Users-Losers (1971)

[Music] day in the seventh grade, his first day in junior high with new teachers and new classmates. Of course, some of his friends from his old grade school, like Barry, for instance, transferred with him. But David still feels strange unsure. One of the big boys in his old school here, he's one of the youngest and he's very much concerned to be accepted in this new [Music] school. David's father spends a lot of time away from home because of his work. His brother Eddie is in the fourth grade in David's old school and his mother has a job. It isn't often the family has a chance to spend much time together. That is one reason it's so important for David to find and to have [Music] friends. David befriends a boy in his class, Henry. Henry's full of fun, and he seems to be on top of any situation. Perhaps because he has the added security of having an older brother in the same school. Both Mitch and his girl Karen are in the ninth grade. [Applause] David and Henry hit it off real well and they start to hang around together after school. Henry soon accepts David into his own group of friends and introduces him to one of their special activities, blowing pot. He wants him to try a little grass, too. But David has never turned on with anything before. And even though he's excited by the whole scene, he declines. But Henry puts the pressure on. Maybe David's not man enough to be part of his crowd after all. He scoffs. Maybe he'd rather go back to grade school, start over again in kindergarten. David's hurt as Henry taunts him. He doesn't want to lose his newfound friend. He wants to be accepted by him, to be part of his in crowd. And for the first time he tries marijuana. David hadn't liked his experiment with grass. He didn't like the taste and it burned his throat. Besides, he really hadn't felt anything. No high. [Applause] Henry had promised to turn him on to something else, something easy and sure. And it isn't long before he keeps his promise. Henry takes David to a special, a secret place, a stash, where he hides his supply of goodies. He has just the thing for David. Downers, reds. He has no trouble getting supplies. Anything you want. [Music] His brother Mitch is a dealer, the biggest in the whole school. Here, red on the house. We'll make you feel real good. [Music] And David drops his first ribs. David liked the feeling he got from the Reds, but when he asked Henry for some more, he was told he had to see [Music] Mitch. Mitch is all business. The free ride is over. If David wants more reds, it'll cost him. He'll have to come up with the bread. How? That's his business. Everyone else is doing it. If David wants to be one of the crowd, he'll have to fall in line. David doesn't want to be left out to lose his newfound friends. And he does consider Henry and Mitch his friends. He assures them he'll get the money. [Music] He saved his allowance, but it wasn't enough. He started to hoard the money his mother gave him for juice with his school lunch, and he went [Music] without. And he began to steal coins from his mother's purse. [Music] Pooling all the money he could lay his hands on, his allowance, his lunch money, and what he could piler, David soon has saved several dollars. And when his mother treats him to a movie, he adds this money as well. By now, he has enough for a sizable score. David's eager to see Mitch, and Henry agrees to take him to a place where his brother often hangs out with his friends to smoke pot or drop some pills. Turn on [Music] [Music] [Applause] What's going on? Beat me. [Music] [Applause] [Music] It's Karen. What happened? She must have ODed. Is she dead? Yeah. Come on. But she was Mitch's girl. Shouldn't we look? Don't you think? Don't you dare think. The next day, school, going to classes, being with the other kids is a nightmare for David. Pretending nothing had happened while carrying the burden of his terrible knowledge. He's disturbed, shaken. He's afraid, but he doesn't know what to do. He feels he must tell someone what he knows. And yet, he doesn't want to rat on his new friends. Henry realizes that David is uptight about the whole thing. He tries to put him at ease. He even offers him a couple of reds for free to make his problems go away, but David declines. