Drug Watch International
"You never can trust your baby sitters, if
you're not alert about drugs."
The following are excerpts from a talk given by Dr.
Keith Schuchard, a parent and University of Texas Professor of English, on the
topic of drug use in society, and particularly marijuana, and the need for
parents to participate in the effort to keep drugs away from our children.
Amazingly, Dr. Schuchard, one of the founders of the parent prevention movement,
gave this talk in 1980. For the next ten years, drug use declined
dramatically, dropping nearly 50%. However, in 1992, that downward trend
did an abrupt turnaround when the media and entertainment industry, taking a
lead from what appeared to be the new administration's softer stand on drugs,
once more began glamorizing drug use.
Schuchard said: "If they don't (use drugs) in this day and time they will be in a shrinking minority and quite often very lonely, left out of what seems to be the normal way of growing up, of having a social life in normal teenage situations" and she went on to talk about the "normalization of drug use in our culture." She began her talk saying: "A great many colleagues, graduate students, and student assistants are users."
PARENT POWER
"It started at the universities it started among the
brighter students at the universities, quite often among the more distinguished
and intellectual faculty members now unfortunately, that was a long time
ago. The world has totally changed the representatives of that point
of view still have a disproportionate point of view in the media, particularly
through the many, many, young reporters and journalists who are marijuana or
cocaine users themselves and have a very difficult time of dealing with how much
the problem of usage has changed, because of the extent of it and the young
children involved and again, from the power within the very influential
opinion-makers in the university, the health agencies, the many psychiatric
consultants who work for the federal government, etc."
There is a "Tremendous responsibility of those in the
academic world, those who are influential with the media, to wise up to find
out that the 1960's are gone and we have a terrible mess on our hands with the
effects of that decade."
"The drug culture has been sold to the kids in the
same way that blue jeans and tennis shoes have...The merchandising apparatus is
the same mentality, utilizes the same expertise, and is just as effective as
that that's controlling your children's fashion styles, their language, their
slang, and the kind of movies and music they want to go see."
"So its coming in every direction at your children in the form that, as they enter adolescence, is the most attractive to them the fun world of music and dancing and parties supported, as far as they can see, from very respectable elements in the media, in the professional life they all know who in the White House smokes/snorts cocaine, or smokes pot. They pick these up as endorsements from the Federal Government, even though it's a situation that is very difficult, as I say, for both parties to deal with at this time.
They could certainly deal with it better since nobody's
staff is clean I think as long as they have any staff workers who are in the
age group of 20 to early 30's because it 's so entrenched in that whole age
group."
"Knowing something about the biological process and
effects of marijuana is a major weapon you have against the drug culture.
Because the children's mythology, which has been sold to them, marketed to them
that it's harmless, is the thing that makes it hardest for parents to contend
with the initiation into a marijuana using lifestyle the kids just
laughing at a complete lack of awareness, first of all about the drug and what
it SEEMS to do to them, and then about all the things they heard."
"If you have not known about marijuana, make clear why
you're concerned about it, why you don't want your child to smoke, they may go
to that first party completely unprepared to have the cute little boy sitting
next to them say "Want a little hit? It (the offer) comes in a form
that is not scary to children the person who introduces a child to marijuana
is usually his friends, a worker, an older brother or sister, and increasingly,
among younger parents, its a parent. Usually the parents have no idea themselves
about the pharmacology of marijuana or particularly, the particular effect on
their young child."
"There will be parents who will really differ from
yourself on these issues but you can make a very reasonable argument for
sticking together as far as juvenile behavior goes, behavior by minors. The
bigger the city you live in, the more you live in say a professional or
university neighborhood, the more important this will be because you'll have a
lot of opposition where you don't expect it."
"The major thing that parents need is the gossip
network to know what the kids are doing and where to be willing to share your
suspicions or your worries, even if it embarrasses you or hurts you, to be
willing to call a parent and say I suspect that your child is dating a drug
dealer to be willing to call your best friend and let them know that her
daughter has been sneaking around doing some things to be willing to get
those calls yourself. It's the hardest part of this whole business we're
talking about because that's the part where you have to act and you have to
communicate with someone else."
Dr. Schuchard talked about the formation of the group,
FAMILIES INVOLVED TOGETHER, and the tactics they developed:
"One thing that is very important is that the testing ground was the
parents sticking by the rules and enforcing them with their children. This
wasn't thumbscrews and putting them on the medieval rack. This was
grounding them, cutting off TV privileges, being home it meant maybe your
husband had to take off work to be home it meant for some people giving up
jobs they had long wanted to hold for a temporary period...the infection of
any of the children with the drug culture puts all the children at risk."
