Drug use in teens escalates

Drug use among our teens have been an increasing problem and it’s about the highest it’s ever been.

Over the last several years, these experts say they’ve seen teens move from illegal drug use to prescription drugs like Xanax, Percocet and Hydrocodone.

Kids can gain access easier by rummaging through parents’ medicine cabinets at home.

Then, they bring it to school and it’s treated like currency.

Parkridge Valley Coordinator Justin Forgette says, “they’re trading it for video game systems, or shoes or whatever it is they want.”

These experts say the kids in the juvenile court system are getting younger and committing more violent crimes.

Some are as young as eight or ten years old, but primarily from fifteen to seventeen years of age.

They’ve graduated from running away from home, to stealing cars and fleeing out of state.

Culturally, now, it seems more accepted.

Bradley County Probation Officer Josh Gann says he, “…thinks that it’s glamorized to some degree. With a lot of the social media and the entertainment industry. A lot of kids will follow the underground rap scene. You’ll see that they talk about it openly in those places and it seems almost a status symbol for some kids.”

Forgette says bad decisions and life struggles seem to be the new normal. “At least two or three referrals a month it seems. It used to be one every two or three months.”In my five years in the juvenile court, it’s probably the highest it’s been in a long time.”

Gann says he’s seen an increase in caseloads by at least 10%.

Forgette says that parents are either ignorant to the problem or that kids are facing harder problems at home. “It boils down to broken families. I always tell parents, ‘you’ve also got to work on yourselves; your relationship and you’ll see the benefits with your kids.”

Gann says that the growing concern is the use of Fentanyl.

Coming up within the next few months, Parkridge Valley will introduce new medication to assist with treatment for its worst addicts.