 Welcome to Teens On Topic, I'm your host Emma Arnson and today I'm joined by Eric and Adam. And before we get into the meat of this topic, let's hear what adults around Davis have to say about it. Do you think drug use in high school has increased? For what reason? I think it just depends on the area because where I'm from. I remember in high school a lot of kids, all they really did was smoke weed. Nowadays I don't know why, but I feel like a lot of them are doing harder things or I just noticed they're doing harder things and I'm like, y'all are like 16. Do you think stresses of rising expectations for academics have forced this onto kids or do you think it's just more recreational drugs are available? I think that also depends on the area. With higher accessibility, especially kids that are stressed, they will do it as a way to break free from the social stigma I'd say, as well as recreational use does come into a play and then with recreational use to make a profit, it does come towards selling it to friends, getting more people involved. There is a good and bad side towards it at the end of the day, so it just depends on the area, your intentions and how people will view it. Do you think the government and the school system should do more to stop this problem if it's growing so badly? If it's growing so badly, then yeah, totally, because a lot of drugs, they're not good, so obviously, but a lot of the drugs will mess up, they're not good for the kid and if they're doing more, it'll help with stress, but it's not going to help with their academics or anything with drugs like cocaine or LSD and stuff like that, but I don't know much about weed. That's a different drug, so honestly, what I know from school districts, they're probably not doing enough or what they should be doing to support students. Honestly, I think that there could be more done. I went to a charter school and really there wasn't a whole lot of preventative measures taken by the teachers. There wasn't a whole lot of other programs that were offered, so yeah, I think a lot more could be done, frankly. I'm not sure that it's the high schools, I'm not sure that it's any of their business. They're there to hopefully educate the kids, give them the tools they need to make safe choices. I think the society is full of drugs. Kids be drinking caffeine, that's a drug. All their parents overdue the caffeine use, so it just depends what we're talking about, but how else are these kids supposed to make money also, you know what I mean? They're going to sell drugs if there's no schools, so you shut down the schools and the kids are going to come trap out the schools. What are you going to do, man? Do you think that the rising academic expectations for teens has contributed some to their drug use? Oh yeah, man. There's too much pressure, man. It's so much on their young minds, man. They're still figuring out life and what's all about, man, so of course they're going to use more, and it's their parents' expectations, man. It's on the parents, man. They've got to be there for their kids to show up in their life, and then they won't turn to drugs, man. Awesome. Thank you so much. Have a good night, guys. Be well. Well, that was some very interesting opinions that we heard. What do you guys think about what they said? Yeah, I think it's definitely a problem in the schools nowadays, and I don't think the districts, especially Davis School District, I mean that's what I have experience in is doing enough to stop the drug use, and for example, they've started to catch on to the vaping aspect, but I don't think they can really do much to stop it when it's outside of campus, like alcohol or marijuana, but I don't know. It's interesting how they really have no say in what kids do. Schools here in Davis don't really do much about it. They've probably seen it and just tried to ignore it, because it's probably a big problem. I don't know. It's what I've seen. Yeah, I think it's kind of just out of their hands for like, I mean, kids are going to find a way to get access to drugs, whether it be through older siblings, through homeless people. There's different ways of getting them, and I think you mentioned that there's kids who have green cards and stuff, so if they're over 18, they can sell it to younger age people. Yeah. For sure. Yeah, I think it is a bit of an epidemic. I personally don't know how it was in like the 80s or the 60s or in comparison how it is now to back then. I mean, 80s movies, if that's any way to think about it, there's a lot of drugs in 80s movies, so I don't know. Sorry. There's always drugs in the start, somehow. I don't know. I think it's always been a problem. Do you think that younger and younger people are getting into drugs, or do you think that's just how it has always been? I feel like the next generation's going to have different ways to use drugs or do drugs, you know? Yeah, I think we're seeing younger generations getting into vaping, because I hear stories about even middle schoolers vaping, and that's kind of crazy to me. I know. Nowadays, it's super easy to get like a, what do you call it, jewel? Yeah, the jewels and whatever, and the government is trying to regulate it, but it's hard for them to actually keep it out of the hands of teenagers. We talked about this on our vaping episode, but yeah, they're trying to take away the colorful flavors like mango and stuff that kids are apparently more attracted to. I think it's just too hard for the school system to actually have a say in what their kids are doing, whether it be on campus. You hear stories about kids getting caught in the bathroom, but it's really such a small fraction of the amount of kids who are actually doing it. As a younger student, they probably hear the word like unicorn flavored, and they're like, yeah, that probably tastes good, and they probably try it out, and it's how they get addicted, and then they pass on to their friends, and it's like a nonstop, yeah. Yeah, it's definitely gone out of hand recently. Yeah, I think, I definitely don't think the administrations have an idea of how bad it is, or if they do, they are not doing anything to stop it. I don't think they really can, because even if they just had an inkling that maybe this person is doing drugs, there's not really much you can say. You're doing drugs, so you can say, no I'm not. So unless you actually catch them in the act, it's kind of hard to prove something like that. So they do get catched, and they probably find a different way to get