The street drugs that can be found by most any kid today have many severe consequences on both themselves and the world they occupy. No matter if you have children or not, it has become everybody’s problem. From the expense of state dependant health care for the ones who suffer from the ill effects of drug abuse to the cost of thief and damages concurred by their acts to buy the drugs. Addiction can affect any age from the newborn to the elderly. Maybe some of the most vulnerable and easily manipulated are the Middle School Students.
Wanting to be accepted by their peers, easily influenced, and easily controllable they are especially easy targets for the dealers. One of the drugs teens use in middle school is cocaine. It is a stimulant and it is very addictive. A lot of times teenage kids try something because of peer pressure and what they don’t know is that what they are trying is addictive.
Once you have used this drug it is very hard to get off of and not even realize you ” re addicted. There are different ways to use cocaine. You can snort it, smoke it or inject it. All three ways go to the bloodstream, some considerably fast. Smoking or injecting cocaine is the most powerful ways to use it, because of the rapid speed into the body. Cocaine gives the user a lot of energy and the illusion of power and able to face the world, they will desire more and more.
With increased use, cocaine builds up need and addiction rapidly. Some of the health risks of cocaine are that it plays on your nervous system and when you are not on the drug you want that high feeling again. “Short-term effects of cocaine include constricted peripheral blood vessels, dilated pupils, increased temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, insomnia, loss of appetite, feelings of restlessness, irritability, and anxiety.”High doses of cocaine and / or prolonged use can trigger paranoia.” . The Monitoring the Future Study (MTF) started recording drug use of high school students. In 1991 they started to annually include studies of the drug use among middle school age students. Here is a table of trends in frequency of 8 th-Grade students and cocaine use.
For more statistics on other drugs and grade levels go to NIDA Website. Another type of popular stimulant drug is Methamphetamine also known as Meth or Crank. The problems are not much different than cocaine however, it maybe a more growing problem today than Cocaine. Ecstasy, also called MDMA, is one of the last two decades’ top drugs. Giving you the feeling of Cocaine and Meth, then adding the hallucinogenic properties of LSD. Ecstasy affects the pleasure regions of the brain.
“Short-term effects include psychological difficulties, including confusion, depression, sleep problems, drug craving, severe anxiety, and paranoia – during and sometimes weeks after taking MDMA, physical symptoms such as muscle tension, involuntary teeth clenching, nausea, blurred vision, rapid eye movement, faintness, and chills or sweating.”Recent research findings link MDMA to long-term damage to those parts of the brain critical to thought and memory. .” Our team looked at a couple of educational programs and some felt the DARE program is good because they went through it and remember some of the things they talked about. The DARE program stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education. The DARE program deals with just middle age students and drugs.
The goal of the program is to help students recognize and resist the influences of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and other drugs. It’s a program set up by law enforcement. The program offers a lot of different interactive programs for this age group. Each session is 45 to 60 minutes long and there is 17 sessions altogether. Their goal is to target kids before it is to late. They try to get kids turned against drugs before they ever see the drugs.
Another part of our team feels that education on drugs is best when started in the home. Parents: The Anti-Drug program is a great source for parents or anyone to get information on helping young people learn to say no to drugs. From pamphlets of information to resources for treatment and care of addicts they seem to have it all for anyone to access. Giving parents tips on how to help your kid by walking through a situation of a dealer trying to offer them drugs. Teaching the parents how to be a parent instead of a friend to their kids when they should be. Even how to deal with the hard questions like, ‘Did you do drugs?’ or ‘Everyone is doing it’.
No matter how hard we try or keep our children away from drugs, we cannot stop them from coming across the chance of being offered them someday. The best thing we can do for them is to teach them as much as we can and by our example. The only one who can stop them from doing the drugs are themselves and with guidance and good values they have a chance at living a happy life drug free.