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How a Culture of Drugs Is Killing our Youth

A discussion on the conversation of drugs and youth

By Adonis RichardsPublished 4 years ago 6 min read
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featured image credit to: CC Scott Garfitt/Shutterstock 2.0

Last weekend the world, unfortunately, lost another great young soul in the form of artist Juice WRLD. Reports from TMZ claim that the artist who turned 21 December  2nd, passed away after a seizure in Midway Airport in Chicago.

One moment for the young beautiful soul...

Reports also apparently claim that the artist had taken a significant amount of painkillers before his death.

Now that report although disturbing is linked to the fact that the police were coming to search the plane, and Juice Wrld's team had to get rid of the pills. This led to his unfortunate and untimely death. This is for another story, which is surrounded by the question of why were the police coming to search the plane? Something I will address in another post.

 Right now I wish to talk about the topic of the pills. The pills and how this drug culture has affected our youth, and the terrifying results it delivers. 

For Juice Wrld, he is another victim of this terrifying drug culture that is surrounded by guns and poor mental health within our inner-city youth. Thinking back before these kids were even famous, they were regular children. They were attempting to become famous and make music and create content for the rest of the youth. However, what is this culture doing to our youth? What is it doing to these performers? At this moment in time, the cycle of drugs and mental health is spinning out of control and it's causing so many of our young talented children to pass away and die.  

These kids are not just influencers. They are the representation of what's going on in America. A microcosm if you think. How many kids do you believe actually go through this in their regular everyday lives? How many kids go unnoticed around this age and die from the same effects that juice Wrld or a Lil peep may have died from. Even a Mac Miller? Every day we're watching our youth fade away and running to Pills and other substances to escape the pain that they're living in. Juice Wrld is just another example. Although Juice Wrld did die on the circumstances that are tragic, it is undeniable that his death is an example of the horrors we live in.

How Drug culture is destroying our youth. 

“Kids are looking for leadership in our society and we’re giving them none because we can make a fast buck off them,” said Bob Forrest,

For the likes of Juice Wrld, Lil Peep, even XXX tentaction, these are young kids whose mental health was staggered even before they reached the limelight. Juice Wrld was once quoted as wanting a cup of Lean because he heard rapper Future say it in a song. Let’s understand That Juice Wrld was once a young kid like a lot of the youth his age. How many of these kids live with these same ideals and nothing is done about it?

Then for those that become famous, they fall into this relentless industry that exploits their talents but never attempts to understand them or their struggles. There is a lack of guidance and counseling of our youth and its affecting them in ways that are spinning out of control. Juice Wrld is another soul we’ve lost to this horrifying reality.

“I see this every day, a kid becomes an overnight sensation, makes millions, and they’re a train wreck,” Forrest said. “My job now is not even educating these kids about drugs, it’s to inspire them that life is worth living.” LA Times

Our youth is subjected to drug culture, rapper J cole has highlighted this problem in his lyrics for years, all the prescription drugs these kids utilize to escape reality and our pop culture promotes this type of behavior and the results are the tragic deaths of our youth. 

These children are consistently conditioned to believe that prescription drugs such as Xanax and percs are popular and conducive to what’s popular and it is a by-product of how hopeless and self-destructive our community. It is stemming from the sub-genre of hip hop music known as Xanax rap where Xanax and other prescription drugs are glorified.

Rappers such as Future and Lil Wayne at one point and time have been culprits of this type of hip hop endorsement. 

However, there is another problem that is rooted in this drug glorification. These record companies that promote such behavior. The blood-sucking companies that suck the life out of these rappers for productivity and never take the time to assess their mental health. The results come in the tragic losses of these children. 

We have songs that teach people how to use these substances. Everyone from the likes of Rick Ross to French Montana, J cole has admitted to it as well.

Some industry figures including Tumay agree. “I honestly believe record deals should be forced to have a therapist attached,” Tumay said. “Have some person assigned to an artist to check on their mental health. [Labels should] say, ‘We’re not signing you unless you go to therapy.’ ” LA Times

These kids are coming into this industry tormented and traumatized, attempting to make music for the youth and they consistently create a cycle that promotes the abuse of these substances that are designed to eliminate one problem just to create another. 

The sad part is that there are youths that listen to these rappers endorse this problem and become on a macro scale repeating the process of losing themselves to escapism and drug abuse. 

The most horrifying part about this reality is that this isn’t new. Inner-city youth have been victims of substance abuse for decades and now it becomes a problem. For so long we have been subjected to these horrifying realities of using these drugs that kill us relentlessly and effortlessly and no one has spoken about it. Its glorification and the highlight of its wrongdoing have risen simply because middle America has realized it’s a problem. The young, middle class white American youth have now popularized these rappers music and we are realizing how destructive it has become. 

What’s the result? We see these young kids promote the very drugs that are killing them and the constituents that listen to them. We have a problem that we haven’t addressed in so long and it’s finally being highlighted.

The last problem is that these young black and brown kids are victimized to the subjugation of escaping trauma through the abuse of substances. The troubles inner-city youth experience daily from violence to poverty and substance abuse is the by-product of systemic oppression. Substance abuse is just another addition to the long-standing destruction of our people. We're consistently troubled with seeing our own die in the street, we're subjugated to police brutality and the seething racism on top of the desire for gratification through material objects and we're told by those that influence us that these drugs are what will help us run away from this pain and suffering. all that combined with poverty and we have a generation of people holding the weight of mental health issues on a scale we haven't seen.

There have been songs for years that have glorified drug abuse and it's a trend that is now delivering the side effects of death, anxiety, and depression amongst other mental issues. We have had a drug epidemic in this country, it started with glorifying of selling drugs to the glorifying of using drugs. Nothing has changed, it's just been illuminated on a larger scale and it's time we started to address this problem at its core.

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About the Creator

Adonis Richards

An aspiring writer and journalist looking to motivate people through my writing and poetry

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