So, now it is time for the next confession—this drug situation in our schools and community is scaring me. I like to think my children are level-headed and reasonable little people, but I keep seeing kids that I have always sized up as being similar to my kids making bad decisions regarding this stuff. And I am just the tiniest bit terrified. It is a problem that defies logic. Drugs are bad, right?  Ask a “know everything” teenager to define bad. Understand that adolescent logic immediately downgrades most parent “serious conversation” to media-fueled hysteria. Add in the invincible teen armor of “it won’t happen to me." Mix the ingredients and you have smart teenagers rationalizing away bad choices, sometimes with life-altering or life-threatening consequences.

Listening on the grapevine, I hear people blame it on us as parents, having been raised with permissive attitudes about drugs and alcohol. They blame it on living in an affluent area, like poor kids don’t do drugs because they couldn’t afford them. Reading the crime reports, I see the various ways the poor support their drug habits and I know drugs are a problem in poorer areas, so I don’t think that’s the whole story. People blame it on easy access to prescription drugs, proximity to Mexico, to using those school and household supplies we later learn are toxic and mood-altering. Are the number of teens doing drugs here any higher than communities far away from Mexico? Do parents who don’t take prescription drugs have children who don’t do drugs? Is there a rhyme or reason to this madness?

I can only speak for myself. I was a stick in the mud about drugs, drinking when I was 19 (the age of legal drinking the year I turned 19; it changed to 21 later), not smoking, not touching anything else. I didn’t see the appeal. I was already hyper enough without adding something else to the mix. Plus, having a family with a history of alcoholism and substance abuse issues, I didn’t want to go there and be that side of the family. And being a pragmatist, that temporary escape was not very appealing. The idea of escaping for a few hours due to a chemical high just meant facing a letdown greater than the one you were dealing with before when you came back to reality. Reality was often bad enough, why make it worse?

However, me being a stick in the mud does not mean I didn’t see drugs in action. A high school classmate went to prison shortly after graduation for killing a woman in a drunk driving accident. Another was kicked out of college and went to prison for selling cocaine. Very smart kids drifted into drugs and switched their focus from academics to the next high. Don’t know where they ended up later, but it wasn’t the pathway to prosperity. Guys wrecked pre-graduation sport cars while high on pot, long before graduation. A friend almost died from alcohol poisoning. And this is the stuff I observed from the periphery. I have no idea what happened on the inside of the drug culture in my high school. Our rival high school had a police officer on-duty most school days … the drug-sniffing dog, metal detectors and locker searches kept him really busy. I probably missed a lot.

And that’s what scares me. Me being a stick in the mud means I am very oblivious to those subtle signs of drug use. I read the reports, watch the specials, go to the presentations, but I worry it hasn’t clicked with me and I am going to miss something that will come back to haunt me later. I have book learning, but no common sense, as my grandmother used to say. So, what’s a mom to do?

The Poway Community Leadership Institute, an organization I am a proud graduate of, is sponsoring a juvenile substance abuse “Town Meeting” with the Rotary Club of Poway at 7 p.m. on Jan. 19 at the Templar’s Hall in Old Poway Park. I encourage you to educate yourself, educate your child, and then go to this meeting and tell our elected officials, school board members, and public safety officials your fears, your wishes, and your needs. Other forums are held year-round by our school district, the county, the police department, the sheriff’s department. If you need to learn more, the opportunities are there. Just go and get involved. Your little people might thank you one day.

Also see:

Need to Know: School Ban on Synthetic Drugs

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