ADDICTION

Parents Must Teach Promise Of Living

The path toward drug abuse is easier to find than the way home.

Testimony given at the Recognize, Educate, Assist, and Prevent event in
Danville Monday showed how simple-seeming choices can lead to a maze of lost
opportunities.

From the old but resurgent plague of heroin to the new but deadly fad of
ecstasy, panelists described how a chemical substance can hijack young lives
and alter them - or end them - forever.

About 100 people attended the Monday REAP event. The more than 200,000
people in the Central Susquehanna Valley area need to get the message.

New weapons are added to the arsenal of addiction every year. Junkies
discover new ways to get high all the time. New drugs crop up faster than
legislators can outlaw them. How can children be expected to make the right
choices when society can not keep pace with substance abuse challenges?

The most effective defense remains constant: To avoid the whispered promises
of drugs, we must shout the promise of living to our children. Parents
should be the cheerleaders for life. If parents are unable or unwilling to
become fully involved in their children's, schools and community groups
should take up the baton. If the message still does not get through, the
burden of picking up the pieces falls to hospitals, police and the court
system. The problems should never get that far.

As the participants in the REAP know, early intervention and prevention is
worth many times the costly and painful cures available. Every waking hour
of children's lives can be spent in preventing drug abuse. That is not to
say children need to be bombarded with a constant lecture about the evils of
drugs. They need to be bombarded with love, high expectations and the
promise that only a sober future can bring.

Addicts, with the proper support and attitude, can recover. They can never
recover the lost time.