Drug Facts
All facts came from the following websites:
www.drugfree.org www.drugabuse.gov www.niaaa.nih.gov
INHALANTS
Inhalants are house hold products found in your garage, kitchen, and/or bathroom. Examples could be hair spray, deodorant spray, spray paint, nail polish remover, model airplane glue, paint thinner, gasoline, Freon, cooking spray, the propellant in aerosol whipped cream, and dust off.
Inhalants are the fifth most-abused substance after alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and prescription drug misuse among high school students.
According to NIDA (www.drugabuse.gov) in 2006, 16.1% of 8th graders have tried an inhalant at least once in their lifetime.
Wizard air freshener and Axe/Tag body spray are very popular right now
Dust off is also a common way to get high. Dust off is a bottle of compressed air that cleans your keyboard. It also contains a gasoline called R2 and can kill you if it is inhaled. Read the true story below about a police officer's son dieing from inhaling dust off........ Dust off story
ALCOHOL
In my own opinion, it seems like more kids are starting to drink at a younger age in today's world. Some kids are starting to drink in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. Kids are going to be curious on what alcohol taste like because they see it everywhere. Most of them see it at home and all of them see it on TV. A lot of these reality shows on TV show people getting drunk and having fun with alcohol. You have to educate your child what you think is right about alcohol, but in my own opinion I feel the earlier the child starts to drink, the more likely they will engage or experiment with drugs. I teach the kids to hang out with friends that don't drink, smoke, and/or do drugs. When your friends don't do any of this, you are not as curious on what it taste like or makes you feel when comparing to someone who hangs out with friends that engage in alcohol, tobacco, and/or drugs. The reason is, if you don't see it, you are not thinking about it as much as if you were seeing it. Plus the peer pressure is a lot less because it is not around you to be offered to you.
According to www.niaaa.nih.gov, each year, approximately 5,000 young people under the age of 21 die as a result of underage drinking; this includes about 1,900 deaths from motor vehicle crashes, 1,600 as a result of homicides, 300 from suicide, as well as hundreds from other injuries such as falls, burns, and drownings.
Also according to www.niaaa.nih.gov, adolescents who begin drinking before the age of 15 are 4 times more likely to develop alcohol dependence than those who begin drinking at the age of 21.
ALWAYS keep track of how much beer you have in the house. If you notice beer missing, than your child may have taken it. A lot of kids get alcohol from their OWN house.
ALWAYS keep track of your liquor intake. Draw a line on where the level is on the bottle. As you keep drinking from it, make a new line. Be careful because some kids will take liquor and then add water to get the level back up to the line. The best thing to do is just lock up all liquor.
Kids think that Mike's Hard Lemonade or Smirnoff Ice is okay to drink because there is really no alcohol in it. They believe this because it doesn't taste like beer or hard liquor and it says 5% alcohol on the bottle. But kids don't realize that a regular can of light beer is 2.5% alcohol. Therefore, a Mike's Hard Lemonade or Smirnoff Ice is equivalent to 2 cans of light beer.
MARIJUANA
According to www.drugabuse.gov in 2006, 15.7% of 8th grades said they have tried marijuana at least 1 time and 42.3% of 12th graders said they tried marijuana at least 1 time.
Marijuana effects your hippocampus part of your brain which deals with learning, memory, emotion, and motivation. Kids who smoke marijuana may have a tendency to become more lazy, be less motivated in their school work and extra-curricular activities, and not care what happens in their lives.
Marijuana smoke contains some of the same cancer-causing compounds as tobacco, sometimes in higher concentrations. Studies show that someone who smokes five joints per week may be taking in as many cancer-causing chemicals as someone who smokes a full pack of cigarettes every day.
THC is the main ingredient in marijuana and it kills the cilia in your lungs. The job of cilia is to help filter out the polluted air out of your body. When you smoke marijuana your lungs produce more phlegm. Ask your kids about the jar of phlegm in my classroom.
For more info that parents may need to know about marijuana, go to http://www.drugabuse.gov/MarijBroch/MarijparentsN.html
PRESCRIPTION DRUGS
Believe it or not, but prescription drugs are starting to become abused more and more each day. Kids are buying pills from other students at schools. Kids are stealing pills from their own parents medicine bottle. The problem here is that kids think it is okay to take these pills because a doctor issued them. The problem is they abuse them and the results are the same as if you were going to take any other dangerous drug like cocaine....you can die.
According to www.drugfree.org:
IMPORTANT: Did you know that you can buy prescription drugs online and it's very easy to do. Kids can buy prescription drugs from online sites that work out of the country and all they need is a credit card. Parents, make sure that you keep a close eye on the Internet sites on your computer. Also, if any unknown packages come to the house, make sure to ask and see what it is.
Have you heard of PHARMING? Pharming is someting new thing kids are doing at parties. What happens is every kid steals a couple of prescription dugs from their parents house or grandparents house and bring them to a party. Everyone throws their pills in a big bowl. Kids will then take a handful of pills and take them, even though they don't know what pills they are taking.
There may have been a time where you went to the store to buy cough medicine and had to show identification and sign a book in order to purchase it. This is because kids are abusing cough syrup. Kids will drink a half of bottle or full bottle of cough syrup to get high. The worst part and dumb part about this is that when the kid is done getting high, they will throw-up/drive-heave for about 1-2 hours straight. Also note that this can happen with cough medicine pills as well.
Other info
For more info and help on how to keep your child off of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, visit http://www.drugfree.org/Parent/
To see statistics of surveys taken by 48,460 students click here, http://www.drugabuse.gov/infofacts/HSYouthtrends.html. This survey shows the percentage of students in grades 8th, 10th, and 12th grade that tried a certain drug at least once in their life time, once in the past year of taking the survey, and once in the last 30 days of taking the survey. They have results from 2003- 2006 so you can see if the drug abuse is going down or up.