What can i say to my friend to make her stop using drugs?

Question

PLease help, ive tried everything! I hate when she does them but i cant make her stop plz help!

Answer 1

The war on drugs is having little or no effect on the traffiking of drugs, except to make them more expensive. Since the use of all major recreational drugs except opiates has increased since the passing of the laws which illegalized them, the increase in cost cannot be said to discourage the use of the drugs.
The war on drugs is extremely costly to our society in terms of taxpayer dollars, lives, productivity, inability to pursue law enforcement of more damaging crimes, and social inequality. It is easy to demonstrate that the financial and social costs of drug law enforcement far exceed the damages that the drugs themselves cause.
The war on drugs is counterproductive to the goal of discouraging drug use. The primary mechanism for this is reverse psychology. Forbidden things become fodder for rebellion, and illegal drugs have been popularized by this perception. In addition there is a great disparity of our ability to enforce drug laws among those above and below the age of 18, and this causes high-school aged children to become the conduit through which drugs are distributed, contravening our "protect the children" intentions.

Dangerous to self:

Recreational use of certain drugs is unhealthy and dangerous for the user's body. Therefore, it cannot be produced or distributed with the help of the state, because the goal of the state is to protect citizens' health and not to expose them to risk.

This is a falacious generalization. In order to determine the level of acceptability of risk, each illegal drug must be judged on its own. Marijuana, for instance is far safer than alcohol or tobacco.

Heroin and methamphetamines may be more harmful than alcohol or tobacco, but that does not make a statement about any other illegal drug's degree of danger. Please divide this argument into separate discussions about each group of drugs.

Actually, drugs are produced and distributed with the help of the state, as apparently the goal of the state is to protect corporate profits and expose citizens to risk. Indisputably, well over half a million North Americans die every year from the use of taxed and regulated tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceuticals.

Please provide some sort of proof of this inflammatory statement.

The World Health Organization unambiguously stated in the 1990s that "(b)y the end of the 20th century, cigarette smoking will have killed about 62 million people in developed countries: 52 million men, 10 million women." Today, the WHO notes that alcohol in Europe causes 9.2% of all ill-health and premature death.

The British newspaper The Guardian, in co-operation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists exposed tobacco firms as participants in the wholesale smuggling of cigarettes into third world countries.

Not coincidentally, manufacturers of cigarettes, intoxicants and medications are among the world's largest political contributors.
In Canada, the regulatory agency charged with protecting their citizens, Health Canada provided pharmaceutical companies with a speedier approval process in exchange for drug evaluation fees, with the result that 19 harmful drugs had to be removed from the market in the last 11 years, compared to 25 drugs withdrawn in the last 30 years.

The Canadian situation mimics the United States' Food and Drug Administration fee-for-speed user-pay system in which the proportion of newly approved and widely advertised drugs that had to be withdrawn tripled during the period 1997-2000, compared with 1993-96.

One particular pharmaceutical firm, Merck is widely alleged to have covered up safety and efficacy data of their palliative Vioxx, which caused between thirty and fifty thousand American deaths before it was pulled from the market voluntarily, without any FDA interference in the billions of dollars earned by the deadly and defective pain killer.

Merck and the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy blanket the public airwaves with commercials on National Public Radio, which to it's credit has recently taken both to task for their deceptive practices.

The goal of the state is to protect citizens' health and not to expose them to risk. Just because the state does the opposite sometimes does not mean that their goals have changed, it just means that there are certain dishonest people working for the government who are not doing their jobs properly and should be fired.

The purpose of the government of a free society is to protect its citizen's freedom. The purpose of the government of the United States is clearly stated in the preamble to its constitution - "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Nowhere in here does it mention anything about ensuring citizens don't make decisions that adversly affect thier physical health. To suggest that its the governments job to ensure that citizens don't make unhealthy decisions is arbitrary and unsupported.

It is more dangerous for both the individual and for society to prevent judicious access to certain drugs. For example, the exploratory use of hallucinogens has led to personal growth and increased awareness in those subjects (artists, philosophers and ordinary people) who have experimented with these substances. Likewise, the therapeutic use of hallucinogens helped a great many individuals with mental difficulties, including autistic children, and terminal cancer patients, for example.

These uses, and the methods empoyed were documented in the studies of early researchers in the field, such as Stanislav Grof and others. Closing off access to these substances reduces the overall level of consciousness in society and puts out of reach a powerful tool for working with the mind to a positive end. This creates an unsafe situation for all, as the people prevented from functioning to the best of their mental capacity, often in positions of power, act in ways that are confused and destructive of themselves, others, and the environment.

