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Lock up medicine cabinets
(Pueblo Chieftain, The (CO) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) May 18--Most parents hope that their children will be more successful, more educated, better off financially, and happier than they are.
It is a hope, in America, that is based upon the belief that every generation has more opportunities, more knowledge than the previous one.
But there are major obstacles to success today that didn't exist decades ago. For example:
--Teenage pregnancy, once rare, is common today.
--Teenagers, whether in gangs or not, don't slug it out with fists; they use handguns.
--It used to be rare that a high school student would drop out of school. Today, three and sometimes four out of 10 freshmen will not take part in high school graduation.
--Perhaps worst, it is very easy today for teenagers to obtain alcohol and drugs. They can get both from their homes; they can get them from friends; they even can obtain prescription drugs on the Internet.
I hope that you took time to read The Chieftain's series, "Generation RX," which concluded Friday.
For those of us who are older, the series left us shaking our heads, wondering how we got to this point.
If you're a parent of a teenager, it should have scared the hell out of you and perhaps served a warning to put your children under more supervision and scrutiny.
And for those parents with young children, the series hopefully gave you information you can use as your children grow older and face peer pressure to drink and use drugs.
Partying by teenagers is nothing new. Teenagers in the '50s and '60s often gathered in the prairie for "keggers," which were beer parties. In the late '60s, marijuana entered the picture, but use by teens still was not common.
But in the decades since, drugs such as crack cocaine, stronger marijuana and methamphetamine have entered the picture. Stronger, more addictive drugs have replaced the now-quaint 3.2 percent beer of past generations.
And in recent years, as our series pointed out, a new phenomenon has occurred: the illegal and increased use of prescription medicines such as pain killers and antidepressants by teenagers.
It's really a fairly new phenomenon that such drugs are so widespread legally. Past generations who had various pains typically were told to take aspirin or Tylenol. It wasn't common practice for doctors to prescribe strong medicines such as OxyContin or Darvocet.
But today, there's a pill for everything; every middle-ager knows that.
We take one prescription pill for acid reflux, another for high blood pressure, another to help us sleep, one or two for allergies, the occasional pill for back pain, and so on.
Whereas medicine cabinets once stocked a good cough syrup, some iodine for cuts and scrapes, and a huge bottle of unbuffered aspirin, today's medicine cabinets look like minipharmacies.
All of which makes it easy for teenagers to get their hands on drugs. Once smuggled out of the house, it's a simple matter of selling the pills, trading them or tossing them into a bowl at pharm parties.
There's no disputing that pharm parties are taking place in the U.S. There is some disagreement between local authorities as to whether they're taking place in Pueblo or whether it's merely a case of urban myth.
It doesn't really matter. There is no dispute that teenagers are getting ahold of prescription medicines and using them.
For baby boomers, that is astounding. We may be on several medications, but our generation is one that does its research. We get online, we read books. We learn what the drug does, what the side effects are, and what the contraindications are with other medications.
It's inconceivable to our generation that someone would stick their hands into a jar and take pills and swallow them. Or that they even would buy pills from classmates and take them without really knowing how the drug works.
But our series established that it's happening. A generation that should be smarter than we are, is acting much more foolishly.
In our series, we did not offer solutions because, frankly, we're not qualified to do so. Many, many dedicated people are working to address the use of alcohol and drugs by teenagers.
Looking back, maybe we made a mistake by shutting down 3.2 beer joints where teenagers could "learn" to drink. Maybe our society's financial -- emphasis on the financial -- fixation on incarceration rather than prevention and rehabilitation has been a mistake.
Regardless, we hope that if nothing else, the series will encourage some of you parents to lock up your medicines, to check your bottles of alcohol.
There may not be a way to stop alcohol and drug abuse, but it shouldn't be easy for our children to get these materials, either.
Steve Henson is The Pueblo Chieftain's managing editor. He can be reached at 544-0006, ext. 410; or online at shenson@chieftain.com.
To see more of The Pueblo Chieftain, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.chieftain.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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