Let’s imagine we are sitting in a classroom in a typical American high school. The students in front of us are in their last year of school before going to college or getting jobs or whatever they plan to do next. In this typical classroom, there are twenty-three students. How many of them are using drugs? An updated report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse gives us a pretty good picture.
Out of these 23 students:
• Eight have smoked marijuana this year
• Two or three smoked Spice, also known as synthetic marijuana
• One or two have abused Adderall, the drug given to young people said to suffer from attention disorders
• One or two found some Vicodin (hydrocodone) and abused that
• One has abused cough medicine
• One has abused a tranquilizer
• One has used a hallucinogen such as LSD or PCP
• One has abused a sedative
• One used the herb salvia, a drug that’s legal in many places that causes a severe, short-lived psychosis
• One abused OxyContin
On average, there was less than one student per classroom that used Ecstasy, cocaine, inhalants or Ritalin.
This doesn’t mean that there were as many as twenty out of 23 students that were using drugs. Chances are very good that a few students used several different drugs. Among those who go to rehab for help with addiction, polydrug abuse is the norm.
Chances are also pretty good that most of the students in this room know who’s using drugs. Among their peers, it is not very likely that these kids are keeping secrets. Wanting to be “different,” some of these students probably brag about their drug use and ability to lay their hands on anything they want.
This newly updated report does seem to imply, however, that drug use in our high school classrooms, particularly the higher grades, is a fact of life. This is supported by the report from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, the National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse from August 2012. This report, the result of extensive surveys of students and their parents, states:
“Nearly all high school students (97) say that classmates drink, use drugs or smoke. They say that 47 percent of their classmates drink alcohol, 40 percent use drugs and 30 percent smoke.
“This is the disgraceful bottom line: For millions of teens, high school is a convenient place to get high: for millions of parents trying to raise drug-free kids, the ‘high’ school years are the most dangerous time their children face, and the ‘high’ schools (and nearby ‘high’ spots) are a most dangerous place to send their kids.”
For a parent determined to raise his (or her) children to be drug-free, this information can be discouraging. But in fact, it is the situation that surrounds their efforts to get their children through to adulthood sober. It’s important to know the magnitude of the enemy so that the correct level of counter-attack can be mounted.
Narconon has gone to great lengths to provide parents with the information they need to raise sober children. Here are two of the pages on our website that can lead you to the information you need to prevent drug abuse. You will need to educate your children before they hear about drugs from their friends as that will never be a source of accurate information.
http://www.narconon.org/drug-abuse/parent-center.html
http://www.narconon.org/drug-prevention/national-prevention-month.html
It’s a very important job that parents do – in fact, it’s vital. The opinion and the voices of parents are the most essential component in keeping kids drug-free. It’s far more important than anything they may hear in school, although that can help.
But in the end, it’s parents and family that guide a child through to adulthood and helps them if they go astray after they are grown. That’s why we have put hundreds of hours of work into providing educational materials to help the parents around the world.