Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/drugs/page/5/)
Just joining us? This is part five of a five part series. Start from the beginning. Cobb County, Ga’s., Juvenile Court Judge Juanita Stedman’s office overflows every Wednesday at 4 p.m. For an hour, with therapists and probation officers filling every chair and – with several sitting on the floor – Stedman and her juvenile drug court team do a rundown of every kid currently in the program. One by one, Stedman calls out the name of each of 30 or so kids.
Just joining us? This is part four of a five part series. Start from the beginning. Kyle is now only a little more than four and a half months clean. His last relapse came during the Thanksgiving break of 2010.
Ohio is struggling with a severe prescription drug abuse epidemic, according to a story in The New York Times. In the last decade, fatal overdoses surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of accidental death in the state. Most popular among drug addicts is the painkiller OxyContin. Read more about the devastating effects of prescription drugs and OxyContin abuse in Prescribed Addiction, the first in our ongoing series, Journeys.
A mother is accused of putting marijuana in her 5-year-old daughter's school backpack in Gwinnett County, Ga., according to wsbtv.com. When the girl got on her school bus the driver noticed a strange smell coming from her clothing and her backpack. When the driver asked the child about it, the girl pulled out 10 small baggies of marijuana packaged for sale. She told the driver her mom put it there. After police obtained a search warrant to the child’s home, investigators found a relaxant and two grams of crack cocaine.
Just joining us? This is part three of a five part series. Start from the beginning. Kyle Boyer, 15-year-old prescription drug addict, duped his parents once again, faking a stomach ache to stay home from school. But instead of staying in bed, he went out to do what had become his norm – breaking into houses and stealing whatever the medicine cabinets within had to offer.
Just joining us? This is part two of a five part series. Start from the beginning. Juvenile Court Judge Juanita Stedman, who presides over Cobb County, Georgia’s Juvenile Drug Court has gotten to know Kyle quite well the past three years. Yes, he was one of the most dangerously addicted kids she’s seen.
Just joining us? This is part one of a five part series. See the whole series. When Suzanne and John Boyer left their upper-middle class home for work on the morning of May 20, 2008, their 15-year-old son, Kyle, had a stomachache and was still in bed. It wasn’t too bad, he told them.
Life is a great adventure, but it’s not always easy. For all the joy, excitement and feelings of accomplishment we experience, there’s just as much sorrow, boredom and defeat. It’s like any journey. You know you can deal with the easy parts; the challenge is how to get through the bad times. The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange will start focusing on one aspect of those bad times in a few days when we profile Kyle Boyer, a teen from suburban Atlanta who went from a hopeless addiction to prescription drugs to recovery.
The Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) are sponsoring the Science Education Drug Abuse Partnership Award. This grant seeks to find new programs and materials to understand how drug abuse and addiction really impact kids; what it does to the neurons of their brains and how kids behave on a daily basis. This grant will focus on drugs or drug topics that are not well addressed in existing efforts by the educational community or media.
It has that reputation of giving one a sense of inner peace, even euphoria. But experts say the drug that goes by such kind and gentle names as ecstasy, Adam, Blue Kisses, Care Bears, Hug, Beans, Lovers' Special, Molly, Rolling, Scooby Snacks and Tom and Jerries, is not nearly as warm and fussy as the names imply. Taking the drug, they say, can lead to long-term negative effects on the brain's serotonin center -- a region of the brain that regulates mood, memory and sexual desire -- and can cause depression and other serious health problems.
Salt Lake City's The Deseret News delves into the issue in more depth in a story published this week.