Nearly any activity, from driving a car to cleaning the house, can be dangerous. The legalization of drugs can aid in the minimization of the dangers of drug use (see harm reduction). It is worth noting that the effects of marijuana on the mind (including "amotivational syndrome") and body are minimal to nonexistent, especially when compared with other, legal activities (e.g., drinking alcohol)

The dangers of driving and other legal activities are a result of accidents. The brain damage associated with drug use is a result of regular use and generally cannot be avoided.

Opiates (including heroin) do not cause brain damage. Marijuana does not cause permanent brain damage (it can impair some functions in the short-term through several months after cessation of use, but not permanently). LSD causes no damage at all. Alcohol does cause brain damage.

Most people are fully capable of assessing whether the damage from an activity is worth it, a skill that can be better developed with real, unbiased, factual education that does not exist now but would be essential to any legalization program. Furthermore, some people believe the direct and permanent damage inflicted to their bodies when they get piercings or tattoos is worth it, should those be banned?

The number of deaths per year due to tobacco use, alcohol, reckless driving by sober drivers, skydiving accidents, AIDS contracted through sexual contact, etc, would serve as a counterargument to your statement. Every person who has died by one of the means I've mentioned knew the risks before they engaged in such risky behaviour. Yet they did anyway.

While it is true that many activities include some level of danger, that does not mean that they are all equally dangerous. Illegal drug use is unacceptably dangerous, regardless of how dangerous other legal human activities may be.

No one has died from an overdose of THC (the main active constituent of marijuana). Many currently prohibited drugs have not been shown to cause any physical damage; study of these substances is difficult due to societal stigma and prohibition.

That may be true of marijuana, but you have not addressed the issue as it applies to all other drugs.

Deaths from all illicit drugs combined pale in comparison to fatalities caused by the regular use as advertised of tobacco, pharmaceutical or alcohol products. The question at hand is whether they present an unacceptable risk, a subjective concept made more complicated to evaluate by the fact that prohibitions encourage such societal stigma.

This is another example of the Two wrongs make a right fallacy, and you make a pretty good argument for the prohibition of tobacco.

The question is not whether tobacco or illicit drugs are right or wrong, but whether certain illicit drugs present an unacceptable risk. Taxing tobacco cigarettes to the point that criminals are motivated to smuggle them has demonstrably funded terrorist groups. Surely criminalizing tobacco use would give rise to societal harm, including but not limited to violence and property crimes. During historical periods of alcohol and drug prohibition, per capita homicide rates increased drastically.

More people die every year from peanut allergies (including proportionate to population usage) than from Ecstasy. Since equal nutritive value can be derived from other food sources, is the use of peanuts unacceptable due to the risk?

Everyone who has ever died from peanut allergies has been allergic to peanuts. You don't have to be allergic to cocaine to die from it.

Coca leaf was used for many thousands of years without overdose. After cocaine was prohibited it's popularity and abuse soared, and without reasonable regulation, the resulting derivatives are more dangerous to use. If peanuts were illegal, few would know if they were allergic, and peanut users would be disinclined to seek treatment.

"Coca leaf was used for many thousands of years without overdose." -- You can't possibly know that. Anyway, what you're basically saying is that cocaine is currently dangerous.

Which... says to me that it should be illegal.

So skydiving should be illegal too?

Every year, hundreds of metric tons a year of coca leaf are approved by the Drug_Enforcement_Administration for U.S. importation to Maywood, New Jersey for pharmaceutical and surfactant chemical extraction. Cocaine is a schedule II FDA approved drug.

Heroin and other opiate drugs, in their pure and unadulterated form, are among the safest substances, assuming an accurate dosage can be administered.

Link, prease.

Fatal heroin overdose is potentially preventable. Educating users about the risks of co-administering alcohol and other depressant drugs with heroin, the comparative safety of injecting heroin in the company of others and the need to call for intervention sooner may reduce the frequency of heroin-related deaths.

I'm sorry, when I said "Link, please," I meant a link to a reputable website, as opposed to one that is nothing more than a mouthpiece for propaganda from the pro-drug lobby.

Note: the link referenced above is from the Medical Journal of Australia, which makes articles freely available on the World Wide Web for the advancement of public health and medical research.

Unacceptably dangerous is a subjective statement. The question should be one of "risk vs. benefits." Most drug users consider the benefits of mind-expanding drugs like LSD to be greater than the risks, including potential brain damage and jail time.

