If 24 teenagers died in a fiery school-bus crash because the driver was drunk, on drugs, or crazy, the media coverage would be spectacular. The entire community would be demanding immediate, positive changes to the school bus system. But at least 24 teenagers 18 or younger in the same city – Dallas-Ft. Worth – have died from heroin overdoses in the past 18 months. In fact, kids are dying from drug overdoses almost daily across the country. Where’s the public outcry to fix the system? Like our alleged school bus crash, the system must be impaired. And when we think impaired, we think drug rehab.
The Dallas-Ft. Worth "cheese heroin" tragedies have been reported in local and even national media, and teenage drug deaths are reported somewhere in America with frightening regularity. But as in cities across the country, Dallas-Ft. Worth has only heartbroken families, overworked police trying to nab elusive dealers, and assorted public agencies and educational authorities desperately trying to invent some way to stop teenagers from dying of drug abuse. A few kids – a very few – are in some kind of drug rehab or treatment that, hopefully, will keep the kid clean for life. But there's no concerted public outcry from the entire community of American parents, no organized action by our elected officials to fix an obviously impaired and broken system.
So how do you "drug rehab" a whole system? For starters, we have to change the way everyone thinks about the problem. The Texas "cheese heroin" epidemic that's killing Dallas teenagers is a case in point. Almost every media report I've seen for the past year about kids dying from cheese heroin starts off by saying a teenager has died from it, and then it goes on and on about cheese heroin – what it is, how it’s made, where it comes from, how dangerous it is, where the kids get it, the neighborhoods it’s showing up in, comments from the city’s harassed drug abuse workers and school officials, comments from the DEA and the "war on drugs" – but there's rarely anything about what actually matters. Why are kids doing drugs, why aren’t more kids being sent for drug rehab, and why aren't there more drug rehab programs for kids that actually work for kids?
If I was a television or newspaper reporter, I would simply go to the kids. I would be looking for a story that is the real news, one that might begin to change the way "the system" and the public thinks about this horrible situation. I would ask them three simple questions – at least to start.
1.Since you already know you can get addicted, ruin your lives, and even die from drugs, and everyone has told you how bad they are, why do you take them?
2.What do your friends, teachers, and especially your parents think about you taking drugs? Yes, I know that's actually three questions there.
3.If you thought you were getting addicted or that drugs were ruining some part of your life, or this happened to someone you know, would you want to try to handle it through drug rehab? Why not (if the answer is "no")?
Now those answers would make a news story worth reading. It could change the way the public thinks about things such as drug rehab for their kids. It could change the way "the system" thinks about how it's approaching drug rehab for kids. And if enough kids were interviewed in a school, a school district, a city – hey, let"s interview every kid in America – it could change the way kids think about drugs, about each other, and about drug rehab and the value of their lives.
Kids hate being preached at. It's always better to just ask and listen, and then do the right thing by them. Teenagers who are getting messed up by drugs need a drug rehab program that actually answers their own personal questions. That's the beginning of a life free of drugs, a drug-free country, and the hallmark of a successful drug rehab program.
Every day of the week there are at least a dozen stories in newspapers and on TV across the country and around the world decrying local substance abuse and alcohol or drug addiction problems. They are usually about a particular drug or alcohol concoction, street drugs or prescription drugs, and may concern teenagers, a local high school or grade school, an ethnic minority, pregnant women, the elderly, a local celebrity, street gangs, even the population at large – the combinations of who is using what or addicted to what or selling what or dying from what seem endless. But there is a common denominator among nearly all of these troubling stories: they rarely feature the importance of alcohol and drug rehab in dealing with rampant addiction.
Today, for example, there were stories about anti-depressants and painkillers from a North Carolina university, tougher alcohol laws in New Zealand, an alcohol ban on San Diego beaches, a Reno, NV series on the dangers of energy drinks laced with alcohol, a New England high school's crack-down on student alcohol and drug use, and a North Carolina county's new war on local drug pushers. There were similar stories from South Africa, Pakistan, Canada, India, Australia, Bulgaria and the UK.
After lengthy descriptions of the spread of drug addiction or the need to stiffen law enforcement or the horrendous amount of binge drinking at US colleges and universities, a few stories might mention that someone entered drug rehab. But none of them feature drug rehab for what it is: The only tool we have to help people suffering from habitual substance abuse and alcohol or drug addiction.
Americans comprise only four percent of the world's population, but 20 million of us consume two thirds of the world's illegal drugs. More than 2.6 million teenagers abuse illegal drugs. More than 16 million Americans abuse prescription drugs, and the number of alcohol abusers and addicts is holding steady at about 16 to 20 million.
These kinds of statistics, and daily news stories about alcohol and drug addiction, are proof that substances are still plentiful, and abuse isn’t letting up. New drug rehab facilities are announced now and then, but their numbers are almost impossible to find. The media favors drug smuggling, drug-related crime, drug arrests, drug addiction and drug deaths, to reports on a successful drug rehab program somewhere.
Another issue which will soon make headlines if nothing is done about it are the numbers of kids experimenting with drugs and alcohol today. According to media reports on government, academic and United Nations studies, kids are starting to abuse drugs and alcohol at younger ages around the world. Teens who abuse controlled prescription drugs are twice as likely to use alcohol, five times likelier to use marijuana, 12 times likelier to use heroin, 15 times likelier to use Ecstasy and 21 times likelier to use cocaine, compared to teens who do not abuse such drugs.
This presents a new set of problems. There are few alcohol or drug rehab centers specifically for kids, and adult facilities are not equipped to deal with them at all. There's a growing interest among treatment professionals in drug rehab specialization for kids, but precious little research on which to base drug rehab treatment. It's mostly a learn-as-you-go field of endeavor. Ideas are being proposed, but there’s no standardized approach yet.
Meanwhile, street kids keep puffing on weed and snorting meth and crack, while the more genteel mini-suburbanites, who of course also smoke weed, continue to snort esoteric and extremely dangerous heroin mixtures or prescription drugs stolen from a friend’s medicine cabinet, and arrive dead or near death in ever great numbers at local hospital emergency rooms.
Alcohol and drug addiction and abuse is a raging epidemic, and it's not receiving the medical attention and drug rehab services it should get. If 20 or 30 million Americans – the same number as drug and alcohol addicts – came down with avian flue or some other pandemic, we'd have everyone from the CDC to FEMA to the Army trying to deal with it.
Not so for addiction and drug rehab. There aren't enough in-patient drug rehab facilities to treat even a fraction of the alcohol and drug addicts in this country. Yet most of the media ignores the treatment story in favor of the crime and abuse story.
Maybe if the national media – TV network news, major dailies and magazines – really went to town on this for a few weeks, the public might take notice and start hollering for their elected representatives to do something about it. Because every American whose life has been ripped away and ruined by alcohol and drugs deserves a successful drug rehab program.
Rod Mactaggart has sinced written about articles on various topics from Addictions, Alcohol Treatment and Keyboard Synthesizer. Rod is a freelance writer that contributes articles on health.. Rod Mactaggart's top article generates over 135000 views. to your Favourites.