Whether it is prescription medication, psychoactive hallucinogens or alcohol and marijuana, there are always drugs being bought and sold. Experimentation is both common, and to some degree, healthy. Learning the limits to what you can do is a colossal part of growing up. Teenagers are largely not used to making choices that have permanent, long-term effects. Learning to pause and think about what you are doing is a big step towards maturing.
Whether it is prescription medication, psychoactive hallucinogens or alcohol and marijuana, there are always drugs being bought and sold. Experimentation is both common, and to some degree, healthy. Learning the limits to what you can do is a colossal part of growing up. Teenagers are largely not used to making choices that have permanent, long-term effects. Learning to pause and think about what you are doing is a big step towards maturing.
On the darker side of teenage exploration, not all teenagers are simply experimenting. Namely, the ones who provide the drugs and make drugs a long-term segment of their lives. The teenagers who decide to sell drugs fail to consider long-term ramifications. They do not think, “What if I get caught?” They do not even think of themselves as drug dealers. Often, they claim that they are “hook ups,” as if it will mean any difference to the police. They say they are not drug dealers, yet they deal drugs. They just hook friends up, but they make a profit. No one buys a mini-scale just to help their friends have fun.
While TV and movies may make it seem like a professional and genuine business, I have never personally met a drug dealer who does not use drugs. This becomes a real issue when the dealers snowball to harder and harder drugs. They often get into these harder drugs through their own supply. Which would they rather sell, the marijuana that makes them a small profit just above even, or the ecstasy which can bring in $500 a night. If you have the drugs anyway, why not use them? They continue down this path when they trade. If you trade away your marijuana but come back with Vicodin, it would not take much convincing to get you to use them.
Experimentation is not a valid excuse to the police. Whether you are rebelling against your parents, the world, or yourself, it is important to understand how dealing drugs can affect you later in your life.
Juvenile possession is an extremely serious charge. More than 20 grams of marijuana is a third degree felony, and may receive as many as five years in prison. Sealing your record is a process that prevents others from being able to see your criminal history. While it is true that you may be able to seal your record, the process is lengthy and difficult. Unfortunately, not all crimes are eligible. In fact, there are many felonies that cannot be sealed. You cannot apply to have your records sealed while you are serving a sentence, including probation.
This could keep you from going to college, getting a job, voting, and even damage whatever time you have left in high school. While colleges do not require you to disclose criminal history, and it can be sealed, you cannot hide the years missing from your education. It is highly unlikely that the college application process will not, at some point, bring up your age and the time missed from school. If you disclose it to them voluntarily, they may reject you. If you do not, and they do not get answers to the obvious questions, they may accuse you of lying.
Life as a felon without an education does not seem like the road to success. Sure, it does not seem like it would happen to you. It does not seem like it would to anybody, but all it takes is one arrest, and your life comes apart at the seams.
Being a felon is like having a permanent brand that marks you as guilty. All jobs will know, schools will know, your family knows. Your partners have to know. Forever. It does not feel like you are committing a crime. You do not seem like a criminal. But, in the literal view of the term, you are. And if you are caught, you will face the consequences.
Jordan Craig is a junior at High Tech High International in Point Loma and a resident of El Cajon.
