Pubdate: Thu, 17 Jul 2003
Source: Barrington Times (RI)
Copyright: 2003 Barrington Times
Contact:  http://www.barringtonri.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1814

DRUG `PROBLEM' IS MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE

Numbers don't lie, but they also don't tell the whole story. The whole 
story is much more complicated and takes much longer to tell.

Should we be alarmed, for instance, that 41 percent of Barrington High 
School students have been offered drugs, according to the results of a 
recent survey? Or should we be encouraged that only 27 percent actually 
used drugs?

Examine the numbers even closer. They tell us that two out of every five 
BHS students could have smoked pot last month. Or maybe they tell us that 
three out of five never even saw a pot leaf.

Consider the numbers on actual drug use. They tell us that one out of every 
four students uses drugs. Yet maybe the real story is that three out of 
every four students does not use drugs.

You see, these numbers are two-dimensional -- lines on a page. They open 
windows into the complicated lives of Barrington teenagers, but they don't 
really allow us to step inside. To really understand drugs in this 
community, you have to talk to the teens themselves.

Three of them this week offered rather illuminating commentary. Speaking on 
the condition of anonymity (story on page 1), they said the drugs are 
everywhere. They said that even if they haven't been offered any drugs, 
they know where they can find some.

They also find it all very understandable. Kids with lots of money and 
loads of free time are bound to experiment with recreational drugs. It was 
that way in Barrington back in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, and it is still 
true today. These kids have wealthy parents, relative to society at large, 
and they live, as everyone knows, in "Borrington." Thus many of them use 
drugs, mostly because they can.

After at least four decades of this ongoing cycle of teens partying -- kids 
get the stuff, go to the beach to use it, cops arrive and chase them away, 
kids go to a spot in the woods, cops chase them away, kids go home to the 
garage, mommy and daddy are asleep -- it's dubious to suggest this 
community really wants to say there is a problem.

But if it does, there are positive avenues to explore. Teens need 
alternatives to drinking and smoking around campfires and down beach paths. 
The Place, a teen hangout run out of the College Lane Barn, has had on and 
off success. The Brickyard, a Maple Avenue restaurant run by and for teens, 
is nearing completion, but it needs more money to officially open its 
doors. Barrington should support the Brickyard concept, because it offers 
something other teen centers have not: a sense, from teens' perspectives, 
that it is being run by them, not by adults.

But this presupposes that the community has a problem. From your 
perspective, does it? 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart