Mindset

http://mindsetonline.com/howmindsetaffects/parentsteacherscoaches/index.html#container


I have a changeable ability. It gets better as I learn.


Couple with growth mindset:

See my weakness, encourage me to learn and become better.


There is no perfect future; it keeps changing.


Girls were praised much more so they are sensitive to praise. Boys are opposite; they are critisized 8 times more so they are not affected much.


Enron- many people with talents but fixed mindset. If not doing well, not willing to work on improvement. They will keep up the facade and lie to stock holders.

Nine-year-old Elizabeth was on her way to her first gymnastics meet. Lanky, flexible, and energetic, she was just right for gymnastics, and she loved it. Of course, she was a little nervous about competing, but she was good at gymnastics and felt confident of doing well. She had even thought about the perfect place in her room to hang the ribbon she would win.

In the first event, the floor exercises, Elizabeth went first. Although she did a nice job, the scoring changed after the first few girls and she lost. Elizabeth also did well in the other events, but not well enough to win. By the end of the evening, she had received no ribbons and was devastated.
What would you do if you were Elizabeth’s parents?
Tell Elizabeth you thought she was the best.
Tell her she was robbed of a ribbon that was rightfully hers.
Reassure her that gymnastics is not that important
Tell her she has the ability and will surely win next time.
Tell her she didn’t deserve to win.
There is a strong message in our society about how to boost children’s self-esteem, and a main part of that message is: Protect them from failure ! While this may help with the immediate problem of a child’s disappointment, it can be harmful in the long run. Why?
Let’s look at the five possible reactions from a mindset point of view [and listen to the messages:]

The first (you thought she was the best) is basically insincere. She was not the best – you know it, and she does too. This offers her no recipe for how to recover or how to improve.

The second (she was robbed) places blame on others, when in fact the problem was mostly with her performance, not the judges. Do you want her to grow up blaming others for her deficiencies?

The third (reassure her that gymnastics doesn’t really matter) teaches her to devalue something if she doesn’t do well in it right away. Is this really the message you want to send?

The fourth (she has the ability) may be the most dangerous message of all. Does ability automatically take you where you want to go? If Elizabeth didn’t win this meet, why should she win the next one?

The last option (tell her she didn’t deserve to win) seems hardhearted under the circumstances. And of course you wouldn’t say it quite that way. But that’s pretty much what her growth-minded father told her.

Chapter 7 tells you what he told her and what happened.
You can use messages to help your children cultivate a growth mindset. You can also have them use the Brainology® online program to develop a growth mindset through their learning about the malleability of the brain and how to gain control over their own brain development.

July 22, 2002
DEPT. OF HUMAN RESOURCES

Are smart people overrated?

1.

Five years ago, several executives at McKinsey & Company, America's largest and most prestigious management-consulting firm, launched what they called the War for Talent. Thousands of questionnaires were sent to managers across the country. Eighteen companies were singled out for special attention, and the consultants spent up to three days at each firm, interviewing everyone from the C.E.O. down to the human-resources staff. McKinsey wanted to document how the top-performing companies in America differed from other firms in the way they handle matters like hiring and promotion. But, as the consultants sifted through the piles of reports and questionnaires and interview transcripts, they grew convinced that the difference between winners and losers was more profound than they had realized. "We looked at one another and suddenly the light bulb blinked on," the three consultants who headed the project--Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod--write in their new book, also called "The War for Talent." The very best companies, they concluded, had leaders who were obsessed with the talent issue. They recruited ceaselessly, finding and hiring as many top performers as possible. They singled out and segregated their stars, rewarding them disproportionately, and pushing them into ever more senior positions. "Bet on the natural athletes, the ones with the strongest intrinsic skills," the authors approvingly quote one senior General Electric executive as saying. "Don't be afraid to promote stars without specifically relevant experience, seemingly over their heads." Success in the modern economy, according to Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod, requires "the talent mind-set": the "deep-seated belief that having better talent at all levels is how you outperform your competitors."

This "talent mind-set" is the new orthodoxy of American management. It is the intellectual justification for why such a high premium is placed on degrees from first-tier business schools, and why the compensation packages for top executives have become so lavish. In the modern corporation, the system is considered only as strong as its stars, and, in the past few years, this message has been preached by consultants and management gurus all over the world. None, however, have spread the word quite so ardently as McKinsey, and, of all its clients, one firm took the talent mind-set closest to heart. It was a company where McKinsey conducted twenty separate projects, where McKinsey's billings topped ten million dollars a year, where a McKinsey director regularly attended board meetings, and where the C.E.O. himself was a former McKinsey partner. The company, of course, was Enron.

