I'm going to take Julian's logic here one step farther:
what that data underscores is just how unusual (if not literally "unique") his family's experience is. Nowhere near half of American teens, after all, are dying of heroin overdoses. What the NIDA figures say is that by the end of high school, over half of students have used at least one illict drug, just under half have smoked pot, and three quarters have used alcohol. Total who've ever used heroin at the same age? A whopping 1.5 percent.[...]Terrible as this guy's premature death is, I doubt that promoting the unrealistic notion that a whiff of the ganja on junior's backpack is likely to be a prelude to a heroin overdose is going to be conducive to either good policy or good parenting.
You really don't want to be the parents who screamed wolf. If you build up a hit of herb into some sort of magnificent offense, second only to genocide in the annals of transgressions, the moment your kid takes that first puff and finds it harmless is the moment your moral authority crumbles. Worse, if you overreact, releasing the hounds every time he edges past curfew and looks a bit too tired, he'll just learn that you're the sort of parents who merit extreme secrecy, which means you won't know of any problems till they've advanced far beyond safe limits. Drugs may be bad, but they're not all deadly. If you argue the latter, you'll rapidly be proved wrong, and if you're proved wrong, even your most righteous pronouncements will lose their credibility.
