Safety First!
Dr. Marsha Rosenbaum wrote "Safety First, a reality-based approach to teens and drugs" in response to seeing her children struggling with drugs. Here is an excerpt from the introduction of her excellent booklet and website.
"Like many parents, when my children entered high school, I wished “the drug thing” would magically disappear and that my kids would simply abstain. Yet as a long-time researcher supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and as a realistic parent, I knew this wish to be a fantasy. Today’s teenagers have been exposed, since elementary school, to the most intensive and expensive anti-drug campaign in history. They’ve been told, again and again, to “just say no” by school-based programs such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) and televised anti-drug media campaigns (remember the “this is your brain on drugs” ads?). Parents, too, have been advised, indeed bombarded, with billboard, newspaper and electronic messages urging them to become the “anti-drug,” to talk to their teens and establish clear limits and consequences for disobeying the rules.
Yet despite federal drug prevention expenditures totaling $2 billion per year, school-based anti-drug programs reaching virtually all students and a multi-million dollar media campaign, most teenagers—including student body presidents, cheerleaders and sports team captains—have rejected the “Just Say No” mantra and have used alcohol and/or other drugs while in high school. Most youthful drug use is experimental or occasional and the vast majority of young people, fortunately, pass through adolescence unscathed. Still, I worry about those whose experimentation gets out of hand; who fall into abusive patterns with alcohol and/or other drugs; and who put themselves and others in harm’s way.
Let me be clear from the outset. As a mother myself, I do not excuse, encourage or condone teenage drug use."
Read more here...