The Enron scandal is now almost a year old. The reputations of Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay, the company's two top executives, have been destroyed. Arthur Andersen, Enron's auditor, has been driven out of business, and now investigators have turned their attention to Enron's investment bankers. The one Enron partner that has escaped largely unscathed is McKinsey, which is odd, given that it essentially created the blueprint for the Enron culture. Enron was the ultimate "talent" company. When Skilling started the corporate division known as Enron Capital and Trade, in 1990, he "decided to bring in a steady stream of the very best college and M.B.A. graduates he could find to stock the company with talent," Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod tell us. During the nineties, Enron was bringing in two hundred and fifty newly minted M.B.A.s a year. "We had these things called Super Saturdays," one former Enron manager recalls. "I'd interview some of these guys who were fresh out of Harvard, and these kids could blow me out of the water. They knew things I'd never heard of." Once at Enron, the top performers were rewarded inordinately, and promoted without regard for seniority or experience. Enron was a star system. "The only thing that differentiates Enron from our competitors is our people, our talent," Lay, Enron's former chairman and C.E.O., told the McKinsey consultants when they came to the company's headquarters, in Houston. Or, as another senior Enron executive put it to Richard Foster, a McKinsey partner who celebrated Enron in his 2001 book, "Creative Destruction," "We hire very smart people and we pay them more than they think they are worth."

The management of Enron, in other words, did exactly what the consultants at McKinsey said that companies ought to do in order to succeed in the modern economy. It hired and rewarded the very best and the very brightest--and it is now in bankruptcy. The reasons for its collapse are complex, needless to say. But what if Enron failed not in spite of its talent mind-set but because of it? What if smart people are overrated?

2.

At the heart of the McKinsey vision is a process that the War for Talent advocates refer to as "differentiation and affirmation." Employers, they argue, need to sit down once or twice a year and hold a "candid, probing, no-holds-barred debate about each individual," sorting employees into A, B, and C groups. The A's must be challenged and disproportionately rewarded. The B's need to be encouraged and affirmed. The C's need to shape up or be shipped out. Enron followed this advice almost to the letter, setting up internal Performance Review Committees. The members got together twice a year, and graded each person in their section on ten separate criteria, using a scale of one to five. The process was called "rank and yank." Those graded at the top of their unit received bonuses two-thirds higher than those in the next thirty per cent; those who ranked at the bottom received no bonuses and no extra stock options--and in some cases were pushed out.

How should that ranking be done? Unfortunately, the McKinsey consultants spend very little time discussing the matter. One possibility is simply to hire and reward the smartest people. But the link between, say, I.Q. and job performance is distinctly underwhelming. On a scale where 0.1 or below means virtually no correlation and 0.7 or above implies a strong correlation (your height, for example, has a 0.7 correlation with your parents' height), the correlation between I.Q. and occupational success is between 0.2 and 0.3. "What I.Q. doesn't pick up is effectiveness at common-sense sorts of things, especially working with people," Richard Wagner, a psychologist at Florida State University, says. "In terms of how we evaluate schooling, everything is about working by yourself. If you work with someone else, it's called cheating. Once you get out in the real world, everything you do involves working with other people."

Wagner and Robert Sternberg, a psychologist at Yale University, have developed tests of this practical component, which they call "tacit knowledge." Tacit knowledge involves things like knowing how to manage yourself and others, and how to navigate complicated social situations. Here is a question from one of their tests:

You have just been promoted to head of an important department in your organization. The previous head has been transferred to an equivalent position in a less important department. Your understanding of the reason for the move is that the performance of the department as a whole has been mediocre. There have not been any glaring deficiencies, just a perception of the department as so-so rather than very good. Your charge is to shape up the department. Results are expected quickly. Rate the quality of the following strategies for succeeding at your new position.

a) Always delegate to the most junior person who can be trusted with the task.
b) Give your superiors frequent progress reports.
c) Announce a major reorganization of the department that includes getting rid of whomever you believe to be "dead wood."
d) Concentrate more on your people than on the tasks to be done.
e) Make people feel completely responsible for their work.

Wagner finds that how well people do on a test like this predicts how well they will do in the workplace: good managers pick (b) and (e); bad managers tend to pick (c). Yet there's no clear connection between such tacit knowledge and other forms of knowledge and experience. The process of assessing ability in the workplace is a lot messier than it appears.