"It's much better if you get support (from the
schools) but the parents can do it whether they get anybody to help them or
not."
"Children from weaker families, parents who could not sustain the discipline, the time, the providing of alternative fun and things like that for their children, benefited from having other parents who had their lives more under control, enter into their lives and take care of it. The burden fell quite often on stronger parents on at-home mothers who are carrying many burdens in a world that's given up volunteerism, to where the idea of being a volunteer has become a dirty word to the women's movement."
The thing that we really stressed was that you can protect
your child all you want. You can raise a perfect child who never touches
drugs, never gets in trouble and if you can't help other children then your
child grows up in a very diminished world. There won't be many boys out
there for your daughter to date who aren't into pot and drinking there won't
be many friends for your child to have if there aren't other kids who aren't
growing up in basically the same way so that, in a way, even if your child is
drug-free they are living in a world very much affected and diminished by the
power of the drug culture all around them."
"What I'm saying for all of you as things are right now, is everybody is vulnerable right now. And in many ways, the more all-American, cute, fun, involved, your kids are, the more vulnerable they are right now.
"You cannot underestimate the power of the other
side's arguments or how attractive the proponents of that argument are right now
in the media, in the entertainment world, and in the government. There's a
whole generation of young people in positions of influence, of great public
exposure, who grew up and went to college during the late 60's for whom the drug
scene and the enjoyment and preoccupation of marijuana and now cocaine, is very
much a part of the entire mentality they educated themselves into. The
great tragedy of this is, this is the age group who's always given us our best
journalists, muckrakers, investigators out trying to expose things the young
Turks of any business or anything else those who are out there trying to dig
up the dirt on anything."
"This generation of journalists has been almost lost
to us to deal with marijuana problems because of the denial process of anything
being wrong with it involved, and from the wrenching intellectual process it
takes to think 'Maybe we were
wrong,' because maybe they were wrong about a lot of other things too.
Because it was so much fun to be FOR marijuana. This is something parents
can address. You can talk to your local reporters if they are users or
defiant, you educate them you make them read the studies...you can bring
them around to doing the good kind of public education they need to do."
You will run into opposition from very attractive, very
intelligent, and very well educated people. The major thing you have is to
present a very credible biological presentation about marijuana as the
touchstone of the drug culture when we lose the argument on that we seem to
lose it on everything else. Focus on what we are learning now about
marijuana, its implications for children, for females of reproductive age, and
for heavy users even among the healthy. Stick to the biological facts,
i.e., that this is a subtle accumulative drug that will have long range effects
on this generation and the next."
"We've heard many awful things about drugs your
kids are going to see survivors of drugs all over the place quarterbacks who
smoke pot before games, cheerleaders who use cocaine to get them up for their
yells, kids who make straight A's and claim they smoke pot every day you're
going to have to contend that there are a lot of people out there who seem to be
doing all right. What you have as a counter argument is that you're
dealing with a cumulative process of chemicals in which there will be a chemical
bill to pay but it will come at different times for different people.
Also, that some people smoke 3 packs of cigarettes a day and don't get lung
cancer but cigarettes are still bad for your lungs that some people
drink a bottle of scotch a day and don't become alcoholics but most people
have trouble if they drink like that."
"The first weapon is information most people
don't know the facts about marijuana." The parents need to be able to
talk factually) about marijuana."
"The MOST important thing is to have some group of
parents with some methodism who will begin the process of supporting the
institution changes if the school is going to change some of its rules, if you
want your pediatrician to begin talking to your children about drugs. You
have to make sure they're educated first though because physicians do not get
pharmacological education (about illegal drugs) as a standard part of their
medical training. If you want your reporters to do a better job it should
be from a good core of parents who will hang in there, evaluate what they're
doing and support, quite often, the very painful changes they may have to go
through."
Excerpts from the 1980 Video "Parent Power"
made by Dr. Keith Schuchard, aka Marsha Manatt, Ph.D., author of "PARENTS,
PEERS, AND POT II"
# # #
In a September 1990 interview with Charleston Police Chief, Reuben Greenberg, about the enforcement of drug laws and prevention of the spread of drug use, Chief Greenberg said, "With few exceptions other than the drug traffickers themselves, faculties and administrations of our nation's colleges and universities are the most hostile elements to the enforcement of our nation's drug laws."
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