Drug Supply to a Teenager

Please read my reply a couple (question dated November 1) to a similar question that was posed.

When your child, like that of the person who asked this question, is a minor, you have an obligation to be looking out for your child's best interest and health. The difficulty around addictions is that an individual's motivation for treatment is an important contributer to the success of that treatment. When raising the issue of rehab with a teenager, it may be better to not make it a yes/no question about going to rehab, but rather to raise that they need to stop using the substances and to come up with them with a numberof solutions to move to this goal and allow them some say in what they will try to do. More could be said about this, but the question being posed is more focused on what to do about one of the suppliers that a teenager uses.

The first thing to be clear about is that if you report the person you know your child is getting illegal drugs from then the autorities may or may not get that person away from your child. Even if they do get that person away from you child, in most locations in this country, that person will simply be replaced with another person or your child will turn to an alternative supplier that they can also find out about. There are few places in this country where the removal of a single street level dealer will dry up the supply in an area. That being said, providing this information to the authorities may be helpful in their broader attempts to address the illegal drug business in your community. As such, I would not argue against doing so. It is also possible that your child could become a suspect themself if the police chose to monitor this person before taking action. This could be something to talk about with your child.

Marijana and prescription pills can both be addicting. However, limiting the supply of one does not necessarily address the addiction to the other. I cannot say if a particular person is yet addicted but the esculation of drug use is something that a parent also needs to be particularly aware of and needs to understand that when a person goes from a single drug of misuse to multiple drugs, this is a significant step.