I’ve lost many of my closest relatives in the past fifteen years. Two were second cousins that died in separate car wrecks not long after high school. Cancer and heart disease killed two of my first cousins. Old age took the rest of my family. My family is nearly gone except for my mom.
Life becomes so precious as I grow older. It bothers me to see someone throw theirs away.
Every household has cleaning supplies and other dangerous chemicals around. You try to protect young babies and kids from that stuff. But a teenager is supposed to have some common sense. You shouldn’t have to lock up the bleach, paint, gasoline and so on to keep them from huffing it. Freon from the AC? That just floored me. Next I guess they’ll unhook the gas from the kitchen stove and huff that?
I’d point out “huffing” of solvents or freon isn’t even technically taking drugs, its just suffocating due to lack of oxygen or brain damage. No chemical is locking into a receptor in your brain or anything.
I recall an old episode of Cops. They stopped a guy for huffing spray paint. It’s all over his face and lips. The guy swears to the cops that he never sniffs paint. :rolleyes: He seemed pretty far gone.
Paint, glue, and gas can really kill off the brain cells. But it takes years to kill someone. I’ve seen scan on the web were areas of the brain were just shriveled up and gone.
Freon apparently is even worse. It’s lethal stuff. That’s why I mentioned the Darwin Award. It’s like huffing a car exhaust. Really bad choice.
I’d say it’s like teaching abstinence. When you teach kids that abstinence is the only way and you don’t bother teaching them anything else because it doesn’t matter since they’re not going to have sex anyways, they end up with STDs and pregnancies when they’re 12, 13, 14 years old because they have no idea what they’re doing. Teach them about safe sex and even if they do it before you feel they’re ready, there’s a better chance they’ll use protection and/or know what to do if something happens (like they get an STD).
In this case, you make all drugs illegal, don’t teach kids about drugs, just that they’re illegal and they don’t know better. But if, for example, pot were legal, you could teach kids about the pros and cons of pot, alcohol, pharmaceuticals etc and maybe they won’t huff Freon and spray paint.
Imagine if during health class you were taught that alcohol shouldn’t be used until you’re 21 and Vicodin shouldn’t be used unless you have a prescription for this that and the other reasons…but don’t combine them because they have a multiplier effect. Maybe you’d have a few less cardiac arrests in the ER each year because someone that just went out drinking all night and then got back to the dorm decided against cracking open that bottle of percocets that they swiped from mom. Save it until tomorrow.
It’s tough and I’m not sure how I feel about schools telling kids what drugs they should and shouldn’t take, but if kids had access to marijuana and knew how to use it safely (even if they had to sneak around to do it) maybe they would leave the more dangerous drugs alone.
Someone talking about the recent legalization of marijuana mentioned that perhaps the reason people that use pot end up using other drugs is that since weed is illegal they end up with people that have access to other illegal drugs. If they could go to the corner store to get it or pay an older brother to get it for them, they wouldn’t be hanging out with the local dealer that also just happened to have some coke or ecstasy.
maaaybe there’s a problem getting drugs in prison but I don’t see that as a problem anywhere else. Kids can get just about any drug they want for the asking.
I’m having a flashback, man. 1976, I was in a recording studio for some reason I can’t remember and someone pulled out a canister of Freon. This isn’t new.
What is new, I think, is the popularity of huffing of anything and everything by younger and younger kids. It’s in the news all the time. Kids hear about it and go, “hmm, wonder what it’s like?” and they think they are impervious and smarter than everyone else, so huffing can’t hurt them.