LSD does not cause brain damage.

See the note labelled above. And I think you'll find that most LSD users, given the choice of "Use LSD and go to jail" or "do neither", would choose the second option.

Whatever users choose, the costs to society of incarcerating individuals are far higher than the costs to society of allowing people to pursue their happiness as they choose. For example, marijuana smoking has increased since the inception of Reefer

Madness laws from being virtually unknown among Americans to greater than half of all high school seniors admitting they have smoked pot.

It is not worthwhile for a law to forbid persons from willingly exposing their own bodies to harm by using drugs, any more than by overeating, bungee-jumping, getting tattoos, or volunteering to work in leprosaria.

The use of some drugs may be significantly more dangerous than most of these activities.

Which drugs? Anything can be dangerous if done improperly.
Obesity is a USA national epidemic, killing millions every year, but the government has no right and does little to regulate how much citizens eat.

If Obesity was truly a major problem (and it isn't), then the government certainly would have the right to step in and regulate things.

Approximately 500,000 Americans die annually from complications due to unhealthy, often fatty or sugar and partially hydrogenated oil laden foods.

Approximately 30% of Americans are obese, the highest of all OECD member countries.

We do and should have laws which prevent people from harming themselves. Currently, driving without a seatbelt and attempting suicide are both illegal, even though they are crimes which will not harm anyone other than the person doing them.

It is false to say that not wearing seatbelts or attempted suicides will not harm others, accidents can be minimized if the driver is firmly strapped in front of the steering wheel, and families and friends of those who attempt suicide are most certainly harmed emotionally.

Attempting suicide should be legal as well. Successful suicide should earn the death penalty, however.

Drug use may underwrite other forms of crime that endanger other people.

Most (a large majority) of these other forms of crime are derived from the black market culture, and are best eliminated by legalization. Crimes committed by users to obtain drugs would also disappear with the price drop and improved access to effective treatment if drugs were legalized.

I disagree. Even in places where gambling is legal, there are a large number of crimes committed by people who are addicted to gambling.

Gambling is a form of prohibition, where equitable transactions are disallowed and instead otherwise unlikely rewards are available to those willing to incur increased risk.

Some drug-related crime may occur as a result of drugs being illegal, and possibly therefore expensive and impure.

What does this sentence mean? It should either be clarified or removed.

Demand for illegal drugs is exacerbated by prohibitions, and because regulation in the trade has been relegated to the black market, there is an ever increasing incentive to offer more powerful and sometimes adulterated products to satisfy such increased demand, often at artificially inflated costs.

Drugs are addictive.

Hence, they essentially rob the user of free will. A drug user can not make an informed and rational decision whether to continue using drugs because the use of the drug eliminates that user's ability to think rationally.

Even if this was true, it would apply only to heavily addicted individuals. The vast majority of users of any drug are not addicted; recreational use is dominant.

"The vast majority of users of any drug are not addicted; recreational use is dominant." -- I'd like to see a link to support this statement, otherwise, I'd vote for removing it.

The 2002 NSDUH reports 4.6 million people dependent on illicit drugs, or illicit drugs alone in the past year, out of 35 million past year drug users (13.1%). This breaks down to 2,614,000/25,755,000 (10.1%) depdendent marijuana users (dependence does not require physical addiction by the DSM standard, although it is on the list of criteria), 198,000/404,000 dependent (49.0%) heroin users, 936,000/10,992,000 (8.5%) dependent on other narcotics (many of which are actually stronger than heroin), 1,025,000/5,902,000 (17.4%) dependent on cocaine, 259,000/3,181,000 (8.1%) dependent on other stimulants. Anybody challenging the validity of others peoples claims ought to at least be familiar with NSDUH findings.

Drug users exercised free will when they chose to use drugs; a person has the right to give up his or her own freedom.

No drug exists which eliminates free will, although death is possible. It is possible to quit using any drug, even if it is unlikely.

Many banned drugs are not addictive, or are significantly less deleterious to free will than legal alcohol or tobacco. Severe physiological addiction has been demonstrated for tobacco (stronger than cocaine), but no strong physiological addiction has been shown for marijuana.

Society condones or promotes psychological addiction to other activities that may be harmful, including overwork or conspicuous consumption.

This is the Two wrongs make a right fallacy. If 'A' is harmful and illegal and 'B' is harmful but legal, this does not mean that 'A' should be legalized.

