How Do Drugs Affect Teens In The 1960's

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Kevin Clavey Ms. Pruter English 101 Dec 3rd 2010 Teens, the 1960’s Peace, love, and happiness was the motto to teenage life in 60’s. The sixties was a huge decade for teens, the baby boom following World War II led to about 41% of the U.S.’s population being teenagers (Hurley 115). Many teens described this era as a whole new way of life. It was a time of freedom and peace for teens of the sixties. Teens were looking for change in the sixties; they used new ways of thinking, changed the way they dressed, turned to drugs for inspiration, and listened to music that promoted all of these changes. The sixties was a decade of change for teens across the United States. Their behavior, clothes, morals, and manners all started to change…show more content…
The counterculture brought a lot of attention to drugs and popularized them in the teen society (American Cultural History). Hippies who made up a lot of the teen population at the time was very into drugs. Most of theses drugs were still legal at this time because they were so new and uncommon. Scientists didn’t have the research on them that they do today to realize the negative effects they had on teens. One of the most popular drugs invented in this decade was LSD also known as acid, which is a hallucinogenic drug (Neary 122). Teens were very drawn to this type of drug because it would cause you to trip and feel like you were in another world. They used this type of drug to escape from the “Establishment.” Another very popular drug at the time was marijuana, at the time it was better know as grass or dope (Miller 201). According to Jay Stevens “It became a ritual-sitting around with your friends, passing a joint from person to person, listening to music, eating, talking, joking, maybe making out-all the senses heightened”(Miller 201). For hippies and other teen’s drugs weren’t thought of as a bad thing, it was more of a social and fun thing to…show more content…
Music was changing in the sixties decade, in the fifties it was all about rock’n’roll, this changed when pop music and acid rock became popular. The music of the this decade promoted dropping out of society, doing drugs, and helped popularize the word “hip” (Miller 222). The Beatles were one of the most influential bands of their time and changed the way people listened to music forever (Miller 222). During the sixties teens were swept up by the Beatlemania. Another thing teens were crazy about were music festivals. They would travel all across the country to go to festivals that would go on for days. The largest festival of this decade was Woodstock. Rock promoters rented a farm in Woodstock, New York and organized a performance for an audience of around 50,000 people, however over 400,000 people ended up showing up from across the country (the editors of Time-Life 146). The farm turned into a huge campground filled with teens that came there for peace, love, and music (the editors of Time-Life). Music was a big influence on teens because it promoted change and that was what teens were looking for during this

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