House Bill 231 goes into effect in January, allocating $1 million for drug education for school children. The goal is to decrease deaths from drug overdose.
Hooray. Hallelujah. I hope it works.
I doubt it will. Schools, parents, churches, TV ads, billboards and every social media form known to man has been doing some form of drug education for decades. Schools, law enforcement and non-profits run classes, seminars and special programs to tell kids that drugs can kill them.
Guess what? It ain’t working. Kids already know drugs kill, and they’re getting high anyway. Overdose deaths are rising every year.
Every school kid in America is well aware of the dangers of street drugs. Every person who uses drugs has been told repeatedly some variation of the words “That s*** will kill you.”
And they get high anyway.
Educating kids is a laudable goal. Every year dedicated, motivated well-meaning DARE and School Resource officers and others spend untold hours working to keep even one kid from dying. Sometimes they’re successful but kids keep doing drugs and kids keep dying.
It ain’t working.
Maybe it’s time to try something different.
Let’s educate the parents. Let’s educate the legislature.
Hey parents, here’s the first step. Get over the denial. Your kids are doing drugs. For real. It’s your kids. It’s the kids from your kid’s school, not just the “other” kids from the “other” school. And it’s not just your kids, it’s your friend’s kids, your kid’s friends, and their classmates.
And, yes, the beer your 14 year old drank at the bonfire counts.
Where do they get their drugs? For most of them, it’s not in the alley or the parking lot. Yeah, they do that, too. Or they buy them on the bus or in the school restroom. According to one drug investigator, lots of kids get their drugs from mama’s purse or daddy’s medicine cabinet. Mama don’t tell me you didn’t realize your Xanax and Lortab bottles were getting empty a little sooner than they should.
So, it’s not the other kids from the other schools. Which schools have problems? Short answer? All of them.
And just for laughs, ask yourself, better yet ask a cop, which schools don’t allow drug dogs.
Your school? Amazing. Now, ask your administrators if they’re denying a problem or are they enabling a problem.
Next step let’s educate the legislators.
Every day addicts get arrested and sent to jail. Many times, their crime is simple possession. Often the charge is theft or something similar to get money to buy drugs. Cops really don’t like making those arrests. Jailers and jail administrators don’t like having people in withdrawal or DTs in their care. It’s expensive and dangerous.
Instead of spending money on feel-good programs that haven’t proved effective but make great photo-ops for the TV news, or on jails for drug users, let’s put money into drug rehab programs. Maybe do it as a targeted part of an expanded Medicaid program.
We know that effective rehab saves lives. I haven’t run the numbers, but I’d be surprised to learn that a 30 or 60 day inpatient drug rehab costs more than keeping a repeat drug offender at Parchman for 10 or 20 years.
We’ve got to do something. What we’re doing now ain’t working.
