BIRMINGHAM DRUG ADDICTION EXPERT SAYS PARENTS CAN'T COMPARE MARIJUANA
OF TODAY WITH THAT OF THE 1960's

The percentage of school children who say they've taken illegal drugs
has dropped 24 percent since 2001, according to a recent national survey.

The statistic - as reported in the annual Monitoring the Future
survey of 50,000 students from more than 400 schools nationwide -
appears to show that kids are paying attention to warnings about drug
and alcohol abuse.

But the survey, which was taken in 2006, also showed that 21 percent
of eighth-graders, 36 percent of 10th-graders, and 48 percent of
12th-graders have at some time during their lives used an illicit
drug, often marijuana or alcohol. And the survey showed a troubling
increase in young people abusing prescription sedatives,
tranquilizers and narcotics.

Beth Gregory, vice president of clinical services at Behavioral
Health Systems Inc. of Birmingham, a company that manages mental
health and drug abuse services for businesses nationwide, has
extensive experience in addiction issues. Here is her expert opinion
on teenage drug and alcohol abuse:

What about the new study?

Some things really jumped out at me. Alcohol and pot have always been
the primary drugs of abuse with early adolescents. Those have also
been referred to as gateway drugs - that is as kids start using them,
they become introduced to other drugs.

The issue that most parents aren't aware of is that pot today is not
what it was in the 1960s. Our treatment providers are finding that
parents will argue with them that they're not even concerned about it
just being pot and alcohol, that pot is no big deal.

Pot today is five to six times stronger than it was in the '60s
and'70s, and increasingly we're finding that pot is laced with
formaldehyde, with cocaine and with crushed pills. An adolescent who
is smoking pot really doesn't know what he's inhaling into his system.

Haven't we learned some things about the physiology of the brain that
should make people more cautious about marijuana?

Yes. PET scans of the brain have shown there really is a reduction in
the mass of the brain, in the gray matter, with continued, even
low-level use, of pot over time. We find that the earlier adolescents
start smoking pot, the less they mature emotionally. It just sort of
arrests their emotional development. It's preventing them from
developing all the brain synapses that lead to a higher level of
moral development.

This new report shows that drug use is down among kids. What would
you attribute that to?

Teens are more aware of the dangers of some of these designer drugs
and club drugs. We've done a good job in educating them about those.
We've seen a decrease in a lot of those.

OxyContin is one of those that is still a concern. OxyContin is so
easily available. It is a drug that was designed only for people who
have chronic, serious pain, or people who have terminal pain, to be
used instead of things like morphine and Demerol. Of course we make a
drug for people who need it, and it finds its way onto the street. It
is over-prescribed.

The survey pointed out that many kids are getting a these
prescription medications from their parents' medicine cabinets. What
are some practical things for parents to do?

I think it's true for all adults, not just parents. Kids will go to
their neighbors and use the excuse to use the restroom and they will
rifle through their medicine cabinet. They'll do it if they're
visiting grandparents, and grandparents will have more medications
like muscle relaxants, tranquilizers, sleeping aids and pain pills.

If you have a prescription, and you are not needing that
prescription, go ahead and throw it away. Do not keep it for future
use. It's not a good idea for us to just store drugs up.

If you think you're only going to need seven of Lortab after a dental
appointment, then ask the pharmacist to only fill seven, and don't
have the whole 30 sitting in your house.

What is the biggest mistake parents make when it comes to drugs and their kids?

Some naivete, that they don't learn about the drugs. The prevention
specialists are out there presenting at the Parent Teacher
Organizations at schools; they're presenting at churches.

I talked with one of the local providers at Bradford Health Services
to learn what they're seeing. Leandra Celaya says parents are very
interested in hearing about this, but their attitude is, "But it's
not my child."

We really don't want to believe its our child ... when I was in
school there was kind of a druggy group. You knew who they were. By
the time my daughter was in school, it was the football players, the
cheerleaders, the people in the honor society. You were seeing drugs
across the board, and that's even more so 10 years later.

The other alarming thing she is seeing is kids of 10 and 11 being
introduced to drugs by older siblings. As parents we often leave the
older teenagers - 16 or 17 years old - at home with the younger ones.
We trust that they are watching out for their younger brothers and
sisters. It really requires that a family sit down and talk about
drugs, the impact of drugs and how the older sibling needs to protect
the younger one from the influence of peers who would expose them to
drugs, rather than them being the conduit.

What other patterns of drug abuse among children should we be aware of?

We're finding a lot of these over-the-counter medicines are also
being abused. It's easy to go in and buy a bottle of sleep-aid,
Benadryl or things that help to calm you. You can buy those
over-the-counter without anybody suspecting anything. And you a have
a group of 10 or 12 kids together, who are all going in an buying a
box separately, and nobody's alarms are going off. And yet they will
combine these drugs and take large amounts all at once.

In general, don't we respond to the severity of a drug addiction in
children with an appropriate level of treatment? How do we determine that?

Yes, that should be. Generally we look at early use, like they may
have been caught smoking pot. It's often just drug education, and
working with a counselor, somebody they can establish a rapport with
and be honest about how much they are using and what else they are
experimenting with.

And then we need to educate them on the real dangers of those drugs
with someone they trust. Often when we do things in the school
system, the students respond to that as scare tactics, and they don't
take it seriously.

I have asked teens in treatment what is most effective, and they tell
me it's the stories from other teens who have been through it.
Unfortunately teens often don't want to tell other kids they've been
through treatment, and the parents don't want them to tell other kids
about it. So the kids that can help most are blocked from sharing
their stories.