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Mitch has been arrested, busted. They're taking him away. Someone had talked. Someone told about Karen. She hadn't been able to get a big enough or quick enough high. She'd taken an overdose. Mitch had been supplying her. The thoughts are whirling around in David's head. Henry, Karen, Mitch. The realization of the grave consequences of getting mixed up with drugs and narcotics crowds in on him. Hey, good catch. Yeah, that's one way of getting it around. What? Narcotics information. Oh, did you read it? No. Why not? You might learn something. Why? What? Like what it's all about. How come we know so much about it? How I was a user. No more. I quit before I got hooked for good. I found out the facts about drugs. It's right here. Let's take a walk. You know, to be a user or not to be a user is one of the most important decisions you'll ever have to make. And the decision is yours and yours alone. Isn't it worth getting at the truth before making it? Yeah, I guess so. Once you've turned on, you don't know anymore when you get really hooked. When it becomes impossible for you to stop. The best thing is never to start. Second best, just smoking grass. That's no worse than cigarettes or taking a drink. That's supposed to be bad for you, too. But people still do it, so why not pot? Oh, come on. Don't give me that. You know better. Sure, smoking's bad for you. Sure, drinking too much can mess you up. Everybody knows that. But is that any reason to start on one more stupid hangup like smoking grass or turning on? What's so bad about pot? Okay, let's go over it together. Marijuana pot is a weed that grows wild in many parts of the world. It's an Indian hemp plant called Satipa. All of it, the leaf, the stem, and the seeds can be used for smoking. The effects on a smoker depends on the quality and the amount of pot smoked. Everyone reacts in a different way to it and there's no telling how it will affect you. You lose touch with the real world. Your senses become distorted and you can't function normally and your judgment of what you're doing becomes faulty and that can be very dangerous. Pot may not be physically addictive like the hard stuff, but you come to depend on it. After a while, you've just got to have it. In that way, it is like smoking cigarettes. Have you ever seen a heavy smoker trying to quit? Well, it's like that, only more so. Much more so. And as for your drinking bit, blowing pot can make you act just as rattlerained as if you were drunk. If you blow pot regularly, after a while, you get a real I don't care attitude about everything. Just think what would happen if everyone had that kind of an attitude. There are times when every one of us has to depend on someone else. I'm sure you've had to. Suppose suppose they had the I don't care attitude of a pot smoker when you needed them. Some scientists who have studied the effects of pot smoking say it's very bad for you. Others say it's not. But one thing they do agree on, it isn't good for you. We'll have to wait for more tests before we'll know just how bad it is. If you blow pot, you take a chance of blowing your whole future. What's the sense in doing that? But isn't it good for something? Negative, man. Marijuana has no medical use. Like pills do, for instance. Yeah. What about pills? Doctors give them to people. There can't be any harm in them. Depends. Not when they're prescribed by a doctor to help cure some illness. There's a big fat difference between taking drugs on prescription to get well and taking them for kicks to get high. A doctor has had years of training. When he gives you a pill, he knows why you need it. He knows what and how much to give you, and he knows what it'll do to you. What do you think a dealer knows about things like that? His lack of knowledge may cost you. Pills and caps fall into two main categories. Amphetamines, uppers, and barbituates, downers. Uppers are stimulants that directly affect your central nervous system, your brain, and spinal cord. They come in many shapes and colors with slang names such as benny's, dexis, and hearts. Often they're bought on the street rolled in tinfoil. One of the most dangerous, methadrine, also called meth or speed, comes in both tablet and powder form. It's very very true that speed kills. It has many times. Under a doctor's care, amphetamines and barbiterates are used to treat various medical problems. But taken for kicks, it's another story. Unchecked abuse may lead to dependency, even addiction. The user becomes confused, aggressive, irrational, and reckless. In bad cases, it may even lead to a serious mental disorder. Barbits downers are depressants, the opposite of uppers and even more dangerous. One of the most dangerous is second, reds. There are many downers on the market with slang names such as reds, yellows, pink ladies, blue heavens, and rainbows. Downers are addictive. You have to have more and more of the drug because your body gets used to it until you may well take an overdose. OD. More people died from downer ODS in the United States. one year than were killed by guns. Sure, popping pills may feel great at the moment, but in the end, it'll destroy you. A dealer will try to get you hooked on something that'll make you come back to him, like reds. He'll tell you that you'll get a bigger high from stronger stuff. LSD, even heroin. It becomes easier to go on to the next step all the time. LSD is a very powerful and very destructive hallucinogen. It comes in