DARE TO TELL YOUR KIDS THE TRUTH

Quandaries Of A Thinking Parent

I consider a loving, trusting relationship with my children to be one
of the most important aspects of my life. My parents, in their effort
to "protect" me, told me half-truths and mistruths. How betrayed I
felt when I learned that they had not always been honest with me! This
was a feeling I did not want my own children to experience.

I soon learned that if I told the truth and tried to prepare my kids
for their eventual role as responsible adults, my message to them
often conflicted with messages they heard via the media, movie images,
commercials or others with different political or social agendas.
These conflicting messages reached their ears even though they were
home-schooled, and despite the fact we had no commercial television at
home.

We struggled with how to protect our children from these lies and
partial truths, without putting them at risk of losing respect for
authority. How could we teach them to question the values that modern
consumer society holds dear, without alienating them from the rest of
the community?

Bombarded with psychologically manipulative advertisements, which
often form rather than reflect social values, how could we explain why
"needs" are different from "wants"?

Our public school was a mess, with a lack of discipline, rampant
bullying and name-calling. My own experience with school made me want
to be able to offer other options to our family. I didn't want my kids
spending hours doing "busy work" while their minds yearned to soar. My
desire was not to structure learning into tight time periods, but
instead to allow constant access to their natural curiosity and hunger
to explore our universe. As a home educator I felt I could teach my
children truth and reason, with a strong emphasis on personal
responsibility.

A dilemma presented itself when we began to discuss drugs with them.
The confusion I experienced when trying to explain the drug war to my
kids eventually led to a twenty-year involvement in drug education and
drug policy reform.

Learning About Drugs

When I was growing up in the forties and fifties, there wasn't much
talk about drugs, but of course they were everywhere, even then. Some
of my earliest memories are the smells of cigarette smoke and coffee
greeting me every morning. I probably owe my life to the antibiotic
medications that I was given as a child, when I suffered recurrent
upper respiratory infections, possibly brought on by the excessive
smoke.

My family did not use alcohol at all, even to discuss it. It was just
considered bad. When I graduated from a small mid-western school in
1962, I only knew of a couple of people in the whole school who smoked
cigarettes and no one who drank alcohol. That was soon to change as I
entered college in the sixties, with its "party till you puke" motto.
It was a weak stomach, not high morals that kept me out of trouble
with alcohol. Even though I yearned to fit in with the crowd, I didn't
like being sick, which was inevitable if I drank even small amounts.

I watched as my friends and other students tried a plethora of legal
and illegal drugs, even banana peels, in an attempt to get high. Some
had problems many with alcohol. Most encountering problems had them
because they didn't know what drug they were getting, had no idea of
dosage or what to expect. I was astounded at their willingness to risk
the unknown, given my own self-protective instincts which kept me from
such experimentation.

It wasn't until the late sixties that I smoked marijuana after
observing no ill health effects on the marijuana users I knew. I was
pleasantly surprised as it relaxed me, but was not nearly as heavy or
injurious feeling as alcohol. At this point I started to question the
law. Still I naively believed there must be a health threat since the
laws were so harsh.

During the '70s, I started to see negative effects of drug use on
people I cared about. My grandmother was over-medicated on
prescription drugs, a neighbor suffered cirrhosis of the liver from
excessive alcohol use, an uncle had emphyzema from years of heavy
smoking and a friend was dependent on over-the-counter nasal inhalers.

By 1980 I had my own children who looked to me to teach and protect
them. To prepare them for the decisions they would face regarding
these legal drugs I sought to better educate myself on the subject. I
needed good information and found it at the University of Oregon, Drug
Information Center (UODIC), directed by Mark Miller. Working with the
academic staff of the UODIC and nationally ranked UO Health Education
Dept., Mr. Miller developed the nationally acclaimed Drug Consumer
Safety Education (DCSE) curriculum and presentations.

The unbiased health approach of the DCSE recognized that our society's
virtually exclusive focus on illegal drugs has obscured a terribly
important fact: that negative side affects (drug interactions and
allergic reactions) are far more likely to be experienced by people
improperly using the many legal, readily available drugs than people
using illegal drugs. The general lack of awareness about problems of
tolerance and dependence in regard to legal drugs makes it hard for
people to participate in an "informed consent" process when they:

- - go to the doctor for the more than 100,000 available prescription
drugs;

- - go to the pharmacy for the more than 350,000 over-the-counter
medications;

- - use alcohol, nicotine or caffeine;

- - are exposed to thousands of chemi-cals, compounds or impurities in
commercial and industrial products found in: insecticides, herbicides,
food additives, cosmetics, household chemicals and industrial chemicals;

- - misuse and abuse the dozens of controlled substances out
there.

