Marijuana Shipment Dumped in Ocean Cuts off Supplies for Teenage Drug Abuse
In late May 2012, more than one hundred bales of marijuana were found floating in the Pacific Ocean off the Orange County coast. The Sheriff’s Department hauled in the drugs that were then whisked away for destruction.
Seagoing drug shipments are particularly difficult to detect and seize because of the vast stretches of ocean available for trafficking. Any small cove can serve as a place to land the shipments. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the eastern Pacific route near the coast of California is commonly used for illicit shipments originating in either South America or Mexico.
Law enforcement was tipped off about this shipment and found the bales twelve miles south of Dana Point, which would mean they had traveled about fifty miles from the US-Mexico border.
The seizure of this much marijuana means that the supplies for teenage drug abuse were reduced by approximately five million individual “joints” or cigarettes made out of marijuana.
Would this Marijuana Have Been a Gateway Drug for Teenage Drug Abuse?
Opinions vary on whether or not marijuana is a gateway drug—meaning that it serves as the first drug a person will use before they move on to abuse other drugs.
According to the National Center on Substance Abuse and Addiction at Columbia University (CASA), three-fourths of high school students have used cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana or cocaine by the time they graduate and half of all students are current users. While it is difficult to trace the exact relationship between the beginning of drug use and ultimate addiction, it can be stated that the $467 billion in substance abuse costs to federal, state and local governments are primarily driven by those who started using drugs as a teenager.
CASA reports go on to show that if a young person refrains from teenage drug abuse—in other words, refrains from abusing addictive substances when they are less than 21 years old—they are virtually certain to never do so later in life.
Narconon Drug Rehab Helps Those who Lose the Battle
When a person loses the ability to control his own drug or alcohol use, and when damage is occurring that person’s relationships, health, finances, legal situation or other areas of life, that person is struggling with an addiction. When this happens, the correct solution is drug rehabilitation.
Whether drugs start becoming a problem as teenage drug abuse or it starts later in life, the Narconon drug rehab program can be the end of the danger and damage. This long-term program that addresses both the harm done by addiction and the causes of addiction is offered at more than forty locations around the world. In three to five months for most people, the factors that cause people to stay locked in an addictive pattern can be resolved.
The Narconon program has just one basis: get the result of lasting sobriety. Family can get back the one they lost to addiction and the individual who once was lost can get his or her life and future back again.
Find out how Narconon can help someone who is struggling with drug addiction.
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