tablet or powder form or as a liquid and it is most often taken by mouth perhaps over a sugar cube. The effect on the mind is frightening completely unpredictable. The trip can be the hope for heaven or it can be a hell of horrors from which you may never return. A lot of young people have become permanently deranged through a single terrifying trip or have destroyed themselves while freaking out. Neither LSD nor heroin has any real medical uses. Heroin addiction is the end of the road for the user. The way back is almost impossible. Withdrawal from the is extremely dangerous and painful. A heroin high may put you 6 feet under. And think about this. Nearly every heroin addict began by blowing pot. And every last one of them never thought that he'd go on to the hard step. That's something that happens to the other guy. And here's something else to consider. From pot to heroin, it's against the law to possess it, to sell it, to give it away, even to be in a place where illegal drugs or narcotics are being used. You can be arrested. Get yourself a police record that may hurt you all your life. And it's just plain stupid to blame the police officer like some heads do. He's only doing the job that we, the people, have hired him to do, upholding the laws that protect us all. It makes a lot more sense to help him. How? Well, you may feel that you don't want to tell on your friends, but maybe that kind of loyalty is misplaced. The fact is, the dealer who wants to turn you on is not your friend. He will abandon you at once if there's trouble. Drug friendships are not real friendships. Who's really your friend? The one who wants to get you on self-destructive drugs? Who's eager to mess up your life? Or the one who wants to steer you clear of them? To point out the very real dangers to you honestly. Using narcotics or abusing drugs is nothing but a copout from life, an escape from having to face up to everyday problems. Everyone has hang-ups and problems. Growing up means learning to cope with them. They don't go away by themselves, and drugs only make them worse. By using them, we only deny ourselves the ability to become mature and responsible and have a chance of real happiness. Drug addicts, on the average live 20 to 25 years less than they would if they didn't pollute their bodies and minds with narcotics. We all know how the earth is being polluted. You don't believe in pollution, do you? polluting the water and the soil and the air. Of course not. You want it stopped? Sure. What are you doing about it? You're kidding. What can I do? Well, for one thing, one very important thing, you can decide not to pollute your own body. The pollution that's being blown into the atmosphere every day, following the air we breathe, is no different from the pollution you draw into your lungs when you smoke pot. The sewage being dropped into the water, polluting and poisoning it, is really no different than the drugs you put into your body and you drop pills or acid. If you had an aquarium with beautiful fish in it, you wouldn't pour poison into it, would you? Then why put poison into your own body? You never really know what's in the drugs or narcotics you get. Most dealers don't know themselves to make a buck. A lot of the stuff has all kinds of junk mixed into it. to make it stretch further. You can be sure of only one thing. It will pollute your body and your mind. If you're smart, you'll say no to drugs. You'll say no to this chemical copout. Yeah, but who wants to be called chicken? Chicken? Who's really chicken? The guy who must go along with the crowd at any cost? Or the guy who has the guts to take a stand for what he knows is right, even if it's not the popular thing to do. It takes courage to say no. to tell the guy who wants to turn you on, to mess you up, that you don't need a chemical crutch. Saying yes only leads to suffering and unhappiness for you and for everyone who loves you. Don't gamble with your life. It's the only one you've got. Take it from me. I had to learn it all the hard way. Don't put yourself in a chemical cage. It's up to you. The decision is yours and yours [Music] alone. Think about it, man. Think about it. David is impressed. He has been given a lot to think about. He's promised his mother to pick up his brother Eddie at the grade school, his old school. But when he gets there, he doesn't see him around. He learns that Eddie and a couple of his friends went on down to a construction site where they're putting in storm [Music] drains. David goes down to get him. [Music] David is shaken. Not Eddie, not his little brother. This could be the start. Sniffing whether just as dangerous it can even kill. They're alive. David has to tell his brother. Drugs and narcotics not only turn you on, they turn don't pollute your body and your mind. It's your decision. Just remember, there are thousand reasons why users end up losers. [Music]