An employer really wants to assess not potential but performance. Yet that's just as tricky. In "The War for Talent," the authors talk about how the Royal Air Force used the A, B, and C ranking system for its pilots during the Battle of Britain. But ranking fighter pilots--for whom there are a limited and relatively objective set of performance criteria (enemy kills, for example, and the ability to get their formations safely home)--is a lot easier than assessing how the manager of a new unit is doing at, say, marketing or business development. And whom do you ask to rate the manager's performance? Studies show that there is very little correlation between how someone's peers rate him and how his boss rates him. The only rigorous way to assess performance, according to human-resources specialists, is to use criteria that are as specific as possible. Managers are supposed to take detailed notes on their employees throughout the year, in order to remove subjective personal reactions from the process of assessment. You can grade someone's performance only if you know their performance. And, in the freewheeling culture of Enron, this was all but impossible. People deemed "talented" were constantly being pushed into new jobs and given new challenges. Annual turnover from promotions was close to twenty per cent. Lynda Clemmons, the so-called "weather babe" who started Enron's weather derivatives business, jumped, in seven quick years, from trader to associate to manager to director and, finally, to head of her own business unit. How do you evaluate someone's performance in a system where no one is in a job long enough to allow such evaluation?

The answer is that you end up doing performance evaluations that aren't based on performance. Among the many glowing books about Enron written before its fall was the best-seller "Leading the Revolution," by the management consultant Gary Hamel, which tells the story of Lou Pai, who launched Enron's power-trading business. Pai's group began with a disaster: it lost tens of millions of dollars trying to sell electricity to residential consumers in newly deregulated markets. The problem, Hamel explains, is that the markets weren't truly deregulated: "The states that were opening their markets to competition were still setting rules designed to give their traditional utilities big advantages." It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone that Pai ought to have looked into those rules more carefully before risking millions of dollars. He was promptly given the chance to build the commercial electricity-outsourcing business, where he ran up several more years of heavy losses before cashing out of Enron last year with two hundred and seventy million dollars. Because Pai had "talent," he was given new opportunities, and when he failed at those new opportunities he was given still more opportunities . . . because he had "talent." "At Enron, failure--even of the type that ends up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal--doesn't necessarily sink a career," Hamel writes, as if that were a good thing. Presumably, companies that want to encourage risk-taking must be willing to tolerate mistakes. Yet if talent is defined as something separate from an employee's actual performance, what use is it, exactly?

3.

What the War for Talent amounts to is an argument for indulging A employees, for fawning over them. "You need to do everything you can to keep them engaged and satisfied--even delighted," Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod write. "Find out what they would most like to be doing, and shape their career and responsibilities in that direction. Solve any issues that might be pushing them out the door, such as a boss that frustrates them or travel demands that burden them." No company was better at this than Enron. In one oft-told story, Louise Kitchin, a twenty-nine-year-old gas trader in Europe, became convinced that the company ought to develop an online-trading business. She told her boss, and she began working in her spare time on the project, until she had two hundred and fifty people throughout Enron helping her. After six months, Skilling was finally informed. "I was never asked for any capital," Skilling said later. "I was never asked for any people. They had already purchased the servers. They had already started ripping apart the building. They had started legal reviews in twenty-two countries by the time I heard about it." It was, Skilling went on approvingly, "exactly the kind of behavior that will continue to drive this company forward."

Kitchin's qualification for running EnronOnline, it should be pointed out, was not that she was good at it. It was that she wanted to do it, and Enron was a place where stars did whatever they wanted. "Fluid movement is absolutely necessary in our company. And the type of people we hire enforces that," Skilling told the team from McKinsey. "Not only does this system help the excitement level for each manager, it shapes Enron's business in the direction that its managers find most exciting." Here is Skilling again: "If lots of [employees] are flocking to a new business unit, that's a good sign that the opportunity is a good one. . . . If a business unit can't attract people very easily, that's a good sign that it's a business Enron shouldn't be in." You might expect a C.E.O. to say that if a business unit can't attract customers very easily that's a good sign it's a business the company shouldn't be in. A company's business is supposed to be shaped in the direction that its managers find most profitable. But at Enron the needs of the customers and the shareholders were secondary to the needs of its stars.

A dozen years ago, the psychologists Robert Hogan, Robert Raskin, and Dan Fazzini wrote a brilliant essay called "The Dark Side of Charisma." It argued that flawed managers fall into three types. One is the High Likability Floater, who rises effortlessly in an organization because he never takes any difficult decisions or makes any enemies. Another is the Homme de Ressentiment, who seethes below the surface and plots against his enemies. The most interesting of the three is the Narcissist, whose energy and self-confidence and charm lead him inexorably up the corporate ladder. Narcissists are terrible managers. They resist accepting suggestions, thinking it will make them appear weak, and they don't believe that others have anything useful to tell them. "Narcissists are biased to take more credit for success than is legitimate," Hogan and his co-authors write, and "biased to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their failures and shortcomings for the same reasons that they claim more success than is their due." Moreover:

Narcissists typically make judgments with greater confidence than other people . . . and, because their judgments are rendered with such conviction, other people tend to believe them and the narcissists become disproportionately more influential in group situations. Finally, because of their self-confidence and strong need for recognition, narcissists tend to "self-nominate"; consequently, when a leadership gap appears in a group or organization, the narcissists rush to fill it.

