TEEN DRUG SHOCKER

The disturbing account of drug addiction by an anonymous Manatee High
student should be another wake-up call to administrators and parents about
teen drug abuse. Unfortunately, the reaction seems to be geared more to
finding out how the account got into the school paper than on what the
story says about the pervasity of drug use by MHS students.

Granted, the story was fairly raw. But we would argue that the explicit
detail was good for kids to read. It didn't make drug use sound very
glamorous. On the contrary, the student's admission that, without the
intervention of a friend, "I may very well have . . . been lying dead in a
gutter right now" constitutes a sobering message about the insidious nature
of drugs. So do other passages describing the student's inability to focus
on school or work while addicted.

As for the detail of how to prepare a prescription drug pill for snorting,
we have no doubt that every first-time purchase of illegal drugs includes a
free lesson in how to prepare and imbibe them. It won't be necessary to
have read a copy of the Macohi newspaper.

Assuming the article is accurate and not embellished, Manatee High
Principal Lynda Boyer need not apologize to parents or reprimand the
newspaper's faculty sponsor for its publication. Faculty and parents need
to be aware of what is going on behind their backs. This sentence near the
beginning should send a chill up their spines: "I'd tried other drugs
before. Cocaine, Ecstasy, marijuana, acid, all kinds of mind-altering fun.
. . . All of my friends did them; it was nothing more than fun."

The proper response to this article isn't censorship; it's starting a
dialogue with our teenagers.