The Internet can be a supermarket for teens looking for prescription drugs. Painkillers, antidepressants, and stimulants are readily available to anyone with a credit card, and many parents feel it’s useful for teens to have their own cards. For drug novices, there are Web sites that provide how-to advice, personal testimonies from experienced drug users, and tips on how to obtain and prepare drugs. One of the most popular of these sites is the encyclopedic Erowid, which presents hundreds of pages of illegal drug information.
Parents in Denial
Some parents minimize the problem, saying that they survived their own experimentation with drugs when they were young. “But the drugs of the 1970s are not the drugs of today,” says Iris Koonin, Student Assistance Counselor at Hackensack High School in New Jersey, pointing out that the level of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, is much higher today than it was in the past.
Inhalants—a category that includes glues, spray paints, nail-polish remover, cleaning fluids, Freon, and cooking sprays—are used mainly by younger teens and tweens. While parents are checking the levels in their liquor bottles for surreptitious alcohol consumption, they should also check their supplies in the basement, garage, kitchen, and under the sinks. Teens are using products as innocuous as Wite-Out® to get high.
Thanks to the Internet, teens can exchange drug information with anyone around the world, so the drug scene today is constantly changing. Teens are very adaptable and can be inventive in their methods of concealment. Girls in one middle school were saturating their hair scrunchies in nail-polish remover and taking them off periodically throughout the day for a deep sniff to maintain their high.
What Parents Can Do
In this ever-changing drug environment, what can parents do? Dr. Emil Chiauzzi of Inflexxion, a company that creates behavioral health solutions for prevention, education, and disease management using interactive technologies, says that parents should make themselves aware of the “road signs” of drug abuse.
- Look for all types of changes in your teen. Is your son suddenly more defiant? Are his grades slipping? Has he lost interest in how he looks and dresses?