Tyco Corporation and WorldCom were the Greedy Corporations: they were purely interested in short-term financial gain. Enron was the Narcissistic Corporation--a company that took more credit for success than was legitimate, that did not acknowledge responsibility for its failures, that shrewdly sold the rest of us on its genius, and that substituted self-nomination for disciplined management. At one point in "Leading the Revolution," Hamel tracks down a senior Enron executive, and what he breathlessly recounts--the braggadocio, the self-satisfaction--could be an epitaph for the talent mind-set:

"You cannot control the atoms within a nuclear fusion reaction," said Ken Rice when he was head of Enron Capital and Trade Resources (ECT), America's largest marketer of natural gas and largest buyer and seller of electricity. Adorned in a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots, Rice drew a box on an office whiteboard that pictured his business unit as a nuclear reactor. Little circles in the box represented its "contract originators," the gunslingers charged with doing deals and creating new businesses. Attached to each circle was an arrow. In Rice's diagram the arrows were pointing in all different directions. "We allow people to go in whichever direction that they want to go."

The distinction between the Greedy Corporation and the Narcissistic Corporation matters, because the way we conceive our attainments helps determine how we behave. Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Columbia University, has found that people generally hold one of two fairly firm beliefs about their intelligence: they consider it either a fixed trait or something that is malleable and can be developed over time. Five years ago, Dweck did a study at the University of Hong Kong, where all classes are conducted in English. She and her colleagues approached a large group of social-sciences students, told them their English-proficiency scores, and asked them if they wanted to take a course to improve their language skills. One would expect all those who scored poorly to sign up for the remedial course. The University of Hong Kong is a demanding institution, and it is hard to do well in the social sciences without strong English skills. Curiously, however, only the ones who believed in malleable intelligence expressed interest in the class. The students who believed that their intelligence was a fixed trait were so concerned about appearing to be deficient that they preferred to stay home. "Students who hold a fixed view of their intelligence care so much about looking smart that they act dumb," Dweck writes, "for what could be dumber than giving up a chance to learn something that is essential for your own success?"

In a similar experiment, Dweck gave a class of preadolescent students a test filled with challenging problems. After they were finished, one group was praised for its effort and another group was praised for its intelligence. Those praised for their intelligence were reluctant to tackle difficult tasks, and their performance on subsequent tests soon began to suffer. Then Dweck asked the children to write a letter to students at another school, describing their experience in the study. She discovered something remarkable: forty per cent of those students who were praised for their intelligence lied about how they had scored on the test, adjusting their grade upward. They weren't naturally deceptive people, and they weren't any less intelligent or self-confident than anyone else. They simply did what people do when they are immersed in an environment that celebrates them solely for their innate "talent." They begin to define themselves by that description, and when times get tough and that self-image is threatened they have difficulty with the consequences. They will not take the remedial course. They will not stand up to investors and the public and admit that they were wrong. They'd sooner lie.

4.

The broader failing of McKinsey and its acolytes at Enron is their assumption that an organization's intelligence is simply a function of the intelligence of its employees. They believe in stars, because they don't believe in systems. In a way, that's understandable, because our lives are so obviously enriched by individual brilliance. Groups don't write great novels, and a committee didn't come up with the theory of relativity. But companies work by different rules. They don't just create; they execute and compete and coördinate the efforts of many different people, and the organizations that are most successful at that task are the ones where the system is the star.

There is a wonderful example of this in the story of the so-called Eastern Pearl Harbor, of the Second World War. During the first nine months of 1942, the United States Navy suffered a catastrophe. German U-boats, operating just off the Atlantic coast and in the Caribbean, were sinking our merchant ships almost at will. U-boat captains marvelled at their good fortune. "Before this sea of light, against this footlight glare of a carefree new world were passing the silhouettes of ships recognizable in every detail and sharp as the outlines in a sales catalogue," one U-boat commander wrote. "All we had to do was press the button."

What made this such a puzzle is that, on the other side of the Atlantic, the British had much less trouble defending their ships against U-boat attacks. The British, furthermore, eagerly passed on to the Americans everything they knew about sonar and depth-charge throwers and the construction of destroyers. And still the Germans managed to paralyze America's coastal zones.

