Wood County Prevention Coalition
Uniting For A Drug-Free Community Since 2004
Prevention key to opioid crisis
Delta Optimist DECEMBER 29, 2016
By Tom Littlewood
Consider this metaphor: A new lifeguard arrives at work on his first day. He is highly trained and works for an expensive organization that has every piece of technology needed to patrol a dangerous river where hundreds of drowning victims float by every day, desperate for rescue.
Victims are pulled from the turbulent waters 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Most are rescued. Many are beyond help and are pulled dead from the water.
Some are rescued over and over again.
After a particularly difficult shift, the young lifeguard decides to walk up the river to clear his head in an attempt to make sense of the chaos. In the distance he sees a bridge over the river and then, horrified, notices a long line of people waiting to jump into the river.
In a moment of epiphany, he runs to the head of the line and yells, “Don’t jump!” He resigns his position and takes up a post on the bridge and spends his days convincing most not to jump into the river.
This is what we see on the daily news – the constant barrage of overdosing opiate addicts with emergency workers bringing them back from the brink over and over again, sometimes during the same shift. Prevention, the actual solution to the problem, is overlooked because it is difficult to measure success when the problem is solved before it becomes a problem.
Research has shown that almost all addiction, as well many incidents of depression and anxiety, is trauma-based. We know that between the ages of 15 and 25, when youth are just coming into adulthood, they begin to react to this trauma with acting-out behaviour, depression, anxiety and through self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. All of this behaviour is a dysfunctional attempt to mask their inner pain from the trauma. They are then further stigmatized by society who label them as weak, immoral or, worst of all, criminal.
Harm reduction is one pillar but we need to pay equal, if not more, attention to prevention. Therapy is key for these youth to gain insight into their inner pain. As they gain this insight, they are empowered to leave dysfunctional behaviours behind. Most youth will end dysfunctional coping strategies when they address the root causes of their personal issues. Abstinence is the ultimate goal.
There is a critical need now for community and government involvement and funding for prevention strategies.
Has legal pot for adults impacted teens' view of drug's dangers?
CBS NEWS January 3, 2017, 7:04 AM
Teenagers’ attitudes about marijuana are changing at the same time that more states are making the drug legal. A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds some teens perceive pot as having a lower risk than in the past.
Recreational marijuana use is now allowed in eight states and Washington, D.C., while medical use is legal in 28 states and D.C. The legal marijuana market is expected to generate around $22 billion a year by 2020.
Despite legalization in California, medical marijuana dispensaries like Sparc are still the only kind of places where it’s legal to buy marijuana in California while the state develops rules for the retail sale of marijuana to the sale of anyone over the age of 21. But a new study suggests that legalization for adults may impact the way some teenagers view the risks of marijuana, reports CBS News correspondent John Blackstone.
Clay Hurst and his mother, Sylvia, now agree that teenage use of marijuana can be dangerous. But when Clay was 14 years old, he didn’t see the danger.
“My son is an addict,” Sylvia said.
“Was an addict,” Clay said.
“He has been in recovery for over five years,” Sylvia said.
He was a young teenager when he started using marijuana.
“What attracted you to it?” Blackstone asked.
“The taboo idea,” Clay said. “As knowing of course your parents are not going to support you as a 14-year-old smoking marijuana, so it’s kind of the danger or the rush of that.”
“He started using very casually and then it started being more of a daily habit and that was quite alarming,” Sylvia said. “He was just really spaced out and zoned out all the time.”
Clay went on to use ecstasy, prescription drugs and alcohol.
He admitted he “absolutely” put his family through some tough times.
“Fortunately for me, I was one of the lucky ones… for a lot of my friend, it did not end up that way. I had a few die, a few overdose,” Clay said.
Today he helps educate young people about the dangers of drugs.
“We know that early initiation of marijuana use, that is initiation at adolescence is associated with a greater risk for marijuana dependence later on in life,” said Magdalena Cerda, co-author of a new study of marijuana use by teenagers in Washington and Colorado, two states that legalized recreational use for adults in 2012.
Mysterious illness tied to marijuana use on the rise in states with legal weed
NEW YORK -- For more than two years, Lance Crowder was having severe abdominal pain and vomiting, and no local doctor could figure out why. Finally, an emergency room physician in Indianapolis had an idea.
“The first question he asked was if I was taking hot showers to find relief. When he asked me that question, I basically fell into tears because I knew he had an answer,” Crowder said.
The answer was cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS. It’s caused by heavy, long-term use of various forms of marijuana. For unclear reasons, the nausea and vomiting are relieved by hot showers or baths.
“They’ll often present to the emergency department three, four, five different times before we can sort this out,” said Dr. Kennon Heard, an emergency room physician at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, Colorado.
He co-authored a study showing that since 2009, when medical marijuana became widely available, emergency room visits diagnoses for CHS in two Colorado hospitals nearly doubled. In 2012, the state legalized recreational marijuana.
“It is certainly something that, before legalization, we almost never saw,” Heard said. “Now we are seeing it quite frequently.”
Outside of Colorado, when patients do end up in an emergency room, the diagnosis is often missed. Partly because doctors don’t know about CHS, and partly because patients don’t want to admit to using a substance that’s illegal.
CHS can lead to dehydration and kidney failure, but usually resolves within days of stopping drug use. That’s what happened with Crowder, who has been off all forms of marijuana for seven months.
“Now all kinds of ambition has come back. I desire so much more in life and, at 37 years old, it’s a little late to do it, but better now than never,”he said.
CHS has only been recognized for about the past decade, and nobody knows exactly how many people suffer from it. But as more states move towards the legalization of marijuana, emergency room physicians like Dr. Heard are eager to make sure both doctors and patients have CHS on their radar.
It's Never Too Early to Start Talking About Underage Drinking
About Us
Our Vision: Helping youth be drug-free, productive and responsible citizens.
Our Mission: We are a coalition of compassionate community members working together to coordinate high quality programs for the prevention of youth substance abuse in Wood County.
Email: mkarna@wcesc.org
Website: wcprevention.org
Location: 1867 Research Drive, Bowling Green, OH, United States
Phone: (419)-354-9010
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WCPCoalition
Twitter: @woodpccoalition