What We Need to Know About the New Drug Trends Among Kids

As recently as 2009, a new set of drugs began appearing on the scene. These drugs bore the humdrum names of ordinary household products, but were anything but ordinary in their actual effects. Kids were able to easily get these drugs because they were labeled as household items and sold at the neighborhood quick-market. The ploy of everyday names and the warning that they were not intended to be consumed by humans kept them off the drug enforcement radar for only a short time, but they continue to be difficult to identify, though hopefully harder to come by. Here are some of the most popular:

Bath salts

These drugs are crystalline in appearance very similar to actual bathtub aromatics. However, these bath salts are comprised of a dangerous concoction of several controlled chemicals – MDPV, mephedrone and methylone – all of which are legally controlled substances. Glass cleaner

You could hardly choose a more innocuous name than glass cleaner, yet this white, powdered substance provides users with an experience akin to that found with speed or cocaine.

Skittle parties

Skittles are brightly colored candies. Skittle parties do not feature the fruit-flavored treats, but instead is a name for a party where prescription drugs and alcohol are consumed. The kids attending these parties go through mom and dad’s or grandma and grandpa’s medicine cabinet and collect all sorts of prescription drugs. The drugs are emptied into a bowl where their many colors resemble Skittles. Kids as young as nine or ten years old then take handfuls of pills and wash them down with alcohol. No one knows what they are taking nor how it may interact with alcohol.

Crunk/syrup

A few years ago the popularly rapped drug was syrup. Syrup was a mixture of prescription or over-the-counter cough syrup and sprite with maybe a jolly rancher dropped in. Today, the new drug drink is Crunk. Crunk mixes the painkiller Vicodin into Kool-Aid or Sprite in much the same dangerous way.

Cheese

Cheese is the name for another rapper favorite. Cheese is a mixture of black tar heroin and the sedatives Xanax or Tylenol PM.

Young people have always had their own slang and parents have long felt a step behind in trying to understand what their kids are saying. However, it is important to stay engaged and listen to what young children and teens are saying. Don’t shrug off terms you don’t understand – probe until you get an answer. The danger to young people of hallucinations, long-term learning problems and even schizophrenia is all too real. The best defense against new drug trends is old-fashioned parental involvement.