PARENTS MUST BE PART OF SUBSTANCE ABUSE WAR

THERE is good news and bad news that can be pulled from a recent
survey of sixth-to 12th-grade students in Bartholomew Consolidated
School Corp. schools about the use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.

The good is that the use of tobacco, alcohol and marijuana among these
young people has decreased from what was reported in the 1990s.

The bad is that binge drinking along with the use of prescription
drugs and steroids in that age category has increased.

The frustration is that little has changed beyond the choice of
drugs.

Several decades after the community launched a series of campaigns
against substance abuse, the affliction has remained a stigma that
seems resistant to correction.

Those anti-substance abuse campaigns of the past were in response to
surveys such as this latest evaluation on the state of sobriety among
the young.

To the credit of the community and the individuals who became
involved, the resulting corrective efforts were substantial and
well-considered.

Indeed, comprehensive and coordinated approaches were adopted and the
various institutions within Bartholomew County worked in harmony.

Several of the programs that were put in place over the past three
decades have had significant impacts: the DARE program, school
counseling, expansion of the Columbus Fellowship Club (meeting place
for recovering people) and general acceptance that alcoholism and
addiction are diseases, not just bad habits.

It would be frightening to consider the implications had these
community interventions not taken place.

Yet the statistics remain stubbornly high and unacceptable.

This latest survey is even more troubling in that it shows the age for
experimentation has shifted from high school freshmen to middle school
students.

In some respects, these statistics are not so much an indictment
against the community as a reflection that parental involvement in the
lives of children needs to be strengthened.

Ironically, that issue of parental involvement was raised for the
first time in this latest survey with the majority of students
reporting that their parents consider it wrong to use cigarettes,
marijuana, alcohol and other drugs.

While that is a positive assessment, the numbers indicate that many
students are either acting against their parents' wishes or the adults
are not acquainted with the alarming increase in activities such as
binge drinking and the use of steroids and prescription drugs.

We would like to believe that most adults have grown beyond that
tolerant attitude of accepting a falling down drunk episode by one of
their children as a rite of passage.

And any adult who does not understand the cumulative effects on an
adolescent from a significant ingestion of a parent's prescription
medicine is out of touch with reality.

These statistics certainly confirm that the community should be
unceasing in its efforts against substance abuse.

They also strongly suggest that each and every parent in Bartholomew
County needs to become more involved in the lives of their children.

What we don't know can indeed hurt us.