Salmon Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition

  When a Parent Discovers Drugs or Alcohol Use: Few moments are as panic-inducing for a parent as finding a vape pen in your teen’s backpack or smelling marijuana on their hoodie. Your mind races: Is my child an addict now? How do I stop this? This session title, “Got Drugs? Now What!”, encapsulates that feeling of what on earth do I do next? The first step is: take a deep breath. Knee-jerk reactions like screaming, punishing harshly on the spot, or flushing things down the toilet while lecturing may feel natural but often backfire. Instead, try to approach the situation calmly and strategically . Evidence-based prevention and intervention means handling it in a way that’s more likely to actually solve the problem rather than just expressing our anger. So, say you find a baggie of pills or your child comes home clearly intoxicated – as hard as it is, lead with concern and curiosity, not just anger. You might say, “I found this. I’m not happy about it, but more than that I’m worr...

Prevention Begins with Connection: Amid all the strategies to prevent teen substance misuse or other risky behaviors, one stands out as both deceptively simple and profoundly effective: a strong parent-child relationship . This session’s title, “The Secret of Engagement,” is a nod to the idea that keeping kids safe and healthy isn’t about a single conversation or strict rule – it’s about ongoing engagement in their lives. Research has consistently shown that teens who feel closely connected to their parents and family are much less likely to engage in substance use, experience mental health issues, or get involved in delinquency olympicbehavioralhealth.com . In fact, one study noted that adolescents with strong, supportive bonds (where they feel loved, understood, and respected at home) had the lowest levels of alcohol, tobacco, and drug use olympicbehavioralhealth.com . It makes sense: when kids feel securely attached and can talk openly with their parents, they have a safety net. T...

Understanding the Four Waves of the Opioid Crisis: We often hear about the opioid epidemic, but it’s not a single monolithic event – it’s evolved in waves. To set the stage, Wave 1 started in the late 1990s with a surge in prescription opioid use (think OxyContin and Vicodin overprescribing). Wave 2 saw many people transition to heroin around the 2010s as prescriptions became harder to get. Wave 3 hit in the mid-2010s with the emergence of illicit fentanyl , a synthetic opioid vastly more potent than heroin, driving overdose deaths to new peaks. Now, we’re in what experts call the “Fourth Wave” – characterized by polysubstance overdoses, especially fentanyl mixed with other drugs like stimulants (cocaine, methamphetamine) uclahealth.org . This means people aren’t just overdosing on opioids alone; often it’s fentanyl combined with meth or cocaine (sometimes intentionally, sometimes unbeknownst to the user). From 2010 to 2021, the proportion of U.S. overdose deaths involving both f...

The New Nicotine Landscape – Beyond Cigarettes: Traditional smoking may be at an all-time low among youth, but nicotine use certainly hasn’t vanished – it’s transformed. Enter the era of vaping . E-cigarettes (vapes) have exploded in popularity over the past decade, to the point where they are now the most commonly used tobacco product among U.S. teens cdc.gov . These sleek devices don’t look anything like the cigarettes parents remember. They often resemble USB flash drives, pens, even cosmetic cases – making them easy to hide. Flavored e-liquids (think cotton candy, mango, mint) mask the harsh tobacco taste and smell, which is a big part of the appeal for kids. As of 2024, about 7.8% of high school students and 3.5% of middle schoolers report currently vaping cdc.gov . That might sound like a small percentage, but consider that this still translates to well over a million youth. And many of those teens are using these devices frequently – some daily – delivering hefty doses of nicot...

Understanding the “Emotional Chaos” Many Youth Experience: If it feels like your child goes from 0 to 100 in anger or tears at the drop of a hat, you’re not alone. Many parents are noticing that “kids are losing it” – big emotional outbursts, seemingly minor issues causing major meltdowns, or anxious and depressive episodes that are hard to decode. This session breaks down one key reason behind the chaos: emotional immaturity combined with modern stressors . Adolescence has always been a tumultuous time (raging hormones, anyone?), but today’s youth also face fast-paced lifestyles, social media pressures, academic and societal stress – all on top of a brain that is still under construction. Neurologically, teens are driven more by the emotional centers of the brain (like the amygdala) than by the still-developing frontal cortex which governs self-control and reasoning aacap.org aacap.org . That’s a scientific way of saying teens genuinely feel things more intensely and have less capa...

  What Is a 0.05 BAC Law and Why It Matters: A blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08% has long been the legal limit for drivers in most of the U.S. – but traffic safety experts and many communities are now pushing to lower that limit to 0.05%. Why? Because even at 0.05% BAC (which might result from as little as two standard drinks for some people), significant impairment begins. Scientific studies show that at 0.05 BAC, drivers experience reduced coordination, poorer tracking of moving objects, difficulty steering, and slower reaction times to emergencies zerofatalitiesnv.com . In fact, a driver’s crash risk roughly doubles at 0.05 compared to a 0.00 BAC zerofatalitiesnv.com . In practical terms, that “one extra drink” can be the difference between getting home safely or not at all. The session “Driving Change” highlights how countries that adopted 0.05 laws have seen notable drops in drunk-driving deaths. And indeed, in the first year after Utah became the first U.S. state t...