Well, first of all, Happy New Year! I truly hope that you have a terrific, healthy, and fulfilling 2011.
Not to intentionally start off the new year with a negative story, but I recently read a newspaper article in which the author indicated that new research has shown that there is increased use of marijuana, hardcore drugs, and alcohol – not by adults, but by kids as young as 13-years-old!
Over the next 3 weeks, I will share the story with you, as well as my commentaries. The time to act to protect our children is now! Read on for some frightening thoughts on our kids today.
In a recent story by Rob Stein in the Washington Post, he reported that, “Marijuana use continues to increase among young people in the United States, according to an annual federally funded survey of drug, alcohol and cigarette use among U.S. youths.”
That one sentence should be enough to scare the daylights out of parents of little, medium, and big kids, as well as parents-to-be and grandparents. Read it again – “Marijuana use continues to increase among young people in the United States ……”
The remainder of Mr. Stein’s story appears below in bold print with my comments in regular print.
The proportion of eighth-graders who say they smoke marijuana daily increased from 1 percent to 1.2 percent between 2009 and 2010, while the rate among 10th-graders went from 2.8 percent to 3.3 percent, and among high school seniors from 5.1 percent to 6.1 percent, according to the Monitoring the Future Survey, which questioned 46,482 students from 396 public and private schools.
8th graders are using marijuana and their use is increasing? Can you read that and not get worried or angry about the current state of our children in the country? Our children of middle school age are using marijuana at an increasing rate! When I was a child in the Dark Ages, a few kids (we called them burnouts or bad kids) smoked an occasional cigarette, but nobody experimented with marijuana at that age. Perhaps it was not available or perhaps they were scared out of their wits as to what their parents would do.
In either scenario, middle school kids did not use marijuana back then, but they use it now and the rate of use is on the rise!
Because cigarette smoking has been declining among high school seniors, marijuana is now more popular than cigarettes by some measures. In 2010, 21.4 percent of high school seniors had used marijuana in the past 30 days, while 19.2 percent had smoked cigarettes, according to the survey, which is conducted by the University of Michigan.
Think about those numbers for a moment. Over 1 in 5 high school students uses marijuana. If a teacher has 30 students in his/her class, 6 of those students use marijuana. If a high school has 500 students, over 100 of them use marijuana. Is there any question as to why behavior and discipline issues are on the rise in our schools in this country? Based upon the research, over 20% of our high school kids are high or suffering from the effects of marijuana.
(Please come back next Saturday for Part 2)
Paul W. Reeves
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