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Your teen and drugs
The vast majority of teenagers are not, nor ever will be, addicted to drugs. Nevertheless, your child will not get through their teenage years without being offered drugs and they already know somebody who is taking them
Extracted from Teenagers! What Every Parent Has to Know by Rob Parsons
The harsh reality is that the UK has some of the highest rates of alcohol, tobacco and illegal drug use amongst 15 and 16-year-olds in the whole of Europe.
But if drugs are bad, why take them?
- To rebel or shock people
- To feel they belong to a group of friends
- They enjoy taking risks
- It's fun
- It's the in-thing to do
- They are easy to get hold of
- It's part of a night out - maybe a rave
- It feels and looks grown-up
- It's an escape from the pressures of life
- They are bored
And as well as these reasons, we need to understand that there is a much more fundamental reason: teenagers - or anybody for that matter - take drugs because they work. In the short term they give you a buzz. Drugs work for the person who is looking for a good time at a night club, they work for the girl who is constantly bullied and wants the pain to go away, and they work for the person who needs relief from the constant pressure of their employment.
In a society where drug use is so easy, how can we give our children a fighting chance of staying drug free? The stakes are high. One study showed that the rates of alcohol dependency were four times higher among those who started drinking at the age of 14 than those who started aged 20 - every year is precious.
However, a survey by the charity Action on Addiction found that one in four children say their parents are ill-informed in this area and their best source of information is the media. The survey also found that 40 per cent of parents leave the job of educating their children about drugs to schools and the police.
Know about drugs
The biggest problem with education is not the actual getting of information - which these days is easier than ever. For many parents it's overcoming the psychological barrier to believing that this is an area we want to enter.
Perhaps we feel that even by talking about it, we acknowledge the awful possibility that our teenager could be taking drugs. But if we are to help our teenagers, we need to learn what drugs do - both legal (like tobacco and alcohol) and illegal (like cannabis, cocaine and heroin) - how they make people feel and what the short and long term effects are.
We need to find out what drugs education our teenagers are getting at school and perhaps even talk with the police to discover what the special dangers are in the area in which we live.
For some parents this education process may seem overwhelming, but there is plenty of information available in libraries, health centres, schools and on the web.
And a word of warning - don't get too hung up about trying to learn the slang, or 'street names' as they change constantly. If we get them wrong our credibility factor will drop considerably!
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