The TCU Drug Bust: Kids will Break Your Heart

The administration at Texas Christian University, including football coach Gary Patterson, have learned something I discovered long ago. If you work with teenagers and young adults, sooner or later they will break your heart. While I was saddened by this weeks news that seventeen TCU students, including four football players, had been arrested for dealing drugs I was not shocked. Drugs use among students is a reality.

I am still proud to be a member of the "Horned Frog Nation." Our family's association with TCU has existed for over twenty years. We have two Horned Frog alums in the family. We just renewed our seasons tickets for TCU football for another year. TCU is a great university, but even great schools are susceptible to the problem of drug abuse.

I have spent over forty years working with teenagers and their families. The last eleven of those years I was the school counselor at Lutheran High School of Dallas. LHS was a great academic institution, but that did not make us immune to a drug problem. I recall one student assembly. We had invited narcotics detectives unto our campus to talk to our kids about the dangers of drug abuse. They bought along a drug sniffing dog and told me before the assembly they wanted to demonstrate how the animal could find marijuana. Their plan was to plant a bag of pot somewhere in the gym and let the dog find it. I waited, but that part of the program never came. After the assembly I asked one of the officers why. He replied, "We didn't want to embarrass one of your students." The dog had picked up a scent of pot as soon as it entered the room. The detective was even able to point to where the pot was, and indicated he had a good idea as to which student had it in their possession.

Drugs, especially marijuana, are a very real problem among teens and young adults. A recently released study, done for the Federal Government by the University of Michigan, indicated that pot has replaced alcohol as the drug of choice among American teens. This was not small sample. Forty-seven thousand teens were polled. One in fifteen high school seniors reported that they smoked pot on a daily or almost daily basis. That is an epidemic. If a student is using marijuana in high school, they are going to bring that pattern of behavior to the college.

Parents who think their teens are immune, or feel their students are above such behavior, are being naive. The issue needs to be brought to the surface and addressed. Having the TCU drug bust in the news presents the ideal opportunity to have an open and frank discussion about the dangers of drugs and addiction with your teenager. If they have been exposed to drug use believe me they will be.