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Concerned parents are constantly looking for ways to keep their children off drugs. It can be a hard battle to fight, especially if the child has classmates and friends that are already pressuring them to try drugs, and if the parents haven’t taken an opportunity to talk with them about the dangers of drugs yet.
Free Drug Tests
Some counties in New York are using at-home drug kits as a way to arm parents in the drug battle. Suffolk County, Long Island, purchased 16,000 test kits, which they are giving away at no charge to parents. The kits test urine samples for six different drugs, such as marijuana, methamphetamine, and Vicadin. The benefit parents are experiencing through this program is the ease in using the kits, which give results in the privacy of their own home in about 10 minutes.
Drug Abuse Among Teens
Other counties with high drug abuse rates have also begun work to put a program like this into place. These counties, like so many across our country, have seen a rise in recent years of drug abuse among teens. These kids will steal prescription drugs right out of their parents’ medicine cabinets and sell them for a few dollars to friends. Some teens that consume prescription pills can and do suffer serious side effects or even death. Other kids will become hooked and then face a lifetime of trying to get sober. Still others move on to more serious drugs, like heroin, which they can get for even cheaper, but which may have a more devastating effect on their body.
Some of the counties that have purchased the drug kits did so with money from drug paraphernalia seized from teens by law enforcement. The statement being made is that we are now working to fight back against those that would try to drag our counties down with drugs.
Parents Need to Talk to their Kids
The drug test comes in a kit that is designed to get parents to talk to their kids about drugs. It’s not enough to simply test them and then punish them if they have drugs in their system. Parents need to start talking to their kids at a young age and continue having conversations about the risks of drugs. If these free drug kits get more parents to talk to their kids, then it’s worth it. Kids need to know the risks associated with drug abuse, and they need to know how to avoid drug use. These drug test kits are magnetic and can be stuck on a refrigerator, as a reminder to kids about what their parents told them, and maybe give them a reason to stay away from drugs. But most of all, these kits should be used to open up the lines of communication between adults and teens, so we can protect our kids from the world of drugs.
Sources
Why More N.Y. Parents Are Drug Testing Their Kids
