To me, it’s not drugs anymore. From what I hear, coming out, cocaine is not like it was when it first came out. You know, I mean you could do cocaine and you’d be okay for the next 2 or 3 days. Now you do cocaine and you go out 20 minutes later to go get some more not even thinking of the consequences that comes behind that. I never thought about the consequences of me going to jail or losing my kids or none of that. At the time I was just thinking of getting some more. I wasn’t thinking of losing my kids or my apartment or dropping out of school, none of those things. If I knew then what I know now, I would have never have done it.

I continued going to school with Jasmine. I graduated. I completed high school up until 11 th grade, but then I didn’t go back for my senior year. During those years after that I had been enrolling in school, trying to obtain my GED. But I was still involved with the drugs. I would stop using for a certain amount of time, but then I would start back and end up not completing school to obtain my GED.

Q: What has Chicago been trying to do to help with the drug problem?

From the time I was out there until now, it still runs to me. Because you can still see the guys out selling drugs, and guys out walking around for the drugs. Back in the day, it would be an undercover thing so it wouldn’t be so obvious. But now, people are just standing out on the corner sellin it. And people, you see people standing behind abandoned buildings- anywhere they can try to get high. It’s obvious what people are doing now. Earlier in the days, it would be an in-house thing, so people won’t know. Now people use wherever they can. Now there’s both – more using and it’s more visible. The kids, they gettin into the blunt things. Standing outside, rolling it up. And now it’s the young kids coming up, going to school. They even have young kids these days, they recruiting them. And parents, they just don’t care because they feel like they child makin money, but that’s not right. I don’t think that’s right.