A Baltimore City-sponsored event, aimed at helping high school students shatter the myths about drugs, took place Wednesday at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, WBAL-TV (NBC affiliate) reports.
A few studies show that about 40 percent of high school students have tried marijuana, while about 6.5 percent of them—about 1 in 15—smoke marijuana every day, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, WBAL said. This number is also confirmed by a 2012 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reported here in the Durango (Colo.) Herald. Five years earlier, the number was about 5.1 percent.
So Wednesday afternoon, about 200 high school students from the city’s schools joined Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to hear some of the false information circulating about drug abuse by teens put to rest. Also speaking at the event was Dr Lonise Bias, the mother of Len Bias, a great University of Maryland basketball player who died of a cocaine overdose.
“The importance of your decisions means more than you can ever know,” Dr Bias told the students. “And think about your decisions as they relate to, not only to you, but how it will affect your family. When Len died, he affected an entire nation.”
Ms Rawlings-Blake added, “We have to shine light on it and make sure kids understand, No. 1, that drugs are a problem. It’s not recreation. And No. 2, there’s serious consequences.”
