Today I am posting about something that affects everyone in our society. This topic touches everyone who has a child, grandchild, niece or nephew. What am I talking about and why: The rising epidemic of drug overdoses among our children.
Last week I received this email from a friend who is a Emergency room physician in Orange County. With his permission I felt compelled to share it with you in hopes it could help this project and save some of our children’s lives. Please read this!
Dear Friends and Families,
The past year has been a very enlightening one for me. Any of you who know me, realize how much I love to spend time with my family and friends, and I am grateful for all of them. Over the past several years at work in the ER, we have seen a tremendous upward trend—or more accurately, EPIDEMIC, of narcotic overdoses. Having to tell parents that their child has died is one of the most horrific parts of my job. Unfortunately, this has been happening more and more frequently. It is devastating.
I have asked myself, what can I do to help stop this?
I am reaching out to help you and your children become more aware and knowledgeable about the demons that are out there. Marijuana, Opiates, Benzodiazepines, Cocaine, and Heroin, not to mention prescription drugs, are all extremely accessible to our children. It is our duty to protect our children.
In medicine, we talk about “prevention,” and the prevention of drug use must start much earlier than we ever imagined. I have been working with my good friend, Mark Rapparport, to develop a “town-hall” style of drug education for our kids, and ourselves.
We are making a series of short films to help educate, so we can begin the road to prevention. An alarming ninety percent (90%) of those who check into rehab started using before the age of 18–some as young as 9 or 10 years old! These kids are smart. Telling them to “Just Say NO,” does not work. We need to change our tactics, and take the offensive by arming them, and us, with the WHYs.
We teach the birds and the bees at 10 years old. We teach them that smoking causes cancer at the age of 3. We teach them to “look left, right and left again” because we have all seen the tragedies of careless driving. And we do all of those things by arming them with the WHYs.
Now is the time to teach our children WHY drug use is a roll of the dice—a crap-shoot, with horrible odds EVERY SINGLE TIME they engage in it. Now is the time to give them the ammunition to battle this war that doesn’t seem to have any end in sight.
In the upcoming weeks and months, I will be reaching out to you to set up these Town Hall discussions with you and your kids. I feel we can make an impact, and change the statistics of the horrible trend it’s become. Through lectures, group discussions, and films, we can get the word out and begin to institute a change.
With your children by your side, please take a look at the trailer to our film project on Kickstarter. We are trying to gain support, and help educate our community through media, but we need your help!
Please feel free to call me, share your stories, find out what we are doing, and get involved. The time is now.
We would love it if you would pass this information on to your friends. Let’s make a difference and give our kids a fighting chance. We all have a story of a friend, or loved one who has been devastated by drug use. Let’s embark on this quest together, so we have fewer of those stories.
Matthew Kaplan, MD, FACEP
Mission Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine
Apparently Matt has received overwhelming support and response from his email. Please help support him and Mark in making this film by visiting the link above. If you can’t afford to donate to the cause, no problem just watch the trailer with your child and start the conversation. When the town hall meetings start I will pass along the dates and locations for all the local families interested.
xoxo tiffani
Couldn’t agree more and am so tweeting this, because I am not sure why parents can teach all the many other things that they do to their children, but not about all the dangers and hazards of drug use. It is scary the rise in use over the years and I am so with you on this. I do very much plan on teaching my kids, because I do not want to become another statistic with this. Thanks so much Tiffani for sharing! xoxo!!
thanks Janine, We all need to start the conversation! xoxo tiff