do you turn a blind eye to substance abuse?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>It is with much amusement that I read in my local newspaper of the latest “crackdown on drug abuse” in my townish city. But then, why should I see it as fighting windmills? And by seeing it as fighting windmills, don’t I make it stay that way?</p>

<p>When I first came to an American high school from Singapore secondary school I was kind of shocked that the passing of cigarettes, alcohol and sometimes weed was so open between students. I remember the first time it happened at the back of the bus I was wondering why the other kids acted like it was normal, and I was waiting for someone to speak up or complain, but no one did. And of course being the newcomer I didn’t want to ostracise myself committing a faux pas right on the spot, so silent I remained. It is a thing that everyone gets “used to” because the more I saw it happened, the less shocked I became each time. You must forgive my naivete, for even in the Singaporean version of the inner city schools, though you might get gang violence and a suffocating anti-intellectual culture among students, narcotics use was always hush-hush. No one boasted about it. </p>

<p>I suspect that part of it is that gang assault could get you something like 3 to 5 years, while you could be executed for having more than 250 grams of weed, and more than 15 grams of heroin. This probably means some kids you know would probably have ended up with nooses over their heads had they been caught in Singapore. Hence, flagrant displays of gang signs in school, but never drugs.</p>

<p>So I wonder, as parents – would you choose to end the drug problems in your schools or even cities by executing kids? That’s the only reasonably effective “crackdown” I envision.</p>

<p>But the other thing is that that even with the whole anonymous tip hotline, no one likes to rat on friends, even acquaintances. Why would I choose to rat on my Art classmate, who makes pretty good art though he talks about his drug escapades over the weekend? Even if the police department says that they’ll treat drug addicts in the most humane way possible and often they’re just looking for someone to help them out? In America, we’re more individualist I suppose, so we think, “it’s their life…” and plus, it seems to work pretty well too. I mean, except for a few druggies who I absolutely loathe (more because they’re occultists and Satanists and are extremely hostile), when you see those who talk about or even flash their wares at school, you think, “Meh. Nothing disastrous is going on.” The shock of seeing the facebook photos of the valedictorian at a drinking party wears off after a while. No one rats on her. It is the peer mantra of “I respect your life if you respect mine.” So ratting is taboo.</p>

<p>But at some point, the line is crossed, such as when it moves beyond weed to cocaine. Harder drugs are much rarer at my school and I only knew it was a problem through the student judicial court. And at school I suppose, we may think they’re doing fine, not knowing just how horrible are blackouts and ODs they have over the weekend. And at some point the line gets crossed when the consequence for a “freshman tattler” (who saw several students sniffing coke in the bathroom) moves beyond ridicule and ostracism to violent intimidation. It’s a risky strategy for the threatener – fear of speaking against the majority usually works most of the time, but threatening the student means you dissolve all previous discouraging factors in favour of violence. That is when most students would be compelled to rat. But what about other cases?</p>

<p>It’s very telling to see how fellow peers refer to it. “It happens at my school.” </p>

<p>“It happens.” Some mysterious force put it there.</p>

2

<p>Just curious, what was your high school in Singapore ?</p>

3

<p>ACSI. But it wasn’t a socioeconomic fit. (I came from Fairfield Primary.)</p>

<p>My sister went to Newtown Secondary. Dramatically different atmosphere. Very gangsterish.</p>

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<p>ACSI as in the ACS old boys who “own” Singapore ? You know the joke about RI old boys ?</p>

5

<p>Yes, yes. :stuck_out_tongue: </p>

<p>But so many of the students had parents of privilege and power. And mugging was more valued than actual intellectual curiosity. I did not like Sec 1.</p>

6

<p>well, that gives me a better context to understand op. </p>

<p>One of the saddest day of my life was hearing about the od death of a friend of my s. My s is totally not into drugs but his friend supposedly deal in drugs, even at his highly rated high school. I wished someone, including my s had ratted this boy out and he faced the consequences of his actions in high school. I put the story together after the news of his death, when my s was talking about this friend in HS it was vague and I didn’t get the impression it was that serious. He was only 19 or 20, in college. His single mother’s only son. :(</p>

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<p>I think the biggest problem in American society when it comes to drugs is the way we treat drug users. Rather than treating users of hard drugs as people with illnesses we throw them in prison. We should treat drug users more like alcoholics then rapists and murders. If the justice system treated these people more compassionately, maybe friends would be more willing to “rat” on their friends so they can get some help.</p>

8

<p>I think substance abuse is one of the most serious problems facing us today. In my experience, substance abuse is one of the major contributing factors to educational failure, employment failure, and family life failure. When the pill, the powder, the bottle or the weed is so much more important than anything else, society has a huge problem. I don’t know the solution – but the symptoms are all around us… the kid who won’t try anymore in school because pot takes away his motivation, the young adult who uses coke on the weekends and can’t get to work on Monday morning, or the marriage that breaks up because one partner spends his free time with the bottle.</p>

9

<p>“So I wonder, as parents – would you choose to end the drug problems in your schools or even cities by executing kids? That’s the only reasonably effective “crackdown” I envision.”</p>

<p>I assume that you mean those that traffic; not users.</p>

<p>It’s an interesting proposition but it is fraught with problems in the US. One problem that you have here is malicious prosecution, especially in cases that are politicized. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Actual Innocence Project where law students work to clear convicts of crimes where they think that the convicted is actually innocent. The project has had quite a bit of success - which is a pretty scary commentary on our criminal justice system.</p>

<p>Something like this wouldn’t pass though. There are so many parents out there (and probably at least two Presidents) and one self-admitted presidential candidate that use it that many would feel guilty about supporting something like this of which they are already guilty of at least using. Drugs are everywhere. I work with a school board member, and the spouse of a school board member and the spouse basically tells me about the problems in the schools and that it mostly comes down to the parents and the home environment as to how the kids turn out on the drug issue. This is a suburban district - things in cities might be quite different.</p>

<p>Another coworker told me about an experiment to measure drug use in Germany by measuring the presence of certain chemicals in the waste stream. They found that the numbers indicated ten times the cocaine use that police departments thought.</p>