CASA of Carson City—882-6776

Speak Up For A Child.

The Role Of Substance Abuse

A December 7, 2000 article in the Nevada Appeal contained a shocking statement. Residents of Gardner Lane in Carson City said that they knew drug deals were taking place in their neighborhood but that they hadn’t reported this because they believed the drugs were not being sold to children, only to adults.

 “It’s adults dealing to adults, if it would have been children, that would be different.”

 These residents were repeating a myth—a self-serving fallacy that has already devastated large portions of our nation’s urban centers and that has now moved to America’s small towns and rural areas.

 Part of the myth is that the drugs don’t reach children. A 1999 Columbia University study shows that, nationally, 4.7 percent of twelfth graders used methamphetamines during the previous year. (“No Place To Hide” National Center On Addiction and Substane Abuse At Columbia University)

 This study showed that small town twelfth graders were 60 percent more likely to have used methamphetamines during the previous year than twelfth graders in large urban areas. In the 2001 Nevada Youth Risk Behavior Study, 6.7% of the Carson High students responding stated that they had tried methamphetamines at least once. Overall, Nevada has the nation’s highest rate of high school students who have tried methamphetamines.

Alcohol use is also a major issue. We see the effects both in parents who unable to care for children and in children who have been exposed pre-natally-due to their mother’s substance abuse during pregnancy.

It has been estimated that from 50 to 80% of parents known to the nation’s child welfare system have substance abuse problems. The huge increase in child maltreatment being 1980 and the present day has often been attributed to the drug epidemic. In the U.S., there are currently over 550,000 children in foster care.

 Drug usage is highest in American cities with populations from 50,000 to 250,000. Population just over 50,000 and growing, Carson City sits on what is sometimes called the “methamphetamine highway”, running east from San Francisco and Sacramento.

 Methamphetamines are a great danger to our children. The other significant form of substance abuse in Carson City appears to be alcohol. The damage done by pregnant mothers who use alcohol and/or methamphetamines is one of the great modern tragedies. But it is only one part of a larger problem in which mothers and fathers get caught up in habits that physically and emotionally devastate families.