Get the Facts on Drugs

By Jasmine Gibson

I assume we’ve all either been in a situation where we want to say “no,” even though it’s not the most favorable response, or we’ve had friends who have been in similar situations. It can be a palm-sweating, heart-racing, social-suicide predicament, and it often involves drug use. So what do we do?

Instead of stuttering out an excuse to your oh-so “cool” friends as they hand you a cigarette, you could offer them facts about tobacco use. For example, smoking results in more than 480,000 premature deaths every year. It also causes lung cancer. So while your friend is damaging their lungs and will one day be coughing out the remains of their damaged lungs, you can be satisfied that you did not purposefully put yourself at risk of chronic bronchitis.

Luckily, spilling factual information also works for other drugs like marijuana. Marijuana, also known as weed, is a popular getaway drug used by teens. Your friends may tell you that it helps them relax, but what they don’t know is that it also affects your memory if used heavily. Heavy weed smokers can lose up to 8 points in their IQ, as a New Zealand study showed.

In honor of National Drug Facts Week, a health observance for teens put on by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), we at the Youth Council of the Unified Prevention Coalition of Fairfax County are spreading the word about these facts. We’re specifically talking about the drugs we see being used in our community.

We encourage everyone to check out more information at the NIDA Drug Facts Week website at http://teens.drugabuse.gov/national-drug-facts-week and support the initiative to bring the facts about substance abuse to their own communities.

UPC and our Youth Council have contacted the Fairfax County Public Schools’ 8th- and 9th-grade health educators, encouraging them to participate in this awareness week. They can have their students take the National Drug IQ Challenge here (parents and their kids can take it online here as well), participate in the NIDA Drug Facts Chat, and also order free informational materials for their students about health and substance abuse.

The Youth Council also is celebrating NIDA Drug Facts Week independently, taking the National Drug IQ Challenge and participating in our own created NIDA Drug Facts Jeopardy Game, which integrates questions and answers from previous NIDA Chat transcripts.

So fellow students, please do your part to participate in the awareness week and help your friends and peers! Although you may not want to overwhelm your peers with all the data, use the facts and find other ways to choose health. You’re smart. You can still say “no” in a way that is less factual. You can leave the party or say your parents would ground you for life. Sometimes it is easier to just divert their attention to a different activity that you both enjoy.

But if your “friend” is determined to want you to join them, you need to walk away from the drugs and the friend. A friendship like this is a con. Good friends don’t ask friends to do drugs.

Jasmine Gibson, a high school junior, is a member of the UPC Youth Council.

The Unified Prevention Coalition of Fairfax County is a nonprofit organization with more than 60 community partners working together to keep youth and young adults safe and drug-free. Visit www.unifiedpreventioncoalition.org and www.facebook.com/unifiedpreventioncoalition. Follow the group on Twitter at www.twitter.com/keepyouthsafe.