Don't get me wrong here. Drugs are wonderful tools. I'm grateful for
pain medications on a regular basis. However, like most, I have also
experienced serious complications from using both over-the-counter and
some prescribed medications.

But a drug is a drug is a drug. All drugs can be dangerous for some
people. A person can have an allergic reaction the first time they use
a drug or the hundredth time. The basic guidelines developed by the
DCSE curriculum evaluate a drug for its risks before using it, teach
how to determine if one is having problems, and how to de-cide
when/where to seek help if needed.

A result of my efforts to become really informed about drugs was to
form the organization Mothers Against Misuse and Abuse (MAMA) with a
mission to educate about drug consumer safety.

The Price of Paying Attention

Those of us who want youngsters to avoid problems with drugs might
want to look at our own drug use. Ask yourself: does my behavior teach
that all drug use choices are serious decisions, requiring careful
consideration? Do I use drugs excessively and exhibit unacceptable
social behavior? How do I help my kids evaluate the drug-taking
behavior they observe in others; friends, classmates, family members
and other adults? While I felt we had found an excellent way to teach
our youngsters about all drug use, it became increasingly hard to
explain the law to them. I was seeing increasingly harsh efforts
toward the prohibition of marijuana. The government had taken to
spraying poison on marijuana crops.

Marijuana, which I knew from personal experience was relatively mild
when compared to alcohol, carried penalties for simple possession that
were Draconian. I was astonished that the government would go so far
to supposedly protect our citizens' health from marijuana use, yet use
the taxes from the sale of other drugs with dangerous health effects
(alcohol and tobacco) to provide basic services.

Since the staggering tragedy on September 11th there has been media
discussion regarding how to talk to your children about terrorism. As
a parent and drug policy reform activist with a 20-year history, I am
especially well-prepared to discuss this issue. But my enemy is more
familiar than unknown foreign terrorists. My enemy declared war on me
and my fellow citizens. My enemy is Drug Prohibition, and the crime
and suffering it causes, and sadly, my own government is waging the
war.

How can we stop this terrorism and develop drug policy designed to
protect the health and welfare of our citizens? It will not be easy
breaking away from the vast amount of money in the drug war industrial
complex. Beside the money involved in the jail building, staffing and
maintenance, the court system, and electronic monitoring, there are so
many other political and economic interests with a stake in the status
quo. There are the drug makers and sellers, drug-testing companies,
drug treatment industry, even phone companies, which callously make
excessive profits on jail phone calls to and from the literally
millions of people incarcerated over the years for drug-related "crimes".

We can begin to make a change, though. We could start
by:

- - Judging all drugs by the same scientific standard;

- - Educating people to evaluate a drug to reduce the
risks;

- - Providing accurate scientific information and teaching people to
recognize if they are having problems and where to seek help;

- - Teaching people the skills they need to find happiness in life, such
as adult literacy, parenting skills, decision-making skills, anger
management, etc.

- - Using tax dollars collected from sale of drugs for prevention and
treatment on request for those who have problems.

I would like to believe that logic will prevail, that we will analyze
our national drug policy and make these kinds of voluntary changes to
better protect the health and well-being of our citizens, rather than
lining pockets of corporations and giving so much power to
politicians. But experience tells me these changes will not happen
quickly, even though we are starting to see other more enlightened
countries leading the way.

Faced with the current situation, parents are best able to protect
their families by educating themselves, using critical thinking skills
for their own decision-making, and setting a role model their children
are proud to emulate.

My own children report that the process we DARED use to teach them
about drugs has served them well. They are responsible and involved
members of the community, both considerate and respectful, and the
loving, trusting relationship with them that I so value is very strong.

Sandee Burbank works to bring common sense to public policy in a
variety of ways. As Director and founder of Mothers Against Misuse and
Abuse, she has worked for 20 years educating about drug use and
advocating for drug policy reform. Sandee's hands-on approach has
involved her in recreational planning, foster parenting, parent
education, ecological conservation efforts, and legislative issues.
Media coverage, including national television and publication stories
regarding her work with MAMA, helped gain her international
recognition and national and state awards. Sandee can be reached at
mama@mamas.org