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Velasquez

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Alexis Velasquez
Professor Noh
English 114
12 October 2015
Teenagers Under the Influence

On day 5998, Levithan portrays a day of a boy who is heavily addicted to a

substance. Teenagers are curious about the world and are more likely to try things
we should not. At social gatherings teenagers feel comfortable trying news things
such as alcohol because everyone is doing it and it is cool. Teenagers are more
likely to binge drink because they do not know how to use alcohol, and the
possibility of underage drinkers getting into danger increases substantially.

The awareness of underage drinking and driving as sky rocketed because

teenagers are starting to drive at a younger age and drinking is becoming more
common. More drinking and drinking laws have been passed in the last ten years
than in pervious decades combined to prevent any more deaths caused by alcohol.
Ten percent of licensed drivers are under the age of twenty-one, yet there are
responsible for the seventeen percent of fatal alcohol-related crashes. Driving
intoxicated is a crime period, but the consequences for someone under the age to
break the law are far worse. This is a problem that plagues our communities and
hurts our economy, Alcohol related crashes cost American tax payers 100 billion
dollars ever year (NCADD).

Whenever we think of substance abuse, we always think it is the harder

drugs that do the most hurting but we are wrong, it the ones we can walk into a

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market and get easily. Alcohol is the most commonly abused substance out there,
not the illegal hard to find drugs. Due to increased public awareness and
enforcement alcohol impaired driving deaths have decreased 48.5% from
1982(26,172) to 2006(13,470) and probably much more since then (NCADD).
Levithan showcases the pain of fighting the addiction perfectly in his book, although
it not always the stereotypical single story we know of substance abuse.

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