The pain of suicide .... The loss of a child.... Such heartfelt sympathy for parents.

This paper is in Jackson, Miss. Please let our readers know when you post.

In his suicide note, Brad writes that he started with marijuana and then began using LSD....

For Brad, weed was the gateway to bigger drugs.....

It’s an all-too-common theme to Marshall Fisher, director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics . Preaching that marijuana is the gateway drug falls on deaf ears to too many young people, he said.

Where's the site "pro drug" guys to go ahead and once again hit us with the BS that "pot is not a gateway drug" and that "the war on drugs is lost" and that "pot is harmless".

Yeah, they know different than what the clear reality. We just go on losing young people and destroying families with lousy drugs, an industry supported by enablers who insist that drugs should be legal and plentiful.

Condolences to the Taggart family.

The comments under the article are interesting. Easy to see who is for legal pot use. When they switch from pot to other drugs, they go from being in a daze to way too intelligent to argue with you.

Too many of the decision makers are smoking pot themselves, so don't look for too much action.

This one must be read in its entirety. The irony is that this young man thought his mind was gone, yet his father remarked that his suicide note showed his mind was still working. But he didn't think so. And that made all the difference.

A horrific downward spiral for someone who clearly had much to offer. It can happen anywhere, in any family. There are no firewalls. This article tells us that if we didn't already know it.

Add alcohol to the list that is crippling and killing so many. Drugs and alcohol. I have never understood the appeal. So sorry for his parents.

I lost my god-daughter in January to heroine - she was clean 6 months, boy in school got her hooked her senior yr in HS. Good Catholic girl who was so athletic. Boy found her at her parents' home alone getting ready for work, and may have shot her up, this time fatally. She had been doing so, so well, and was ready for college. Boy had restraining order to stay away, but he's now a murderer. Can't locate the kid now... he knows what he did, and her parents are going after him.

Her heart was shot - veggies on her valves - from just the intensity of her addiction over a short time. EMTs couldn't get her back. These kids get a hold of things that I'd have to fight to get if I had a limb torn off, and I'm a nurse.. They carry it around like candy for after school, during school. My god-daughter was the 2nd high profile athlete to die in a year from the same class from addiction.

Prayers for this family is all you can offer. It hurts like hell.

This is such a vital, stunning message, straight from the heart, for our times. It is a MUST READ, ...all 5 pages!

My condolences.

Suicide is a mental health issue.

Substance abuse is a vice but not a crime.

We all struggle to control our relationship with all substances from heroin to cheesecake.

But NO ONE benefits when we bring in the government.

Prohibition is not the answer.

Liberty is perilous.

Adulthood is perilous.

When it is no longer perilous....

...it is no longer adulthood.

Kids who use heroin for a long time and get clean, then relapse and start using again frequently overdose, sometimes fatally.

Heroin is cheap and easily obtained. Look for needles hidden away in odd places.

#9, drugs, do you get it, drugs, do you understand it, small word, DRUGS killed this kid. He KNEW it. He could not stop his addiction, starting from the GATEWAY drug of POT.

STOP, freaking STOP with the lies and distortions that it "is not drugs fault". Yes, it is. It IS drugs fault, and all the problems that go with it.

Do you get, does it ring any brain cells with you, that this kid sold POT so that he could get the harder drugs? It's an ever repeating cycle that goes on and on with thousands and thousands of people.

You can sing song your versed response all you want. Drugs are a scourge, and apologists like you do NOTHING to advance a solution.

#7, my deepest sympathies for you and your family. A lot of terrible things can come from using street drugs including contamination and bacteria, etc.

Also, as another poster mentioned, heroin relapse is the cause of a lot of overdoses because people don't realize their bodies no longer have the tolerance level after being clean for a while. But if one wants to be truthful about the problems with drugs, alcohol is actually one of the absolute worst drugs around with regard to damage to the body, destruction of the brain, breaking up of families and violence. And alcohol is legal. Most people who take drugs and alcohol are actually self-medicating. They often have physical or mental problems that need attention. It is very possible this boy took drugs because he already had problems (depression or other mental or emotional issues). This is why we need better mental health services, more education on drugs and alcohol and better access to medical and mental health as well as treatment for substance abuse.

Alcohol is addictive to some; hard drugs are addictive to ALL.

I'm so, so sorry for your loss #7. I can read the pain in your words.
Prayers.

