There will always be a designer drug of the moment. Entrepreneurs constantly monitor the trends in street drugs and exploit these demands in order to brand and sell new products.
Four Loko and K2 come to mind as recent examples, and apparently the current drug du jour is "bath salts."
What's it going to be tomorrow? Melting light bulbs? Whenever we cut off supply of a particular substance, young people, through their own creativity, have found new ways to get high. What has made this pattern more noticeable is that we're now seeing more families under pressure and more individuals who use mind-altering drugs.
Recently, there's been a lot of buzz about "bath salts," the newest over-the-counter item teens are using to get high. The synthetic powder -- sold legally online and in drug paraphernalia stores under such names as "Ivory Wave" and "Purple Wave" -- has been linked to an alarming number of ER visits across the country. Although we are less than two months into 2011, the American Association of Poison Control Centers has fielded more calls about "bath salts" overdoses than in all of last year.
"Bath salts" may look innocent, but their effects are powerful. According to ONDCP Director Gil Kerlikowske's office, bath salts mimic the effects of cocaine and LSD, causing extreme paranoia and delusions, hallucinations, and suicidal thoughts, among other symptoms. Furthermore, an overdose on "bath salts" can have tragic consequences, as was the case with 21-year-old Dickie Sanders. Dickie snorted a packet of Cloud 9 "bath salts" and was overcome by terror and delirium -- he killed himself that same night.
Dickie's father, Richard Sanders, met with local law enforcement officials in their Louisiana hometown to discuss preventative measures for other teens and their families. "This stuff is poison," Richard told the judges, who promised to take immediate action against the accessibility of the drug. "You don't get high on it; you go crazy," Richard added. Fortunately, there is now no doubt that "bath salts" are highly dangerous, and several states are moving to ban them.
But we've been here before -- and banning another drug won't be enough to protect our kids unless we parents look at the underlying causes of our teens' substance abuse. When addressing drug accessibility and use, it is important to take supply and demand into account, but the "War on Drugs" has been focusing too much on supply alone. We all know that attempts to simply shut down the world's sources of drugs are not successful; instead we need to start focusing more on the demand, and examine the reasons so many individuals turn to drugs in the first place.
These are not problems we can simply legislate away. Our approach needs to be twofold: addressing substance abuse on both macro and micro levels. On a macro level, we cannot keep treating substance abuse as a legislative/criminal justice issue. Instead, we need to follow President Obama's lead and treat substance abuse as a public health issue. We also need to address addiction for what it is: a chronic health condition that must be individually managed.
On a micro level, much responsibility lies within individual families -- namely, with parents, many of whom may approach teen substance abuse from an unproductive angle. Parents should keep tabs on their kids, instead of just keeping tabs on the latest designer drug news. Instead of spending time learning the pharmacological details of "bath salts," Four Loko, or K2, parents should spend time with their kids and learn the reasons for their drug use. To discover and address these reasons, it's crucial to listen to the teen's point of view and foster ongoing family communication.
We as a society must examine why teens turn to mind-altering substances and we must deal with these root causes of drug use through education, prevention, intervention, and treatment. Only when we address the demand for drugs, not merely the supply, can we hope to safeguard our children.
Howard Meitiner: Designer Drugs: How Big A Problem Are They?
Lloyd I. Sederer, MD: Patient Care: Managing High Need, High Cost Medical Patients
Iris Erlingsdottir: Rehab For "Terminally Unique" Lawyers
Bath Salts Ban: Proposed Ban On 'Bath Salts' - ktla.com
Officials fear bath salts becoming the next big drug menace
Fake bath salts send drug users to ERs - Health - Addictions ...
Drug czar: 'Bath salts' drugs pose 'serious threat' - Health ...
Officials fear bath salts becoming the next big drug menace
Synthetic Cocaine Being Sold as "Bath Salts" - Crimesider - CBS News
Bath salts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Officials: 'Bath Salts' Are Growing Drug Problem - ABC News
'Bath salts' latest drug to raise alarms - Los Angeles Times
I also agree that it’s important to identify and address the underlining issues that might be contributing to the drug abuse in the first place.
It’s helpful for parents to understand that many factors can contribute to substance abuse (whether drugs or alcohol), such as genetics, peer influence, and anxiety. Many children and teens today do not understand how to cope with pain, disappointment, frustration, anger, fear, and other challenging feelings. When they experience these emotions, they may look for a way to ignore their feelings instead of addressing and managing them.
It’s important for parents to teach their children and teens how to cope with anxiety, stress, and other feelings as they grow up. It’s not uncommon for people, especially children and teens, who haven’t learned proper coping skills, to turn to drugs or alcohol as a way to deal with these feelings.
At Caron Treatment Centers, a non-profit substance abuse treatment center where I work, we stress how important it is for parents to teach their children healthy coping skills from an early age. We understand that parents may need some help when figuring out how to best approach the issue, so we pulled together some tips on teaching kids to cope: http://www.caron.org/teaching-kids-to-cope.html.
Warm regards,
Katie S., Caron Treatment Centers
@CaronTreatment
The difference is supply. Sorry if that is politically incorrect but that is the problem.
Supply has been there all along. Motivation is the problem.
Maybe it is time to get rid of the "war on drugs" and create a learning environment where kids can identify the biological harm some of these substances can cause. Oh, wait! But then kids will learn that the foods they are being encouraged to eat in large quantities are really, really harmful. We can't have that, now can we, Big Agra?
the things kid's do may have changed some, due to some of these things being illegal or not manufactured now, but some were illegal then and it still went on. Sorry, but I don't believe that addiction is as much in the substance as it is in the users' minds and bodies (DNA).
Before people start tearing down fences simply because they are there, why not ask yourself why they were put up to begin with. Odds are, it was a fairly good reason.
We currently "legalize" tobacco and alcohol and look at the hundreds of thousands of lives each year that those drugs (yes, drugs) directly ruin. Look at the millions (yes, millions) of lives that those drugs indirectly harm at the same time - Stressed out family members, friends, hospital budgets, police budgets... All from legal drugs. And drug advocates clamor for legalizing even more under the guise of "increased revenue" and "more jobs."
If legalizing drugs is a panacea for society's ills, then why didn't lifting Prohibition work? Why do we have more crime, more deaths, more ruined lives, more deficits... Why aren't places in Europe where drug laws are more lenient swimming in government revenue and jobs instead of being nearly bankrupt with unemployment even higher then the US (the so-called "backwards" nation)? Drug advocacy makes no sense and never will.
The reasons criminalisation fails society as a whole are because it creates a barrier to information, about drugs and their effects, and it also creates a disaffected criminal class from people who really need help, but instead are persecuted.
By the time they realize their mistake, many need rehab to get clean. Quality drug rehab costs $8,000 to 15,000 per month. Three months would be the minimum that a person abusing hard drugs would need. How many parents have $24,000 to $45,000?