaine with PCP, is highly dangerous.
Crack reaches the brain in 8-10 seconds with an "electric jolt" and the high lasts 15-20 minutes, followed by a crushing depressing within a few minutes.
A crack user can become addicted within two hits.
Crack usage can cause brain seizures, lung damage, heart attacks (even in young users), and severe changes in brain chemistry.
Cocaine users generally cannot control how much they use it -- "recreational" users can become serious, heavy addicts.
Cocaine combined with heavy physical activity or in combination with other drugs, even medicine for colds, is extraordinarily dangerous.
In large doses, cocaine can paralyze regions of the brain controlling breathing and heartbeat, causing death.
Because cocaine causes hallucinations, users are prone to fear, suspicion, confusion, and lack of contact with reality.
Marijuana use in men decreases the sperm count and mobility, and increases the likelihood of abnormal sperm.
Marijuana use in women decreases estrogen, changes the menstrual cycle, and impairs fertility.
Marijuana use impairs memory, attention span, ambition, analysis skills, problem solving ability, and calculation skills.
Use of marijuana decreases lung function.
Marijuana contains 50 more cancer causing elements than cigarettes.
It takes 20 years of HEAVY tobacco smoking to produce the same type of severe sinusitis, bronchitis, or emphysema that less than ONE year of daily marijuana smoking produces.
Marijuana affects young people more rapidly and more seriously than it does adults.
Marijuana is known as a gateway drug because it is often laced with other drugs, which leads users to try those other drugs.
Traces of marijuana stay in your bloodstream for 2-4 weeks.
Two joints cause the same cellular damage as 30 cigarettes.
One out of three American adults have problems because of alcohol abuses in the family.
Chronic brain injury caused by alcohol is second only to Alzheimer's disease as a known cause of mental deterioration in adults.
Children of alcoholics have a four-times greater risk of developing alcoholism than children of non-alcoholics.
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is the third leading cause of birth defects with accompanying mental retardation, and the only preventable one among the top three.
Alcohol-related highway deaths are the number one killer of 15 to 24 year olds.
About 62 out of every 100 people in the United States will be in an alcohol-related crash in their lifetimes.
Alcoholism is one of the most serious public health problems in the United States.
A single drop of pure nicotine on a human tongue is lethal.
Nearly 1 in 5 deaths in the US are caused by tobacco.
Tobacco is the largest preventable cause of death in the US.
In 1997, Tobacco interests gave $4.5 million to political parties and spent $53 million on lobbying to influence political decisions.
Minors (under age 18) spend about $1.6 billion on tobacco products each year.
From 1980 - 1999, the tobacco industry took in abou $431 billion from American smokers. In that same time period, about $7.5 million Americans died from smoking.
Tobacco companies produce 5.5 trillion cigarettes a year.
That is about 1000 cigarettes for every man, woman, and child on the planet.
Among 6 year olds, Joe Camel is as recognizable as Mickey Mouse.
About 700 chemicals are added to cigarettes during production, including ammonia (poisonous gas in toilet bowl cleaner), cadmium (highly toxic metal in batteries), arsenic (poison in ant killer), and acetone (found in nail polish remover).
70% of smokers wish they could quit or had never started, but nicotine is so addictive, only 3% of smokers trying to quit succeed.
Use of drugs with needles endangers the user because of the possibility of needle contamination.
Use of steroids can cause high cholesterol, hardened arteries, kidney damage, impotence, sterility, heart attacks, stunted growth, intestinal bleeding, and more.
PCP (Phencyclidine) is classified as a hallucinogen and an animal tranquilizer.
Short term effects of PCP include nausea, suffocation, chills, distortion of senses, hallucinations, increased heart rate, and increased body temperature.
LSD substitutes a naturally occurring brain hormone, producing an unpredictable, highly individualized drug experience.
Flashbacks occur when LSD "trips" are relived days, weeks, or even years after use of the drug.
LSD is one of the most powerful chemicals know, and small amounts are very potent.
Inhalants can be instantly fatal in small amounts because they are sniffed directly to the brain.
Use of heroin can cause muscle deterioration, brain damage, physical and psychological addiction, and can put the user in a coma.
The average age teens try inhalants is 13 years old.
GHB is an anabolic steroid.
The effects of hallucinogens last 12 hours.