Here’s the latest salvo from the “What About the Children” battalion of the War On (Some American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs:
(AP) WASHINGTON – More teens are saying there are drugs in their schools, and those who have access to them are more likely to try them, said a Columbia University survey released Thursday.
Twenty-eight percent of middle-school-student respondents reported that drugs are used, kept or sold at their schools, a 47 percent jump since 2002, according to the 10th annual teen survey by Columbia’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.
The number of high schoolers saying drugs are at their schools rose 41 percent in the last three years, to 62 percent, the survey said.
Hmm, a 47% increase of drugs in schools in the past three years, during which time Republicans have been in complete control of government. Why do Republicans hate our children?
Twelve- to 17-year-olds who report that there are drugs in their schools are three times likelier to try marijuana and twice as likely to drink alcohol than teens who say their schools are drug free, the survey showed.
“Availability is the mother of use,” said Joseph Califano Jr., the center’s president. “We really are putting an enormous number of 12- to 17-year-olds at great risk.”
We’d better do something serious if we’re going to eliminate drugs from our public schools! First, we should set up our schools like correctional facilities, where kids are searched and run through metal detectors when they arrive. Next, we should eliminate lockers, forcing the kids to lug around forty-pound backpacks full of books, causing them back and muscle problems. Finally, we should drug test the kids for every conceivable extracurricular activity, from football to band to chess club.
Oh, wait. We do all those things already. And we can’t keep drugs out of our maximum security correctional facilities, either.
Still, there’s got to be some explanation. After all, with George W. Bush and “the adults” in charge of our country, there must be some other, nefarious, insidious reason our kids can’t put down the spliff.
The survey also found that teens who say they watch three or more R-rated movies in a typical month — about 43 percent — are seven times likelier to smoke cigarettes and six times likelier to try alcohol than teens who do not watch R-rated movies.
The correlation between R-rated movie watching and the risk of substance-abuse remains even after controlling for age, the report said. This was the first time the annual survey asked about R-rated movies.
“There’s no question the correlation is very strong and it obviously wants further study,” Califano said.
Yes, of course! It’s Hollywood and those damn liberal media elite, poisoning our childrens’ minds with lurid depictions of glamorous drug use! But they forgot to mention the dominating influence of hip-hop music on today’s teens, too, where singers and rappers are always talking about “blunts” and “the chronic”. And such non-R-rated fare as TV’s “That 70’s Show” where the hip 70’s teens regularly smoke dope.
Well, it’s obvious now. There’s no way we can even think about decriminalizing and regulating marijuana. We’ve got to think of the children and keep marijuana illegal. As bad as the stats are with illegal weed, imagine the devastation it would create to legalize pot!
Most of the teens surveyed — 58 percent — said the legality of cigarettes has no effect on their decision to smoke or abstain, and 48 percent said the fact that marijuana is illegal doesn’t affect whether they use or don’t use the drug.
Ah, but does the legality of cigarettes make it harder for the kids to get their hands on cigarettes? What about the illegality of marijuana; does that make it tougher to score a dime bag?
Few teenagers say they’ve tried marijuana, but teens say it’s easier to buy than cigarettes or beer, according to a national survey. More than one-third of teens polled by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse said they could buy marijuana in just a few hours, 27 percent in an hour or less.
For the first time since the study began in 1996, marijuana edged out cigarettes and beer as the easiest drug for teenagers to buy — 34 percent said it’s the easiest of the three, compared with 31 percent for cigarettes and 14 percent for beer.
Why do you suppose that is? Could it be that to get a six-pack, you have to have a friend who’s 21 to score it for you, or be mature-looking enough to avoid getting carded or pass the fake ID? Same goes for cigarettes, though you need only look 18. But with marijuana, the only ID the dealer looks for is that picture of Andrew Jackson on the $20 bills.
Furthermore, the illegality of weed artificially inflates the price to the point where it is profitable to prey on minors. You don’t see too many cigarette and beer dealers hanging out in public parks or near schoolgrounds.
But at least the study shows the logical method we should use to deal with teen marijuana use:
Meanwhile, the survey found teens who viewed drugs as morally wrong were significantly less likely to try them, as were those who felt their parents would be “extremely upset” to discover drug use.
The report found that teens who confided in their parents were at much lower risk of drug abuse than teens who turn first to another adult.
“If this survey does anything, it really shouts to parents: You cannot outsource your responsibility to law enforcement or the schools,” Califano said. “I think when parents feel as strongly about drugs in the schools as they do about asbestos in the schools, we’ll start getting the drugs out of the schools.”
God, I hate to agree with a drug warrior, but he’s right. Parents are the Anti-Drug.
However, with the illegality of marijuana and the fact that 90 million Americans have used marijuana at least once, it sets many parents up in the role of hypocrite. Those parents that use must do so in secret, hiding their use from their adolescent. The parents may be less likely to openly discuss marijuana, fearing their own use may become the topic of discussion. Some parents may even fear their kids turning them in to the authorities, maybe out of revenge for being grounded, maybe thanks to some D.A.R.E. officer encouraging them to “get their parents some help”. And if there’s one thing kids can sniff out quicker than the smell of ganja from their parent’s room, it’s the whiff of hypocrisy in their statements.
With legalized marijuana, parents could talk openly to their children about marijuana, like they can now about cigarettes and alcohol. There are many parents who smoke and drink, but they can forbid it to their children because there’s no hypocrisy in doing so; society recognizes that some things are OK for adults and not for children. With illegal marijuana, it’s not OK for everyone, so if the parent is breaking the rules, why shouldn’t the kid?
No matter how many “what about the children?” statistics come about from this stupid Prohibition, it will never change the fact that Prohibition never works and always makes the situation worse.
