IS IT ANY WONDER KIDS ARE CONFUSED ABOUT DRUGS?

A disturbing new report indicates that at least one of every four
children in foster care in Florida, many 5 years old and younger, are
taking powerful, mood-altering drugs.

In the 2002 fiscal year, 5,137 foster children were prescribed
psychotropic drugs, including 550 children age 5 and younger. Those
findings were based solely on Medicaid records and not from HMOs or
private insurers, so the actual total could be higher.

At the same time, no one really knows how many youngsters not in
foster care are being sent off to school each day with their brain
synapse humming with powerful mood altering drugs such as Ritalin and
Prozac.

When they come home from school, they turn on the television, and they
are assaulted with 60-second slices of video utopian suggesting that
they -- that everyone -- should "Ask your doctor for our latest
feel-good pill."

If they flip on a sporting event they surely will be deluged with
commercials for erectile dysfunction medications. (Talk about mind
altering!)

That's not even to mention the ubiquitous beer commercials hawking the
most widespread and most destructive drug in our society -- alcohol.

All of that brings us back to the undercover drug string that took
place in several Palm Beach County Schools last week. The five-month
long operation -- dubbed Old Schoolhouse -- netted some minor
student-drug dealers on charges of selling mostly small amounts of
marijuana to undercover officers posing as students.

But if the State Attorney's Office does as officials there have said
they will do, and prosecute those teenagers as adults, some could be
looking at 15 years of hard time. All could have the words "convicted
felon" to carry the rest of their lives.

Again, we are not condoning selling illegal drugs to minors. If
convicted, the teenagers should be punished. But before we judge too
harshly, maybe during this weekend's Super Bowl extravaganza, we
should count how many commercials we see for "feel-good drugs," or ads
that make drinking beer look like the coolest, greatest, most fun
thing a human can do.

And we should ask ourselves: Is it any wonder our kids have trouble
distinguishing one "feel-good drug" from another.

Or maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we should just take some sleeping pills
and go to bed early.