Karenia's Story
When I was eleven, I wondered why my mom's ex-boyfriend always had so much money. He didn't have a job and never mentioned anything about working. I finally realized that he made his money selling cocaine. The people we knew that were buying drugs were really screwed up, they have no hope for the future, and now many of them are dead. Thanks to him, my friend started selling crack. When the cops came to bust him he ran so they sent the dogs after him. My friend ran up a tree. When the cops finally caught him, they hog tied him and put him in the county jail for 6 months. When he got back out he started selling crack again. I never saw him again. The last time I heard about him was when they found him dead. I read about him in the newspaper. Crack really ruined his life and he can never get it back.

Click here to find out more about crack cocaine.

Laura's Story
If I had chance to do it all over again would I make the same decisions? No way! I bet you're wondering why! I'm 15 years old. I was 11 years old when I first started smoking weed. I met Timmy a year later. He is one of those big time boys. He sold a lot of cocaine and hard, which is crack. I loved it when I was living with him because he bought me all the weed I wanted. When I got tired of weed, I started to smoke cocaine and I loved it at first. When Timmy started to cut off my supply, I decided I would do anything to get high. And I did. I didn't eat or sleep for a week or 2 at a time. I knew if I went to sleep I would lose my high. I didn't want to start all over again because that meant going out and getting more money by stealing, or having sex with men. If I wanted to get some cocaine the easy way I could just sleep with one of my neighborhood drug dealers. When you snort cocaine, you don't have too much of an appetite. Cocaine was my food. I lived this life for two years until I got arrested. I went to the detention center. Two days later I went to court and my judge said he couldn't trust me to go home. I didn't ask why because it was obvious. He sent me to the detention center for 9 months and I am currently in a level 6 program. I go home to my family in a few weeks. I plan on going back to school and doing the right thing. All of this really messed up my teenage years. So don't do the same thing I did, because you don't want to sit and think "If I could only do it all over again…"