Prevention Tips for Young People & Parents

Bob is driving a boat with a few friends on the lake. All have had a few beers. Suddenly, one of Bob’s buddies stands up, tipping the boat and throwing him off balance and overboard. The friend hits his head…

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OxyContin is a powerful prescription painkiller, so it is somewhat ironic to think that it could cause pain as well as control it. Yet, the stories submitted to the Web site http://www.oxyabusekills.com/ offer heart-wrenching accounts of emotional and physical pain…

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Today the word “addiction” is applied so loosely and to so many different things as to become almost meaningless. Listen for this word in daily conversation and you’ll hear about much more than alcohol and other drugs. People also talk…

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Even if you’re 99 percent sure that your teenager is not drinking alcohol or using other drugs, consider the facts:

•Sixty percent of high school seniors report having been drunk at least once–as do 20 percent of eighth-graders.
•Forty-six percent of…

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To a young person short on sleep and energy, the idea of taking something that will let them party and dance all night is difficult to resist. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), an alarming number of…

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Although schools can and should play a role in prevention education, Join Together concluded they “should not be relied upon to act as the principal provider of general prevention programs.” What works best, they said, is a comprehensive community prevention…

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When police found Bradley McCue, a student at the University of Michigan, they saw that he was unconscious, his nose was painted red, and the words “24 shots” were scribbled across his forehead.

An autopsy revealed that McCue had a…

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A stanza from the poem that a 13-year-old wrote after Brad McCue drank himself to death captures the tragedy of binge drinking: Now people are sad/Now people are crying/Because of your choices/Because of your dying.

Brad was a junior at Michigan…

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With so many parents working long hours, it is easy to either miss the signs of alcohol abuse or explain them away. Many parents don’t want to believe that their beloved child is engaging in alcohol use. But burying your…

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Here are some tips on how to talk to your child about alcohol:

• Start talking about your rules of “no use” early on. Don’t wait until your child is a teen or even a pre-teen to discuss alcohol use and…

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