#11, to simply claim it is only the drugs is naive. Unless you have dealt with the issue of addiction, you don't know what you are talking about. That doesn't make one an apologist for anything. Yes, suicide IS a mental health issue. That isn't to say that drugs and alcohol don't exacerbate the problem--they can and often do. But sometimes they slow down the person from acting on bigger problems too. And yes, I have experience in all these issues. BTW, my best friend took her own life on purpose using drugs. She had many problems since early childhood, but wasn’t a criminal. Alcohol almost killed her in many ways in her 20s. Heroin actually prolonged her life by getting her off the binge alcoholism. I don't advocate taking heroin NOR alcohol. I am only stating facts. But I’ll say that one of the reasons she committed suicide was because she couldn't get the help she needed and couldn’t break the revolving door of the criminal justice system which kept her trapped—destined to fail. She was a wonderful person who had a very hard life. If she hadn’t been caught in the criminal justice system simply for taking substances and she had been able to get the help she needed, she’d probably be alive today. One problem with making drug use a crime is that every time you are arrested, you lose everything you have including your home and clothes. It is very difficult to start over from scratch each time--especially if you are not a thief or refuse to break the law in other ways. The system is rigged to make people fail.

An addendum to my post #7 - I said the boy "may" have shot her up, and that's being legally conservative. His DNA is all over the bathroom and on her body where she most likely was trying to force him out of the house he entered illegally. She had passed random and weekly drug tests since rehab, and was 100% clean til that morning. Her brother came home and found her too far gone to resuscitate.

She had the most loving family of support in all of us, and knew it. She was successful in being clean, and I'd given her the teaching on the decline of our bodies and core functions accelerated under addiction. She couldn't do anything about the damage already done, but was focused 100% on her future. Her uncle died @ 33 of an unresolvable asthma attack in front of his kids and he had a past severe drug addiction that weakened him to the point he couldn't survive. She never was told of the true severity of addiction predisposition in her family.

#15, it's so nice to know that you can speak with authority of what happened in this boy's life when he SPOKE what was happening to him. There is no note from any family member of a pre-existing depression situation. It takes alot of gall for you to suppose anything about this young man, and tossing aside what he documented as his experience.

Wow, just wow. Calling me naive because I believe the heartfelt letter of this man, who is the ONLY person to state what was happening to him????

And I never asserted, alluded to, claimed, or suggested anything about jailing a young man like this--or any user. But you bring up that old chestnut like a squirrel. The law SHOULD be focused, with full penalties, onto the dealers and distributors. How about 40 years hard time for selling to a minor? How about death penalty for a dealer for anyone who dies on drugs he sold or gave?

How about we start blaming DRUGS for the problem, instead of you and your buddies challenging the experience of a person and assert you know what is happening? How about that?

Give it a rest.

All of the drugs he took are illegal. War on drugs = epic fail. Vote for the war on drugs and then drown the girl you are using while driving drunk.

Alcohol is a hard drug. Tobacco is one of the most addictive. Life is hard...and dangerous...and sometimes very sad.

#18, someone once said the war on drugs is like weeding your lawn. You'll always get weeds, but imagine what happens if you stop pulling them.

That is exactly what we face. That "war on drugs" that you and your "legalize drug" buddies like to rage on gets tons of drugs off the streets every year, closes down meth labs and designer drug houses, saves neighborhoods, and saves lives, every day. The fact that some drugs are still relatively easy to get does not mean it is an "epic fail".

Oh, by the way, "epic fail" and all its associated versions went out about 5 years ago. Try to keep up.

Such a tragic story #7/16. Please know that you & the family of this young woman are in my prayers.

Although it would be a small consolation, I hope nonetheless that this monster who shot her up is caught and convicted. You and everyone connected with this tragedy certainly deserve that much.

When you have a first lady say she's going to party hard after the election,it's not an optimal example for kids ears who hear this crap.

A very sad story; original and from the posters as well. Just about everyone I know has lost someone to suicide. I dont know how that compares to previous generations, but suspect it is more.
As to the drugs, I noticed in the 70's that they were beginning to equate alcohol and tobacco with the harder drugs. It appeared to be a way for college dingbats to come into our HS and dazzle us with their brilliance.
Problem is, kids are stupid. They see their parents take a drink or have a cigarette, and because all that is the same as drugs, it must be ok to use drugs.
Tobacco and alcohol are not the same as drugs. To assert that is to diminish the danger and cost of the real drug problem.

#13 is wrong. Alcohol and drugs are addictive to those who have the inclination for addiction. During the height of the crack cocaine scare, Michael Kinsley was editor of The New Republic, and at an editorial meeting, mentioned that of all the articles about crack, nobody wrote about it who had actually tried it. Jefferson Morley spoke up, saying he had tried it twice, so he was assigned an article on it. Crack was supposed to be instantly addictive, yet Morley was able to walk away from it.