Troubled Teens Resources

“Those engaged in battling meth and other drug use do so on different fronts. Some, like Not In Our Town and Friday Night Live, fight the war mostly through prevention and education.
[…]
Last year, at least 60 percent of kids arrested and convicted used drugs, said Brandon Thompson, Glenn County’s chief probation officer.”

One of the central tenets of the Not in Our Town philosophy is to target teen age drug abuse with a three pronged attack: prevention, intervention, and Treatment.

All too often the fight against teen age drug abuse is only engaged at the third stage - treatment. The objective of Not in Our Town is prevention and intervention through education, so that treatment is less and less needed.

Some feel the program’s message is too rough for pre-teens, but the program’s founder strongly differs.

“But part of the message, and the reason he wants to take it to younger kids, is to show how vulnerable they are. He illustrates that with a story about a 12-year-old boy who first got meth from a man who was looking for marijuana. The boy had pot and the man offered to trade meth for the weed. At the end of the story, he shows kids a picture of his son clinging to life three years later.

“This is when it gets real,” Bettencourt said. “I’ve been there, I know what I’m doing. This is not a game, not a Friday Night LIve skit, it’s real…”

In one presentation to a group a 6th graders, Bettencourt asked if they knew anyone who got high. Over a dozen kids raised their hands.

“They gave me the most descriptive, concise images of somebody using the drug,” he said. “It was bone-chilling to me.”
(source)

“Prevention is always better than intervention after the fact,” she said. “I think some of the children were quite emotional to see students their own age go through this.”

Prevention in this case comes in the form of a play titled The Drug Store that dramatizes for elementary age school children the course of a young, troubled teen’s entanglement in robbery and drug abuse, culminating in his death.

“Law enforcement agencies presented The Drug Store to 1,200 students at the Chino Fairgrounds last week.

Nine stations were set up, each partitioned by curtains, representing a different scene in a play, which followed a student through the course of his life on drugs.

It began with a pharmacy stage in which students were educated by narcotics officers who identified the replicas of a variety of illegal drugs, such as black tar heroin and marijuana.

Unbeknownst to the audience, a fellow student acted the role of a thief by stealing a package of the drug Ecstasy.

Daniel Barnett, a fifth-grader at Liberty Elementary School, continued his acting through each scene, where he was arrested and sentenced to weekend jail time and probation.”

The play was all the more powerful because many of the actors were familiar faces;teachers,pastors and students that the young audience already knew. The final dramatization depicted the teenage drug addict, played by a classmate, laying in a casket.

“Deacon Marlin Filipek of Saint Mary Magdalene Catholic Church was robed as he led the funeral as one of many volunteers who used their real profession to make an impression on the students.

“We’re planting a seed,” he said. “A lot of kids have never seen a casket.”

At the end of the dramatization the children lined up to look inside of the casket, where two mirrors lay in place of a body.

“There have been a few a-ha moments where the students get it,” Filipek said.

Daniel Fleeup, also of Liberty Elementary, was one of them.

“If you were to be the ones to take the drugs, then you’d be the one in the casket,” he said after seeing his reflection in the mirrors.

As for Daniel Barnett, he said the acting experience taught him not to use drugs, “no matter what.”
(Source)

More and more police organizations and schools are implementing early crisis intervention tools such as this play. If you are concerned about your at-risk teen or if your teenager has been an increasingly bad influence on a younger sibling, check in your community for something similar.