Show your kids love by warning them about drugs

I t was terrific to see leaders from Surrey RCMP and the Surrey School District offer parents such common-sense advice this week about the drug crisis afflicting our communities.

School Superintendent Jordan Tinney and Assistant Commissioner Dwayne McDonald urged parents to talk to their kids about the extremely high level of risk posed by street drugs these days and not to assume that their little darlings aren’t experimenting with them.

The warning came a few days after Provincial Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall made a similar plea, noting that 19 B.C. teenagers have died of overdoses since January 2016 and concerned that teenage drug use may rise soon with year-end parties and summer concerts.

“Overdose deaths can easily happen to first-time users or those experimenting with drugs,” Tinney and McDonald said in a letter to parents. “Despite our best efforts as parents, our children can easily be at-risk of drug use.”

The problem is that fentanyl and other easily deadly opioids are being mixed into other drugs, often the so-called party drugs like ecstasy that kids might take, thinking they are relatively safe. They can, and do, suddenly find themselves sliding unexpectedly into unconsciousness and, shortly thereafter, death.

The Surrey officials said that 54 per cent of B.C. overdose deaths happened in homes and that it’s “not a problem isolated to homelessness or drug addicts,” as my colleague Stephanie Ip reported. They noted that fentanyl, which can be 100 times stronger than morphine — meaning that a remarkably tiny amount can kill you — has been found in heroin, powder and crack cocaine, methamphetamine and in fake Oxycodone and Percocet.

Other health officials have previously noted that fentanyl has been discovered in party drugs like ecstasy, cocaine, speed — and even in marijuana, which is pretty scary given how commonly that drug is used by teenagers and others.

Drug experts mock former U.S. First Lady Nancy Reagan’s old “Just Say No” approach to drugs, saying that message doesn’t work with kids and that talking about the relative risk of different drugs is more effective.

The latter is the approach my wife and I — then a criminal lawyer and police reporter — took years ago with our sons when they were young. If we happened to be in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, we’d point out where the bad decisions of drug use could take one in life and routinely explained that different drugs are not equally dangerous. We’d note that a few puffs on a joint wouldn’t likely hurt you but your first experience with cocaine or heroin could kill you, and that crystal meth could permanently turn your brain into cheese.

But I’m leaning more toward Reagan’s views these days, especially in light of the opioid epidemic that is expected to kill more than 1,400 British Columbians this year — well over the 935 overdose deaths in 2016.

It’s not considered popular or perhaps cool to say it, I suppose, and liberal governments seem hell bent on making drug use easier to obtain and use these days, but no one should be wasting their lives on drugs. Even if they don’t kill you, what a terrible waste of one’s potential and precious single chance at existence.

Even marijuana isn’t a great choice, spiked with fentanyl or not. The American College of Pediatricians reported in April that about 17 per cent of those who use marijuana during adolescence and 25 to 50 per cent of daily users become addicted. The drug’s impact on developing brains, including causing psychosis and being linked to schizophrenia, has been widely reported.

While smoking pot may not harm some or even most kids, it can be very bad for a large minority of them. The trouble is we don’t know which kid will be harmed. Those who downplay that risk may as well encourage kids to play Russian Roulette, arguing that five times out of six it’s a really fun, thrilling experience.

A study published earlier this month in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health by British researchers found that teenagers who regularly smoke pot are 26 times more likely to use other drugs by the age of 21. In other words, marijuana is a gateway to more serious drug use, despite what Health Canada claims on its website.

So I agree with Tinney, McDonald and Kendall. If you love your kids, warn them about drugs. gclark@postmedia.com

Gordon Clark is a columnist and editorial pages editor for The Province. Letters to the editor can be sent to provletters@theprovince.com.