access to where we're doing. And one thing that the school system has done, which I think is pretty cool, is recently at DHS we had a drunk driving assembly, so they're not directly trying to limit people's access to alcohol, but they're trying to make it safer when kids are actually using alcohol, which is kind of inevitable, but they're making it so that kids are aware of the dangers of drinking and driving, and the harms that using drugs in an unsafe manner could cause to themselves and other people. So I think that's good. So you could go to a store and buy a Red Bull, or a bang, and the parents were not saying anything, and they're probably like the child. We'd be like, oh I could do this, from the price, I could do this without them noticing, you know? Because caffeine is also a drug to me. Yeah. Do you guys think that the drug problem will get better or worse in the future? I say worse. I think it's definitely going to get worse, especially if you say that marijuana is growing at the rate that it is with legalized access in California now. I think that there's no way that the usage of marijuana is going to go down from that. So I think definitely younger kids are going to get access to marijuana, which I mean, I think there have been studies which say that it's bad for growing minds, but I don't think it's as harmful as other like hardcore drugs such as LSD and cocaine. So I'm not sure if it's that like huge of a problem when compared to those more hard drugs. Also there's like a lot of music videos promoting weed, like kids listen that younger, they grow up and they hear all that. And like some rappers, they have the purple drink and stuff, which is like cough syrup and tons of nasty codeine and stuff. I don't think that's good to advertise to kids either. Yeah. Do you think that more kids will be using hard drugs in the future beyond weed? Yes. Yeah, I think if the school systems don't adapt and learn to take care of these problems, then yeah, for sure the hard drugs are going to start coming into younger ages. Do you guys have any ideas on how schools could handle drug problems better? It's hard because I think that school systems like they only really have control over what happens on their campus. So I mean I think just having teachers like know what their students are up to and like have teachers and staff know like what these drugs, like the effects of it and how to like see that in a student maybe. And so that like I think that would be helpful because you could have a staff like pull a student aside and say like is there anything we can do like we notice like some behavior. I'm not sure, but it's hard to limit what kids do outside of school. And nowadays like a vape pen could be like this small or even looks like a pencil. You know it comes to all these shapes like the last thing I've seen when they sell them on tv like they look like a flash drive and like if teachers are seeing it just flash up it's not. I definitely think that teachers and administrations in general they don't really know what's going on even though they can try that it's just they'll never be as up to date as the people who are actually using the drugs and abusing that substance will be. So I think that it is really hard to try to think of different ways that they could do better because I mean people are already trying to think about that now. But I think that one thing that might be more beneficial is maybe having stronger teacher student connections, having more of a community. So if people are abusing drugs more because they don't feel like they have a home or they're depressed or something like that that maybe they'll stop doing that. But I definitely think that people just use it recreationally just because it's fun to do. I definitely think that we should try to combat drug use from like a community standpoint and we should try to get everybody involved in like knowing different aspects of drug use and how they can see that in their child and try to prevent that in the future. And that's the only way we're going to really try to conquer this as a society is if we tackle it community by community and get everybody on board. Do you guys think that like anti-drug ads work? I don't think they're really like I don't think they have that much of a influence on the people who are actually taking the drugs. I think they kind of maybe only influence the people who already have like a certain like mindset about the drug because let's say you have like an anti-marijuana ad. The people who are already like against marijuana legalization and recreational use are going to take the most out of that. Then the people who are like already using marijuana regularly. It'd be interesting. I think that I mean when we look at cigarettes it's interesting that although there's definitely plenty of people who still smoke cigarettes it's really become something of more of a thing like oh you smoke cigarettes you do this and obviously it's been replaced by vaping which you can make arguments whether or not it's better. But I think that maybe that sort do you guys think that that sort of reaction could happen with drugs or do you think that that's just kind of immune to it? Well so I went to Mexico not a long ago and when I went to the store all these cigarette boxes every brand had a picture of an image of like something that could happen from smoking. I don't know why the United States doesn't do that here but like when I saw the box I just like walked away it was pretty nasty. Yeah I think that it's kind of sad to see how like the tobacco industry has kind of like transferred their efforts into vaping because like a lot of big tobacco companies have like started to fund companies like Juul for example and these like multi-billion dollar like industries that is being created off of the next generation of kids that are addicted to nicotine. I think that's that's really sad because nicotine is already I mean although vapes don't have the the smoke effect which is really harmful to the lungs and obviously causes cancer nicotine can have harmful effects on the brain and it's expensive for kids they're wasting all their money on something just to like feel a little bit like spun as they call it so yeah I think that it's sad to see how kids have the next generation of kids have become addicted to nicotine through a different format. Do you guys have any last thoughts? Don't do drugs. Well thank you for joining us this was a very interesting exciting episode and hopefully you'll join us next week.