The B.C. government recently sent out a news release asking people to not buy alcohol for minors celebrating during grad party season.
The release was almost quaint in its reminder of a time when the big concern for youth was people buying booze for kids standing outside of the liquor store.
If only that was still the biggest worry about teenagers. Instead, we’re in a time when people really need to be warned to have hard, detailed conversations with teens about the drugs they will be offered during this hard-partying season.
Why? Because what teens think is in the drugs they are being offered isn’t actually in them.
According to the Globe and Mail, the B.C. Centre of Substance Use tried out an infrared spectrometer so people could check out what’s in their drugs. Of the “1,714 substances tested, 39 per cent contained the drug the client expected … 88 per cent contained fentanyl.”
Fentanyl is one of the substances to blame for the skyrocketing body count due to drug overdoses.
A total of 161 people – the equivalent of more than five a day – died of suspected overdoses on drugs like heroin, cocaine, MDMA, methamphetamine and illicit fentanyl in B.C. in March, according to the B.C. Coroners Service.
That’s an increase of 24 per cent from last March’s 130 deaths and a 58-per-cent spike over February’s suspected total of 102.
Looking at the first three months of 2018, the coroners service says fentanyl was detected in post-mortem testing in more than eight in every 10 deaths (83 per cent).
Seven in every 10 people who died were aged 19 to 49 years, but suspected illicit drug overdoses have also already claimed the lives of five people between the ages of 10 and 18 this year.
Last year, 23 kids under the age of 18 died of overdoses. So, sure, warn your kids about drinking and driving, and don’t buy minors alcohol, no matter how innocent they look outside of the liquor store.
But keep the dialogue going with your teens about drugs. Show them the numbers. Tell them the people dying come from all walks of life. Tell them that it doesn’t matter if the person offering them drugs is a “good” person – they don’t really know what’s in that pill.