No it is not. If anything, that is a Straw man argument. The truth is that prohibition is and always has been counterproductive. It is not reasonable to outlaw such items in commerce, and disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Furthermore, if 'A' is exponentially less harmful than 'B', it is evident that harm is not and was never a rational basis for keeping 'A' illegal. Historically, wherever 'B' was deemed contraband, significantly more harm was caused to society as is evidenced by the increase in per capita homicides, youth access and abuses evident during Alcohol Prohibition.

Answer 2

You can't. A person who is addicted to a substance, be it prescription drugs, street drugs, or alcohol must want to stop on their own. They have to hit that rock-bottom before they seek help. Sometimes that rock-bottom becomes a fatal thing; they never seek help in time to save their own lives. Maybe her family, along with you, could stage some sort of intervention. If she's underage, her parents can put her in a rehab and counseling. If she's an adult, there's little you can do. Perhaps go on some websites that depict the looks of long-time drug users (there was a good site about this about users of crystal meth, it showed the changes in their faces from 1-3 years of use; awful) or get some pictures of overdose victims. You can sometimes find these on sites that have crime scene photos. I saw one just last night of a young woman who had overdosed on heroin. It wasn't pretty. You could also show her Chris Farley's death photos; he was a big-time drug addict, and those are definitely also not pretty.

She needs to actually see the effects that drugs have on people. There are also lots of stories of people being burned cooking up meth in their kitchens. Give her the information; she needs it.

Answer 3

Say...Stop Being A Idiot...And Be A real Woman For Once...Stop Using Drugs...Get Her A Boyfriend

Answer 4

Keep a spray bottle handy and when they pick up the dope just spray them in the eyes and say no..............no. You have to be stern and you have to point at the drugs right after you spray them and tell them no or they will not remember why they are being punished. Drug addicts have short memories. Anyway, this works with my friends. Hope I helped ya out.

Answer 5

Bring her to the rehab so she could witness how worst it is to be one of those drug users undergoing treatment and away from their loveones. It might awaken her and might stop using drugs. Or as early as now, bring her to a rehab even if she is not yet in a worst case so she will be given an advice.

Answer 6

Fry an egg in a hot pan on the stove. Make sure you let your friend know that the egg represents her brain and the crackling noise she hears when the egg hits the pan, that is her brain on drugs!

Answer 7

sometimes there's really nothing u can do because ur friend needs to WANT help in the 1st place. it might take her getting arrested and receiving a conviction before she's scared straight. it's diff for everyone in terms of hitting rock bottom. u can just be there for her and try to talk her into getting help, but u might not be very successful until something REALLY bad happens to her.

Answer 8

does she family? use that as leverage if she is close to them. if not, just be a friend and tell her shes screwing up, to think of the consequences then wait for her to fall. It sounz like she's way into into it. At this stage, only she can help herself. Just be there for her for when she needs you.

You have done plenty for her by asking in this forum.

Good luck!!!

Answer 9

You can’t. It’s up to your friend to make that decision. I guess you can lay down an ultimatum; our friendship or the drugs. Then see just how much that person respects your friendship. Druggies will only drag you down with them. Think about moving on…fast.

Answer 10

There nothing you can really do, except talk her out of it, or break off the friendship. Let her know how it makes you feel and how it messes her up. if this doesn't work, and you feel like you supported her enough then move on

Answer 11

Sweetie, your question is a very good one and I commend you for trying to help your friend. She's very lucky to have someone as caring as you in her life. I don't want you to think that I'm discouraging you from trying to help her but you have to be careful in a scinario like this one.. I know from experience that in cases like yours, one is easily sucked in and emotionally drained for all they're worth, only to come out of it all on the losing end. I learned this lesson the hard way with my ex fiance.. I wasted two perfectly good years of my life trying to get him off of drugs because I loved him and because I cared but because he wasn't willing to help himself, there was nothing that anyone, not even I could do to make him stop. I walked away penniless, miserable, & emotionally and mentally exhausted. Looking back on those two years I realized that those were two years that I would never get back and that I could have been living happily with someone that truly loved and cared about me.. It wasn't easy but eventually I gave up, walked out and found my way.. As for him, he continued to live his life in his slow hell and as time went on, it caught up to him.. He's been in and out of jail for theft and armed robbery, he had a baby out of wedlock, got married, divorced, lost his job, his house, and everything else that he owned, and filed bankrupt.. It was rumored that he "saw the light" so to speak but the last I heard, he was living with a friend and right back to his old ways.. Some people never learn.
Take it from me.. It's virtually impossible to change a person unless they want to change for themselves.. Best of luck to you.. I wish you and your friend well..