Some of the substances that I will research are going to be Alcohol, Cocaine, and

Marijuana, I found that these are some of the most consumed substances in the teenage years
and I wanted to find out more information on these substances. And how they affect people's
lives from starting in their young adulthood years.

Drugs are often used with adolescents that are legal for adults and they still proceed to
use the illegal drugs. Usually the use of alcohol or tobacco typically proceeds to the use of
Cocaine and Marijuana. In recent years the prevalence of marijuana is used among young
people has greatly increased the surpass of cigarette use. Typically this type of drug is used
among teenagers and High school students. In the year of 2014, 44.4% of them used marijuana
and 4.6% of them used cocaine as well. The progression of these drugs has led to the nation of
all sorts of drugs. The use of alcohol and tobacco has been their “gateway” trips from other
drugs. They typically move on to more serious and illicit drugs after they get sick of the same
“High” from the Marijuan. Most people that have used cocaine have smoked cocaine and most
of them started in their high school career.

The population level of these drugs are the way to use onset and are relevant to the
behavior of adults at different historical periods and can vary on their functions of the drugs
used in adolescence. They have been examining the impact of the variations in the adolescent
of the drug behaviors across 17 different countries in the same historical period. Smoking and
alcohol use is predicted to use other drugs by the age of 29. They have done research on 12th
graders as their functions of smoking levels from two to four years earlier by eight or tenth
graders. They had a peak in 1996 which was at 49.2% and then it lowered dramatically in 2008
to 20.5%. This is when the D.R.U.G. association was created and it took effect on the high
school students and lowered the percentage of the use of drugs and alcohol.

Cocaine is used by more than 14 million people in the whole world. The ages that use
the drug are between the ages of 15 to 64. Cocaine is usually one substance that people turn to
after they get bored of Alcohol. Cocaine is one of the top drug related emergency hospital visits
in the United States. The drug stimulates more of the cardiovascular system and can increase
the levels of norepinephrine and lessen the extent of epinephrine. Cocaine can affect three
mechanisms causing ischemia, the first one can increase the myocardial oxygen demand, the
second can decrease coronary blood flow to the coronary artery vasoconstriction and spasm.
Then the final cause can affect the coronary artery thrombosis via the activation of the platelets,
stimulation of platelet aggregation and potentiation of thromboxane production.

Marijuana is one of the most illicit drugs used in the US. 14.6 million Americans use the
drug monthly. What happens in the body when the substance is used is the THC binds to the
cannabinoid receptors in the brain causing anxiolytic, sedative, analgesic, and psychiatric
effects as well as the appetite stimulation. There is medical use of Marijuana that is usually
prescribed to stimulate appetite in the patients that are receiving chemotherapy or experiencing
waste effects of the immune deficiency syndrome. It has been documented that smoking either
cigarettes or marijuana can cause a rapid clearance of theophylline then in nonsmokers. This
can cause a decrease in therapeutic concentration in patients. The people that smoke
Marijuana more than three times a week, it can affect their body and make them function more
slowly and talk slower than what they usually do because Marijuana is constantly in their
system.

Alcoholism can vary between countries. The prevalence of alcohol use is about 80% but
can range from 3.8% to 97.1%. The risk of alcoholism can be a disorder when it begins in
adolescence and can be developed by the age of 18. The alcohol dependence is more common
in men than women, although the rate for women has been increasing in women and younger
individuals from the year 2014 to now. Alcohol consumption is generally more frequent in older
people than in other age groups. In some European countries the alcohol consumption rate has
been decreasing from the year 2016.

Some of the outcomes of using these substances can relate to chronic experiences to
the minorities because of stress that they deal with in their lives. A lot of the reasons that these
minorities will be pressured into using the substances is because they hang out with people
older than them and they get pressured into trying them. The Majority of the time it is just
alcohol or marijuana. A lot of the younger teens don’t try hard illicit drugs such as Cocaine when
they first start experimenting with alcohol or marijuana. Which is why a lot of the people that do
Cocaine are in the older age group because they have gotten bored of Marijuana or Alcohol and
want to try something different that has stronger effects.

● Keyes, Katherine M., et al. “Birth Cohorts Analysis of Adolescent Cigarette

Smoking and Subsequent Marijuana and Cocaine Use.” ​American Journal of
Public Health​, vol. 106, no. 6, June 2016, pp. 1143–1149. ​EBSCOhost​,
doi:10.2105/AJPH.2016.303128.
● Mohammad Hassan Ghadiani. “Cocaine, Marijuana, Hypertension and
Cardiovascular Effects.” ​Novelty in Biomedicine​, vol. 3, no. 3, July 2015, pp.
155–159. ​EBSCOhost​,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsdoj&AN=edsdoj.f5413b5b0
da46168e30a67cf7e3a494&site=eds-live.
● Lindsey, Wesley T., et al. “Drug Interactions between Common Illicit Drugs and
Prescription Therapies.” ​American Journal of Drug & Alcohol Abuse​, vol. 38, no.
4, July 2012, pp. 334–343. ​EBSCOhost​,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=s3h&AN=76460717&site=eds-
live.
● Trifkovič, Klavdija Čuček, et al. “Quality of Life of Alcohol-Dependent Adults:
A Mixed-Methods Study.” ​Obzornik Zdravstvene Nege​, vol. 54, no. 3, July 2020,
pp. 204–213. ​EBSCOhost​, doi:10.14528/snr.2020.54.3.2985.