pot and drinking issues in the schools (UKY, degrees, high school)

[okaydorothy]

Do the schools do anything about the amount of pot that is being smoked by the students in the schools? Ok, I know and understand that every high school in the world has a pot drug problem. But the more that the schools push the problems under the rugs, the bigger the problem will be. Or is the attitude, if we don't talk about it, it dosnt happen!!


Last weekend was homecoming at our school. Yesterday my sons came home and told me that they have a heroin opiad assembly this morning as a child overdosed on Saturday (they didn't know the condition of the child who is a junior).


Is it the parents who are super wealthy and don't want to face the real world? I am not saying my kids are perfect or never do anything at all. They did go to an after homecoming party and once the beer and pot came out, they left. Luckily one son has too much to loose if he does anything as he is in the National Guard. The other son can see how pot use has slowed his friends down and he is aware of that. One of his "friends" is a dealer who sells to the freshmen.
I don't want to come across as a prude or having my head in the clouds. But by the schools and parents turning a blind eye to the issue, it will just get worse.

[tyovan4]

My contribution is that pot is not the gateway to opiate abuse. The gateway to opiate abuse is the (legal) over-prescription of opiate painkillers (Oxy, etc) by physicians.

[jea6321]

pot and drugs in suburban schools is nothing new. It was going on when I was in high school, and when my parents were in high school. I would bet the farm that it will be going on when my next of kins next of kin are in school. by demonizing things, it just becomes more alluring to those who are trying to rebel against their parents/authorities.

I definitely agree with tyovan4 that prescription drugs are much more of an issue than pot/alcohol. They are easy to come by and lead to serious addiction issues. Kids have this idea that its a pill from a big company, it cant be that bad. I remember even the good kids in high school who would never have smoked pot, would have no issue taking percoset. That always struck me as strange.

[WhoIsStanwix?]

I put drugs, alcohol, and sex in the same light here. All of them, to varying degrees, seem to be issues that American parents have a very tough time confronting. This especially seems true with more conservative (not politically but socially) families. It is something parents are ill equipped to discuss with their kids, for the most part. This is endemic to American families, but might be more prevalent in upper middle class areas or areas with more conservative tendencies. I have no data to back that claim, by the way.

We spend some (not enough) resources educating kids in schools on taboo issues like sex and drugs. Maybe we should be diverting some of these limited resources to educating parents so that they can be better equipped to discuss these very real issues with their kids.

[eschaton]

My kids are nowhere near the age this is an issue yet. That said, I don't think there's much parents can do, unless they try to be so controlling that they ensure their children have no social life. Kids at that age don't care about what adults think, they care about what their friends think. If they've chosen the right group of friends, they will be fine. If not, they'll make some very poor decisions.

Personally, I of course did fine at that age. I was such a loser that no one even offered me drugs until I was a senior in HS, and by then I had a pretty rigorously developed self-identity as someone who didn't partake. My wife tried pot a few times when she was younger, but she said it never got her high. So I'm pretty confident drugs won't appeal to our kids either.

[Moby Hick]

Nobody ever offered me drugs, but plenty of people offered me beer in high school. It turns out that beer is pretty great.

Beer and algebra were the two things I learned in high school that I use most often now.

[okaydorothy]

Originally Posted by tyovan4

My contribution is that pot is not the gateway to opiate abuse. The gateway to opiate abuse is the (legal) over-prescription of opiate painkillers (Oxy, etc) by physicians.

I totally agree here. My son was almost 14 when he had his appendix out and the doctor gave him Oxycotin for pain ; he took one on the first night and we threw it away.


Last year he had a broken nose at age 17 ; again he was given Oxycotin for the pain. That night I gave him a Tylenol PM to sleep and threw out the meds that the doctor gave.


Many of the football players play in the playoffs dosed up on motrin, and other pain pills. If the coaches know, and or the medics assigned to the team know these kids are injured or in pain, isn't it their responsibility to have other kids step in. Or is it a numbers game??

[Moby Hick]

Originally Posted by okaydorothy

Many of the football players play in the playoffs dosed up on motrin, and other pain pills. If the coaches know, and or the medics assigned to the team know these kids are injured or in pain, isn't it their responsibility to have other kids step in. Or is it a numbers game??

I think it's wrong to play kids if they are injured, but nobody is getting high on Motrin. It's not even remotely the same thing as Oxy.

[UKyank]

Unless it's occurring on school property there's only so much a school can do. Everyone knows that 'drugs are bad' so it's not a matter of ignorance on the issue either.

[gladhands]

Originally Posted by UKyank

Unless it's occurring on school property there's only so much a school can do. Everyone knows that 'drugs are bad' so it's not a matter of ignorance on the issue either.

That's a big part of the problem: we never talk about drugs with any level of nuance. It's always "drugs r bad". Kids see how we overreact to relatively safe drugs, and don't believe us when we talk about the drugs that are actually dangerous.