Kids need the right tools to stay safe from drugs
It’s festival time. I know this as most of my son’s friends are away in some sunny part of the country, listening to a lineup of fantastic bands, probably forgetting to apply sunscreen, and getting very little or no sleep. They will be joined by tens of thousands of other Kiwis, all of whom are hoping to have the time of their young lives.
Many of the ones who are over 18 will be drinking, and hopefully will do this reasonably safely, in a contained environment with mates to watch over them if things don’t go to plan.
There will also be some who will choose to take other drugs, hoping that this will enhance their experience – in fact reports from a number of recent festivals tend to suggest that the majority of attendees had taken MDMA (ecstasy) at least.
Drug-taking is part of a number of young people’s lives, whether we like to acknowledge it or not. I know this from years of working in this field, and also from having been young many decades ago.
I was always far too fearful to take any sort of pill that wasn’t from a pharmacy, but I had plenty of acquaintances who did, and luckily all seemed to survive the experience. Many young people will and do make the decision to never try drugs, but I suspect most will be offered the opportunity at some point along the way.
Recreational drug use is a risk-taking behaviour, much like many others that are common during different stages of life – drinking alcohol excessively or in an unsafe manner, driving dangerously, risky sexual practices, and so on. For some young people, taking risks is a way of figuring out their limits, and can at times be a far more valuable way of determining this than simply being told ‘‘not to’’ by a well-meaning parent.
Every parent will have a different stance, but I think I am pretty much a realist when it comes to my children and the choices they will make. I hope I have, and will, equip them with all the information they need to make good and safe choices when it comes to risk-taking behaviours, but I also know that I can’t make those choices for them.
I can only keep my fingers crossed that they don’t forget what I’ve told them, and that if things go wrong they know they can always rely on me to help.
At some stage I suspect they will decide to accept an element of risk to experience something new (whatever form that may take), and I can’t stop them doing that. I can only hope that if or when they do, they are among the majority, the lucky ones who come through this time of life unscathed. There are plenty who don’t.
So as a parent, and a health provider, I tend to frame my conversations in terms of harm reduction. I think being told ‘‘you can’t do that’’ can often be seen as antagonistic, and many young
If you can talk through the pros and cons of their choice, and try to put some safety measures in place, you are likely to get a much better outcome.
people will then just go ahead and take the risks anyway. But if you can talk through the pros and cons of their choice, and try to put some safety measures in place for them, I believe you are likely to get a much better outcome.
We do this with alcohol all the time – accepting
that most young people will drink, but trying to enable them to learn to do this in a way that has the least likelihood of harm. In conversations with my patients for example, I try to encourage having food if they’re going to drink, alternating soft drinks with alcohol to ‘‘dilute the effects’’, choosing lower strength options as they can predict the effects more easily, drinking at home or with mates rather than out on the town, and avoiding cars at all cost where alcohol is involved.
Somehow this conversation isn’t so easy when it comes to drug use, but I think it should be. I hope that my children never take any type of recreational substance, but if there is a chance that they might, I would much rather they were able to experiment in a way that is as safe as possible.
That relies on them having an accurate knowledge of what different drugs are available, and the potential effects and risks. It also requires them to understand that drugs can react completely differently depending on a whole range of factors – your age, size, medical history, use of medication/alcohol/other drugs, and the particular situation you take them in. And it also hinges on them knowing exactly what substance they are being offered, so at least some of the risk is predictable.
The reality is that drug-taking is happening, at festivals and elsewhere, every day. With an alarming rate of ‘‘new’’ chemical compounds or mixes available today, neither prohibition nor the head-in-the-sand approach seems to be working.
This brings me to the debate that has played out in the media over the past week or two – the potential role of drug-testing at festivals. Drugtesting tents are a familiar sight in many countries, but this practice has only been happening on a small scale here for the past few years. The organisation that has been running much of the testing in New Zealand, Know Your Stuff, is hoping the government will change that.
Know Your Stuff’s data from the 2017-2018 summer season showed that one in five people who opted to have their drugs tested had not been given what they thought they had – and often what they had been sold was either a higher dose than they expected, or was laced with something more toxic, thus increasing the potential risks substantially.
I think this practice has a lot of merit and would fully endorse it becoming more mainstream. As a health professional having conversations about harm every day, I support any measure that reduces risk and enables young people to make fully informed decisions. And as a parent, I’m going to keep on having these discussions and hope that when the time comes, my kids will have all the information they need to make the right choice for them.