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Schools

The Bong Biz—Drug Awareness Training for Parents

An eye-opening seminar on drug use was hosted by Youth and Family Services at the Community Center.

Local parents were greeted by a table loaded with drug paraphernalia, creative "drug delivery systems" and devices designed to mask the aroma of marijuana at the C Wednesday night.

This eye-opening evening of education for adults only was sponsored by the group Communities that Care. Chemical dependency expert Daniel Bissonnette gave the audience a lot to think about as he spoke about drug paraphernalia. He is employed by the Puget Sound Educational Service District and supports Drug and Alcohol counseling programs in schools all over King and Pierce Counties. The educator showed parents bongs made out of Pepsi cans and blow tubes made out of cardboard toilet paper rolls.

Wondering what a "blow tube" is? A display demonstrated a tube with a piece of dryer sheet duct-taped to the end so that when one exhales marijuana smoke through the tube the room smells more like the dryer sheet than pot. Another popular method of masking the tell-tale smell, according to the education materials, is to stuff pot into a "Blunt" sweet cigar so that you look like (and smell like) you're smoking a small cigar.

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"Kids will be kids and often experiment, but that is not all there is to it" said Bissonnette.

The question is, he said, whether the experimenter will go in the direction of abuse. Bissonnette went on to explain that of kids who use drugs or alcohol, 15% will end up with a diagnosable problem, and 7-12% of all adolescent users will need significant medical help to overcome addiction, where the "choices are reduced to two: death or treatment." He noted that there is no way of knowing which kids will end up in that tragic 7-12%, where the life story ends up being about drug addiction.

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While there is no "bottom line" result from the "great genetic research" that has been done, said Bissonnette, "we do know that if you have one parent that's alcoholic, you have a 50-50 chance of becoming alcoholic--and if both parents are alcoholic, a nearly 100% chance" of following in their footsteps.

The best preventive measure is to delay the use of cigarettes, alcohol and other drugs, advised Bissonnette. For kids who start smoking cigarettes before they are 10 years old (mostly in other countries), the likelihood of other drug use and significant problems is nearly certain. And he said the same is true for alcohol use. Individuals who do not start drinking before ages 21-25 overwhelmingly avoid abuse and addiction problems--a very small percentage experience problems.

Bissonnette provided a stark example with a group he worked with in prison — he asked how many had abused alcohol or drugs when they were kids — the answer was a unanimous yes. 

He said parents' experience with marijuana, often 20-30 years old, is not relevant to the situation today, where marijuana has become a much more sophisticated crop. As the science as improved (amount of light, nutrients, etc) so has the potency of the drug.

Bissonnette mentioned a recent seminar given by Dr. Lisa Boesky — a CNN analyst and psychologist — who spoke about kids suffering from undiagnosed depression or other mental health conditions -- when they stumble upon alcohol or drug use it can make them feel so much better that such use will have an increased attraction. It's important, he said, that parents address the underlying issue if there was undiagnosed ADHD, depression or other condition before the drug use..

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