12-year-olds abusing inhalants

This article tells us about how drugs are not the only thing kids and parents have to look out for today. Kids as young as 12 have developed a new way to get high, without buying or using illegal drugs and it is called huffing. Huffing is inhaling substances to get the same high as you would drugs. They are using inhalants such as spray paint, shoe polish, glue, air fresheners, hair spray, nail polish, gasoline, aerosols, computer cleaners, even the refrigerant from air conditioners. The things about these items are that they are legal, cheap, and you can easily find them around your house. Recent studies have shown that kids are huffing these products more than marijuana, hallucinogens, and cocaine combined. Huffing can be fatal, leading to "sudden sniffing death." Many experts said 12 is considered a gateway age for inhalant use, but the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration would like to slam that gate shut. It is kicking off National Inhalants and Poisons Awareness Week, which starts Sunday. The American Osteopathic Association also is joining the national effort.

I think that the use of drugs and other substitutes for drugs has gotten out of hand. When kids as young as 12 have to resort to getting high off of hair spray and other things you can find in your own house, you have to start looking at why these kids feel the need to get high. One reason I think is the media. The media today is dangerous. Pictures and articles on celebrities having drug overdoses and getting smashed is not a good image to throw out to children who are going to hold the future of the country. Another reason to get high might be peers. Peers have such a huge influence on your kids today because coming from a kid in high school, kids are mean. You wear the wrong color of jeans one day and you can be shunned from your group. Now that kid has no friends and is going to do anything to become one of the group again and most likely that involves drugs. Things need to go further than to have a national awareness week. Kids find that funny and I can guarantee that peers are going to ignore that little pep fest at school to stop drug use. It needs to be taken further like maybe the celebrities that force the ideas of using drugs to the public should show up to schools, not just the rich ones but the average joes too, and talk about how they screwed up their life by using drugs. Get kids interested in doing other things than drugs. Have them try out for sports! Kill two birds with one stone, start on the obesity problem while we start on the drug problem.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/03/11/inhalant.abuse/index.html?hpt=Sbin