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Gabriel Sayegh's War On Drugs

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Gabriel Sayegh starts his Ted talk by claiming that 20 years ago he was a meth user and abuser. He used methamphetamine as a high schooler, struggled to stayed in school, got into many fights, and barely graduated high school. He ended up abusing meth because he was feeling emotional pain and eventually his tolerance went up from using higher doses. Eventually, he realized that his life has no value to it and that he was no longer getting high off meth since his tolerance was so high. He decided to stop doing meth and go to community college far away, which helped him get away from the drug induced environment he was in. After he told his personal story, he went on to explain the history of the war on drugs, which started in 1971 due to President …show more content…

However, I was completely wrong after watching this video and understanding the concept of the war on drugs. I have thought about ways the government could stop the American people from using drugs, however it is a complex process because people know how to make certain drugs. It makes it harder for the government to stop people from making drugs and using them because the drug user constantly craves the feeling of euphoria. One thing in the Ted talk that I found interesting was the rate of arrests for possession of drugs went up dramatically in 40 years (800% according to the Ted talk video), however the rate of abuse of drugs stayed steady the entire time. Also in the Ted talk video mentioned was that one of the largest mental health treatment center is cook county jail. I found that extremely interesting because I live in cook county and I understand how the crime in that area is one of the highest in America. I believe that it’s great that the jail has a major mental health treatment center because as said in the Ted talk, people use drugs because they are in some form of mental pain. All this information is useful to know for CHLH 243 because in class we go over different drugs, what people feel when they take these drugs, and how it affects them physically and mentally. It’s important to understand the situation these drug users put themselves in because as a class we should be able to understand why people take these drugs even though we know the dreadful influence of

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