The+pot+heads

Q: How is marijuana used?

 * A:** **Most users roll loose marijuana into a cigarette (called a joint or a nail) or smoke it in a pipe or water pipe, sometimes referred to as a bong. Some users mix marijuana into foods or use it to brew a tea. Another method is to slice open a cigar and replace the tobacco with marijuana, making what's called a blunt. Marijuana cigarettes or blunts sometimes contain other substances as well including crack cocaine.** [[image:http://www.broadwayhandicrafts.com/images/bong.jpg]][[image:http://citizenpower.today.com/files/2008/12/marijuana-joint.jpg width="246" height="262"]][[image:http://www.captainblunt.com/myspace/how_to_roll_a_blunt.jpg width="311" height="300"]]

Q: How does marijuana stay in the user's body?

 * A: THC in marijuana is rapidly absorbed by fatty tissues in various organs. Generally, traces //(metabolites)// of THC can be detected by standard urine testing methods several days after a smoking** **session. In heavy users, however, traces can sometimes be detected for weeks after they have stopped using marijuana.**

Q: How do teens smoke marijuana?

 * A: Contrary to popular belief, most teenagers do not use marijuana. Among students surveyed in a yearly national survey, only about one in seven 10th graders report they are current marijuana users //(that is, used marijuana within the past month)//. Fewer than one in five high school seniors is a current marijuana user.**

Q: Why do young people use marijuana?

 * A: There are many reasons why some children and young teens start smoking marijuana. Many young people smoke marijuana because they see their brothers, sisters, friends, or even older family members using it. Some use marijuana because of peer pressure.

Others may think it’s cool to use marijuana because they hear songs about it and see it on TV and in movies. Some teens may feel they need marijuana and other drugs to help them escape from problems at home, at school, or with friends.**

= = ** RATIONALE ** __What we want the audience to get from it:__ We have chosen this newspaper article to show the effects of drug abuse, mainly cannabis. We will show the way that marijuana can take over a life and the consequences of this intake and the fact that it affects every part of your life. In our performance there will be 5 characters played by three people. Jordan: the counseller and the drug dealer. Julia: the policewoman and Sharron; the younger sister. Isabella: the protagonist and Kyra; the older sisther who is addicted to marijuana. __Music/Sound:__ For the sounds for the performance, we will mainly be using songs and chosen lyrics. __ ICT/Technology: __We will be including a short PowerPoint presentation during our performance for the scene settings and backgrounds. __Props/Costumes/Instruments:__ For our performance we will only need a police cap, a counsellers notebook and plain clothes for the actors. __The Risk:__ The sisters and the drug dealer in our performance took the risk of taking drugs, the counseller also took the risk of taking the girls into the kind arms and helping them realise what drugs are doing for them, this will enhance the performance, by including the risks and making short statements throughout.**
 * __Stimulus:__ Our stimulus is a newspaper article about a son drug dealing because the mother was making him. We have gathered other articles and stories about drug use and these will be useful to notice the affects of drug abuse and also the affects by the police.


 * CLP BACKGROUND STORY ** ** There once was a girl named Kyra. **
 * She was 15 and had a troubled past, her father was an alcoholic and her mother was a cocaine addict. **
 * She had a younger sister named Sharron and was 13 years old. **
 * One day, a local boy named Ryan from the neighbourhood talked to her and offered her some weed, she willingly accepted. **
 * She thought it would help keep her mind off her distressed family and thought it was harmless. **
 * She smoked some in her room and got hooked on it. **
 * She began to buy more from that local boy and even from other school kids she knew could provide it. **
 * She gave some to her younger sister who began using a bong instead of smoking joints. **
 * The older sister became depressed and started smoking more. **
 * Her younger sister got off marijuana after some psychiatry from the school counsellor. **
 * The older sister got help from the school counsellor after her younger sister pleaded for her to. **
 * After she quit, she faced up to Ryan, who got her hooked onto the drug. **
 * Ryan was finally arrested by the local police woman and got a sentence of 4 years in a juvenile correction facility and rehabilitation for his own drug taking habit. **
 * Kyra and Sharron both went back to school after 2 months of family counselling and rehabilitation. **

**

RISKS OF MARIJUANA (TRUE STORY) ** The Lows of Getting High: Alby's Story By Cate Baily Adapted from Heads Up: Real News About Drugs and Your Body, Scholastic, Inc., 2003. (While the following story is real, to ensure anonymity, the photo is of a model and is not of the article’s subject). At 18, Alby was living a nightmare behind bars. He felt he was in constant physical danger. “I saw people get stabbed,” he told Scholastic. And he experienced daily indignities. “I couldn’t eat the food they served. The potatoes were like blocks and the meat didn’t taste like meat,” he says. Believe it or not, getting arrested was probably the best thing that could have happened to Alby. It got him into treatment for his drug problem. When we spoke to Alby, he was 1 month into his recovery at a drug rehabilitation center in Westchester, New York. Grudge Against the World It all started one summer day on a street corner in Yonkers, New York, when Alby was 13. “You need to get your mind right. Hit this blunt,” a friend said. Alby didn’t have the strength to say no. He felt he had to smoke the blunt (a cigar hollowed out and refilled with marijuana or a mix of cocaine and marijuana) to fit in. He desperately wanted to belong. His parents had never been there for him. They were drug addicts themselves and couldn’t handle the demands of parenting. So, Alby bounced from a foster home to his grandmother’s to a group home. When he was about 14, his mother died. “I wasn’t supposed to go through this,” Alby says. “I had a grudge against the world.” After trying marijuana (also called weed, grass, pot, herb, boom, Mary Jane, and chronic) to fit in, Alby kept abusing the drug because he enjoyed the intoxicated feeling marijuana creates. “It had me in another state of mind,” he says. “I was relaxed. All my problems seemed like they were disappearing.” The Price Alby’s problems weren't disappearing. They were getting worse. The good feelings he sought from marijuana came at a price. Over the next 5 years, Alby smoked marijuana every day, several times a day. He went to school high and eventually dropped out. “I was losing focus. My attention went from 100 to 0. I was depressed,” he says. Despite the consequences, Alby kept smoking marijuana. In fact, he was willing to do anything to get high. Eventually, he started dealing drugs to support his habit. That’s what landed him in a maximum-security jail.