FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript
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The Deadly Traps of Adolescence
Day 9 of 10
Guest: Dennis and Barbara Rainey
From the series: Substance Abuse
Bob: Have you heard about a new drug called cheese? Have your teenagers heard about it? If they have, and you haven't, then we've got a problem. Here is Dennis Rainey.
Dennis: Do you think we have a problem with substance abuse? We've got a massive problem, and the problem is not a teenager problem. In my opinion, it's an adult problem. It's the failure of parents to be involved in their children's lives – guarding, protecting, and keeping them away from this type of substance that can destroy their lives.
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, July 19th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. What have you done to warn and protect your children about alcohol and drug abuse? Stay with us.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us on the Thursday edition. Last week and again this week, we have been talking about some of the pitfalls, some of the traps that face our teenagers as they walk through their teen years, and we've been talking about the need for proactive parenting; the need for us to pass along mature, godly wisdom to our sons and our daughters as they go through their adolescent years, which is something that the Bible talks about over and over again.
Dennis: It does. In fact, Proverbs, chapter 13, verse 14 says, "The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life to turn aside from the snares of death."
You know, the Book of Proverbs was written by Solomon, I think, primarily to teach his son. Proverbs 13, 14 really exhorts a child to listen to the teaching of a wise person, because it brings forth life, but it also warns that, as parents, what we're helping our children do is turn aside from a snare that would produce death.
Bob: And the trap that we're going to be talking about on the broadcast today is one that has tragically claimed the lives of countless thousands of young people.
Dennis: Well, listen to these statistics, and these come from the PRIDE, which is the National Parents' Resource Institute for Drug Education, which, Bob, is an incredible survey of more than 129,000 students in the sixth grade all the way through the 12th grade, done in more than 26 states across the country, and they found that of all sixth through twelfth graders, 29.5 percent of them had used an illicit drug at least once in the past year.
Bob: Three out of 10?
Dennis: Three out of the 10 – marijuana, of those in grade 6 through 8, 13.6 percent used marijuana at least once this past year. And then you take alcohol, of those who are in middle school – 44.5 percent have used alcohol at least once in the past year. Then there's smoking – of those in middle school, 31.1 percent have smoked cigarettes at least once during that school year, and of those in high school, 48.2 percent.
Do you think we have a problem with substance abuse? We've got a massive problem, and the problem – this is going to sound radical – the problem is not a teenager problem. In my opinion, it's an adult problem, it's the failure of parents to be involved in their children's lives – guarding, protecting, drawing boundaries around their children's lives, and keeping them away from this type of substance that can destroy their lives.
Bob: I've got to confess to you my own naivete in this area. When I was in the 9th grade, I was standing at my locker one day, and a fellow who was on the football team with me came up and leaned up against the locker next to mine, and he said, "Hey, Bob, you interested in a bag of marijuana?" And I said, "No, I don't think so." He says, "Okay, it's cool," and walked away.
I went home and told my parents, and we called the police, and the police captain came out to our house and took a report, and then I got to thinking, "I've got to go back to school the next day, and the word is going to get around, undoubtedly." Well, the word didn't get around as to who, but we did hear later on that this young man had been expelled from school. Obviously, I was not the only target of his interest in selling marijuana.
But that's about the only time in my life that I've had any kind of a run-in with illicit drugs, and throughout high school and college I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, and I was pretty square.
Barbara: Yeah, I was, too, Bob. I didn't do any of that stuff and, for me, it was primarily because I was afraid to. I just didn't – I was just chicken. I didn't want to get into alcohol, and there were kids who started drinking when we were in high school and started smoking when we were in high school. Drugs, I don't think, were much of a problem when I was a teenager, however, it was starting to make inroads into college. But I just didn't want to have anything to do with it, because I just was afraid of it.
Bob: Afraid of what it would do?
Barbara: Afraid of what it would do and afraid of the consequences, and I knew it wasn't right, and I just wasn't going to mess with it.
Dennis: You know, I had enough choices when I was a teenager – I'm glad I wasn't a teenager in this era, because between alcohol, marijuana, the pills that people have to numb them, I mean, children today have a lot more alternatives when it comes to substance abuse, and parents have a bigger task, I think, because they're available, in many cases, in people's homes.
Bob: And in some cases, Dennis, the problem that our kids are facing really stems back to what's being modeled for them, again, by their parents.
Dennis: Yeah, I look back to some of the decisions that Barbara and I made early on in our marriage, and this is one of them. We were going to model a life that didn't bring this stuff into our home, and I can't help but wonder toda...