Drug Addiction in London, Ontario

Alcohol and drug addiction are a pretty major problem no matter where you go. Any village, town or city of any size in North America has a problem with them. Canada’s cities are no stranger to these issues.  London Ontario deals with these problems every day.  As much as people may wish otherwise the problems are in the work place and the schools, the home and in the car. Alcohol is not alone anymore and hasn’t been for quite a long time. While there are treatment centers and programs in place to deal with drug addiction issues they are almost totally overwhelmed by the sheer number of people need help with their addictions.

London Ontario is getting known lately for its marijuana use and addiction, studies and research show it rising to higher rate than in the 90”s and slowly pushing record highs that will surpass even the usage in the 70’s.  Southwestern Ontario and his surroundings including the London area have reported the highest usage of marijuana in the nation; 37%.  Tracking the drug use and possible drug addiction of seventh to twelfth graders have found that drugs like LSD and ecstasy have remained constant or dropped off while the use of marijuana has increased now to be second only to alcohol.  The use of marijuana seems to increase with the person’s age, 6% of seventh graders have used it up to 45% of those in grade 12.

That being said the marijuana use is second to alcohol, which can give anyone a pretty good impression of how much alcohol is being consumed.  Almost 50% of all high school students have drunk alcohol; sometimes this percentage can go up to 80%. As if this isn’t enough up to 35% of the drinking teens drink heavily, regularly. London has a few drug and alcohol issues to deal with but then again so does every other city.

^{References: http://www.fims.uwo.ca/newmedia2005/default.asp?id=125}