Homecoming is no excuse for poor decision making

Homecoming: it’s the first dance of the year. Time for girls to dress up and boys to ask their crushes out. Sadly, sometimes, instead of just enjoying homecoming, some people decide to do bad things. Sometimes they decide they want to drink or do drugs. The thing is they don’t realize that it’s actually not going to make their night any better.

When people who drive to homecoming drink, they put themselves and whoever they are taking home in danger. They use the excuse that they won’t drink enough to be unable to drive right, but, once they start drinking it’s not that easy to just stop themselves.

Other people that don’t have to drive home think they’ll be fine no matter how much they drink, but here’s the thing: if you’re drinking so much that you black out and don’t know what’s going on, so many things could happen. You’ll not only miss the fun at homecoming, but you could wake up with a hangover. You could wake up and find yourself somewhere you’ve never been before. There could be pictures of you on the Internet doing things while you’re drunk that you wouldn’t do normally. Most people don’t think about what could happen afterwards; they only think about how much fun they’re having at that moment. And that’s how bad things happen.

There’s a reason the drinking age is 21. Teens get drunk faster than adults but have more trouble knowing when to stop. When states have tried to lower the drinking age in hopes of lessening underage drinking, it actually got worse. Teen brains are still maturing, and if the drinking age was lowered and we were allowed to drink, it would cause some health problems for us.

Marijuana is a problem too. People argue that it doesn’t affect their driving, but they’re actually quite wrong. Even low doses of it can affect concentration and perception and even mess with reaction time — all things you need to have in order to drive safely. Marijuana can make it hard to judge distances or react to signals and sounds when your driving.

Homecoming is packed with options for fun, so do yourself a favor and leave the chemicals alone.