Pubdate: Sun, 06 Aug 2004 Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) Copyright: 2004 St. Louis Post-Dispatch Contact: http://www.stltoday.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/418 Author: Dan O'Neill Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing) A TOKE ISN'T JUST A TOKEN THING We live in a remarkably ambiguous world. For instance, there has been no shortage of headlines and news concerning BALCO and performance-enhancing drugs. We are determined to get to the bottom of it, identify the perpetrators, discipline the guilty. As fans, we are resolute in our conviction to protect the integrity of the games. At the same time, Ricky Williams recently announced he was retiring from football. He suggested he failed a drug test to instigate the retirement. In sum, he basically would rather smoke pot and hang out with Lenny Kravitz than make millions playing football. Now, take a moment and think about that, especially if you are a parent of a still impressionable and vulnerable teen-ager. Williams shouldn't have to answer to anyone about his choice of career, or his choice of music - although one might suggest he has not truly experienced musical composition in its most righteous form until he has listened to the lonesome warbling of one Bill "Big Mon" Monroe. But some details of this development seem to be completely ignored. First, there is the realization that, apparently, marijuana appears to have impacted Williams' life in such a way that he prefers it to fortune and fame. And second, there is the fact that ingesting, possessing or selling marijuana is against the law, just like steroids. Still, there has been no indignation about Williams' announcement, no investigation, no fallout whatsoever. The response might be the same if he announced he was retiring from football to devote his time to assembling model airplanes. Society seems more concerned with protecting sports and home run records than it is in protecting children from getting the wrong impression about substance abuse. That is an oversimplification, probably overstated. But it needs to be. "It's a huge problem," said Michael Mahon, a counselor with West County Psychological Associates, who works with area schools and troubled teens. "And it's only an analogy of what's going on in society." Read the paper. Look at the statistics, the wasted lives, the shattered families. Consider the disturbing numbers that no one wants to think about. Our casual approach to things such as marijuana and alcohol are contributing to an epidemic environment among kids. According to the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse, the age of drug awareness is now 13, or seventh grade. Twenty years ago, it was 16. Twenty percent of eighth graders and 50 percent of 12th graders report using marijuana. Studies show children and adolescents run a significantly higher risk of addiction than adults. Similar studies show marijuana causes severe damage to the body and can reduce IQ by as much as 20 points. Maybe you smoked a bone or two in your tie-dye days, maybe you think it's no big deal. You should know better now. The average batch of marijuana in the 1960s contained 0.2 percent delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), its main mood-altering chemical. According to a Child Care Services parenting handout, today's basic Mary Jane contains at least 5 percent THC, or 25 times the old concentration. That, along with four hundred other assorted chemicals, adversely affects the brain, lungs, heart, gonads (ovaries or testes) and immune system. In preteens and young adolescents, heavy use of marijuana can impair growth and development. Everyone wants to nail the Olympic athletes or the ballplayers for taking steroids. But the consequences for breaking the rules when it comes to drug or alcohol abuse are relatively laughable, especially within sports. Remember, that was Williams' third violation. And he is already talking about allowing the smoke to clear long enough next year to make a comeback with the Raiders. "If it's a problem at the professional level, I assure you it is an even larger problem at the high school level," Mahon said. There are parents who actually believe supervising these activities at parties in their home makes it OK, discourages their kids from doing it elsewhere. Evidence paints a drastically different picture. For kids, the permissive message comes through loud and clear. A lot of people thought Rams defensive end Leonard Little got off easy when his inebriated driving caused a fatality. They're wrong. Little didn't get off easy. He got the same sentence you or I might have gotten. In fact, you or I might have gotten a lesser punishment. Who should be more ashamed of that state of affairs, Little or a culture that puts such a cheap value on human life, that promotes an Animal House attitude toward a deadly serious problem? Kids are bombarded with these signs. If they watch a game on television, they will see in the neighborhood of 35-40 beer commercials. They will see young, beautiful, extremely hip people, whose lives are being dramatically enhanced by the presence of beer. There are no middle-aged mugs anywhere to be found. If you've been to an NFL game, you know there were more lucid people walking around Woodstock. A significant portion of the football crowd spent the better part of the morning sitting in the parking lot pounding beers before they started double-fisting at the concession stand. Oh and by the way, a significant portion of that same crowd will be driving home, perhaps with kids in the car. "I'm not trying to shoot all of this down," Mahon said. "But we have to decide as a society what we want to tolerate. It's destroying people's lives. If that's what we want, OK. But let's be real about it." This column isn't a chat with the church lady, not by a long shot. This is as much a self-evaluation as it is a sermon. This parent has done his fair share of experimenting, made more bad choices than he cares to remember. He continues to make mistakes. But whether we want to admit it or not, whether we're comfortable or not, things are out of whack. This relaxed environment is contributing to the delinquency of our minors. It is not any one thing, it is all of these things, all at once. And it is making it awfully hard for kids to make the right choices in life. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek