Why This?
This is for you. As a young person, you are experiencing new challenges every day. With each new challenge you will learn more about yourself and you will become more independent. As you get older, you will be facing more and more situations where you will be required to make a decision on your course of action. Some decisions will be smaller, but some will make a difference to your whole life.
Everyone wants to grow up to be a responsible, well adjusted and successful adult. To do that you must have a positive outlook on yourself and your life. You must want to do the best that you can do and be the best that you can be. Sometimes it's not 'easy to make the right choices, or even to know which are the right choices to make.
You may or may not have had to make any decisions about drugs or alcohol, but you know that they exist. They may already be a part of people's lives around you. It is important for you to know that the choice to use or not to use drugs and alcohol will one day be yours to make.
We want to help you make the right choices, but in the end... It's up to you to make the most of yourself and your life.

 

Choosing Role Models
A role model is a person who you want to be like. Role modelling is a very important part of your development. It is you choosing a person or people that you love and admire and wanting to be like them. When you are like them, they are happy with you.
Most often, the people that affect you the most are the people that are the closest to you from day to day. They could be a parent, a teacher, a brother or sister, a club leader, a friend, or a famous person. Perhaps you admire your father's sense of humour, your brother's athletic abilities and the way your favourite pop singer dresses. You have the right to make choices about the people who you want to be like. You can pick some qualities from one person that you admire, and choose different qualities from another person. You can have several different role models to help you form examples of the kind of person you would like to be.
Sometimes the very people that you want to be like have problems that involve drugs and alcohol. While you are growing up, you will also have to make choices about drugs and alcohol.
You can make the right choices. Having positive role models will help you to make the right choices about drugs and alcohol.

Peer Influences
Everyone wants to have friends. A peer is a friend that you share common thtngs with. A peer group is a group of friends who share common things. Having friends is necessary and an important part of learning to be an adult.
As you get older, you begin to spend more time with people your own age. Then you start to keep company with different groups of friends (peer groups) in and out of school. "Fitting in" to a group is very important. Your peer group gives you feelings of belonging, identity and it offers you support. Your peer group also affects your decision making and puts pressure on you to be the same as the others in the group.
Most of the time you probably don't even realize that your friends have such an effect on your thoughts and actions. Group pressures can be helpful but sometimes they are not. When it comes to smoking, drinking and using drugs, some of you will try them because your friends are trying them.
It is not easy to say "no" when you are afraid of offending your friends. These will be hard situations for you to deal with.


Just remember that you can think and act for yourself. You can make your own decisions and avoid problems. You can help your friends and they can help you. Together, you can make the right choices about drugs and alcohol.

What are Drugs?
Drugs are substances taken to change the way that the mind or body works. Drugs do not always come from the doctor or a drug store. Some drugs come from plants that grow wild. Drugs can also be made in laboratories. There are legal and illegal drugs. There are drugs that are helpful and drugs that are harmful.

Caffeine - the most widely used drug
Because it is so commonly found in our everyday lives, a lot of people don't even realize that caffeine is a drug. Most of you know that there is caffeine in coffee. Did you know that tea, colas, chocolate, stay-awake pills and some headache and cold remedies also contain caffeine?
It is known as a stimulant, which means that it can wake you up or give you a boost of energy. However, it affects different people in different ways, and depends on how much you take. Large amounts can harm your stomach or make you tired or restless. Even small amounts can also make you nervous, sleepy or sick.
It is addictive, so in time your body can become dependent on it. If choosing a healthy lifestyle is important to you, you may wish to consider limiting your use of caffeine.

Alcohol - apart from caffeine, alcohol is the most widely used and abused drug
Alcohol, found in beer, wine and hard liquors, is absorbed directly into your bloodstream by your stomach and from there goes to all your tissues. The immediate effects of alcohol vary depending on many things. Your size, weight, gender, the amount of food you have in your stomach, as well as the amount of alcohol you have consumed all make a difference to how it will react in your body.
Alcohol is a sedative so even a small amount will slow down your brain's ability to function. As a result, your
co-ordination, reflexes and judgement are all impaired. Alcohol often increases aggressiveness which can result in fighting and violence.
Common short-term effects of alcohol are light-head-edness, slurred speech, dizziness, nausea, talkativeness and clumsy movements. A hangover can even affect you the next day with nausea and vomiting, a headache and tiredness. Long term effects can include permanent damage to your brain and liver.
Why should teenagers choose not to drink? Alcohol is particularly dangerous for young people because their bodies are still growing. Young organs are easily damaged and brain cells killed by alcohol cannot be replaced. As with other drugs, teenagers are in much greater danger than adults of becoming addicted to alcohol. Typically, it will take 5 - 15 years for an adult to become an alcoholic while it only takes an adolescent 6 months - two years. Alcohol is so dangerous to developing bodies that mothers who drink even a small amount while pregnant run the risk of having a baby that has physical abnormalities or is brain-damaged.

Nicotine - after alcohol, nicotine is the next most widely used drug by youth and adults
Nicotine is a very poisonous and addictive drug, as much or more addictive than heroin or cocaine. You have the right to know that for years manufacturers have also been adding chemicals to enhance the effects of. nicotine to help ensure the quick addiction of anyone who starts smoking.
Here's something to think about. Teens most often start to smoke because they think it makes them look like adults. The truth is that adults rarely start smoking if they did not start when they were teens! Making the decision NOT to Smoke shows a lot more maturity than choosing to start. Tobacco manufacturers work hard at making smoking look attractive to teens because they know if they do not hook you before you finish high school, they have almost certainly lost another lifetime customer.
Look at yourself and nine other friends. If you all choose to smoke, only one of you will succeed in quitting, EVER! The other nine will spend enough money on cigarettes in your lifetimes to buy each of you a house or several cars. Three of you will have chosen to die a horrible and painful death from smoking-related diseases.
50 of the 4000 known chemical compounds found in tobacco smoke are known to cause cancer. Chemicals that circulate through your body every time you take a drag include carbon monoxide, ammonia, lead and acetone. Nicotine directly affects blood pressure and heart rate as well as the nerves that control your breathing. Nicotine is so deadly that it has been highly effective as a pesticide for centuries.
Smokers can look forward to high blood pressure, smelly breath and clothes, loss of stamina and wrinkled skin. Later, they can expect to develop emphysema, suffer from heart attacks or strokes... not to mention cancer. Smokers also invade the health of everyone by polluting our air. Who wins?
Our research indicates that the only benefit to smoking is if you own stock in a tobacco company!