Published: March 13, 2010
Op-Ed Contributor
Alarming Report: 12-Year-Olds Abusing Inhalants
By Robert Paul Reyes
"When their kids turn 12, parents are concerned about peers pressuring them to smoke cigarettes, drink and use drugs, but it turns out 12-year-olds are doing something else: getting high on inhalants.
A new national survey from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration report finds that they're using inhalants more than marijuana, hallucinogens and cocaine combined.
Some young people are sniffing -- inhaling -- a wide variety of products to get high. Inhalants are legal, cheap and everywhere. They can easily be found in most homes: spray paint, shoe polish, glue, air fresheners, hair spray, nail polish, gasoline, aerosols, computer cleaners, even the refrigerant from air conditioners. CNN.Com
With proper supervision, education and encouragement, parents can usually prevent their young children from experimenting with cocaine, marijuana and alcohol. It's not that easy for a 12-year-old kid to obtain hard liquor or drugs.
It's easy for parents to keep their pre-teens away from parks, street corners and other disreputable places where they will be approached by drug dealers, but it's impossible for parents to keep children away from household products that can be used as inhalants.
It's alarming that so many young people are inhaling a wide variety of products that are legal, cheap, easily available, and a hundred times more dangerous than marijuana.
Parents can't dispose of all products that can be used an inhalants, but they can educate themselves and find out what are the symptoms that their children are sniffing.
National Inhalants and Poisons Awareness Week starts Sunday -- educate yourselves!
Follow Robert Paul Reyes on Twitter: http://twitter.com/robertpaulreyes
Robert Paul Reyes is a NewsBlaze writer on Politics, Pop Culture and Pointless Pontificating. Contact him by writing to NewsBlaze.
* The views of Opinion writers do not necessarily reflect the views of NewsBlaze
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