More Student Awareness Is Needed In Schools

First Lets Be Real. Let's Keep It Real about this drug heroin and about this epidemic. Stop speaking it in sugar coated terms. Tell them like it is. Heroin will kill them. Stop with the Disney approach to speaking to kids about it. Disney doesn't perform at funerals. In the classrooms STOP with the talk on coffee and cigarettes when the real problem has a name. It's name is Heroin. Drug dealers are not handing your child cups of coffee.

I can remember for several months of this year I stood in front of the council members telling them that heroin was in the schools. I sometimes wonder if they listened or maybe they thought I was reading too many stories about this heroin epidemic.

The end of May it happened. Two students from Spring Mills High School overdosed on heroin laced with fentanyl and died. It was being reported that they bought what they thought was cocaine and instead it was heroin and fentanyl. Kids should know that drug dealers can and often do this.

One of the solutions is reaching the school age children with powerful messages about the dangers of heroin (and other drugs.) Heroin is just one of the drugs that allows a first time try, after that one choice to try it you are hooked.

As for the recent article in The Journal regarding heroin in the schools. The approach I took from the article is they are confident that it isn't in the schools. Well let me tell you, apparently the administration at the schools haven't visited the students bathroom during the school day. Terms like "It's Chill Pill Time" tells me it is time they should.

Updating and mandating school curriculum that includes effective LEGAL and ILLEGAL drug education for all students. Student awareness on these subjects, particularly legally prescribed pharmaceuticals, are not as effective as they can be, not as in depth as they need to be, not always presented by the most effective messengers, if addressed at all.

1. Mandate curriculum change for Health/PE to include addiction education with addiction with community service hours. 
2. Student assemblies on a regular basis at the very least and preferably built into curriculum. It is very hard to take students away from the current mandated instructional time but this must be done to curb this epidemic
   
3. Self-worth education throughout a student’s entire education, elementary/middle/high school
4. Parent education is required. We must work with school districts to make parent programs mandatory. This parent education could be tied in with student trips etc., but at the very least a dedicated assembly for parents
5. Social Service (Guidance Counselors) must be trained in childhood trauma and a multitude of other ailments linked to addiction. Early intervention must be a priority.

See Also: The National Institute on Drug Abuse For Teens

This information is from Steered Straight