You can imagine what the consultants at McKinsey would have concluded: they would have said that the Navy did not have a talent mind-set, that President Roosevelt needed to recruit and promote top performers into key positions in the Atlantic command. In fact, he had already done that. At the beginning of the war, he had pushed out the solid and unspectacular Admiral Harold R. Stark as Chief of Naval Operations and replaced him with the legendary Ernest Joseph King. "He was a supreme realist with the arrogance of genius," Ladislas Farago writes in "The Tenth Fleet," a history of the Navy's U-boat battles in the Second World War. "He had unbounded faith in himself, in his vast knowledge of naval matters and in the soundness of his ideas. Unlike Stark, who tolerated incompetence all around him, King had no patience with fools."

The Navy had plenty of talent at the top, in other words. What it didn't have was the right kind of organization. As Eliot A. Cohen, a scholar of military strategy at Johns Hopkins, writes in his brilliant book "Military Misfortunes in the Atlantic":

To wage the antisubmarine war well, analysts had to bring together fragments of information, direction-finding fixes, visual sightings, decrypts, and the "flaming datum" of a U-boat attack--for use by a commander to coordinate the efforts of warships, aircraft, and convoy commanders. Such synthesis had to occur in near "real time"--within hours, even minutes in some cases.

The British excelled at the task because they had a centralized operational system. The controllers moved the British ships around the Atlantic like chess pieces, in order to outsmart U-boat "wolf packs." By contrast, Admiral King believed strongly in a decentralized management structure: he held that managers should never tell their subordinates " 'how' as well as what to 'do.' " In today's jargon, we would say he was a believer in "loose-tight" management, of the kind celebrated by the McKinsey consultants Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman in their 1982 best-seller, "In Search of Excellence." But "loose-tight" doesn't help you find U-boats. Throughout most of 1942, the Navy kept trying to act smart by relying on technical know-how, and stubbornly refused to take operational lessons from the British. The Navy also lacked the organizational structure necessary to apply the technical knowledge it did have to the field. Only when the Navy set up the Tenth Fleet--a single unit to coördinate all anti-submarine warfare in the Atlantic--did the situation change. In the year and a half before the Tenth Fleet was formed, in May of 1943, the Navy sank thirty-six U-boats. In the six months afterward, it sank seventy-five. "The creation of the Tenth Fleet did not bring more talented individuals into the field of ASW"--anti-submarine warfare--"than had previous organizations," Cohen writes. "What Tenth Fleet did allow, by virtue of its organization and mandate, was for these individuals to become far more effective than previously." The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it's the other way around.

5.

There is ample evidence of this principle among America's most successful companies. Southwest Airlines hires very few M.B.A.s, pays its managers modestly, and gives raises according to seniority, not "rank and yank." Yet it is by far the most successful of all United States airlines, because it has created a vastly more efficient organization than its competitors have. At Southwest, the time it takes to get a plane that has just landed ready for takeoff--a key index of productivity--is, on average, twenty minutes, and requires a ground crew of four, and two people at the gate. (At United Airlines, by contrast, turnaround time is closer to thirty-five minutes, and requires a ground crew of twelve and three agents at the gate.)

In the case of the giant retailer Wal-Mart, one of the most critical periods in its history came in 1976, when Sam Walton "unretired," pushing out his handpicked successor, Ron Mayer. Mayer was just over forty. He was ambitious. He was charismatic. He was, in the words of one Walton biographer, "the boy-genius financial officer." But Walton was convinced that Mayer was, as people at McKinsey would say, "differentiating and affirming" in the corporate suite, in defiance of Wal-Mart's inclusive culture. Mayer left, and Wal-Mart survived. After all, Wal-Mart is an organization, not an all-star team. Walton brought in David Glass, late of the Army and Southern Missouri State University, as C.E.O.; the company is now ranked No. 1 on the Fortune 500 list.

Procter & Gamble doesn't have a star system, either. How could it? Would the top M.B.A. graduates of Harvard and Stanford move to Cincinnati to work on detergent when they could make three times as much reinventing the world in Houston? Procter & Gamble isn't glamorous. Its C.E.O. is a lifer--a former Navy officer who began his corporate career as an assistant brand manager for Joy dishwashing liquid--and, if Procter & Gamble's best played Enron's best at Trivial Pursuit, no doubt the team from Houston would win handily. But Procter & Gamble has dominated the consumer-products field for close to a century, because it has a carefully conceived managerial system, and a rigorous marketing methodology that has allowed it to win battles for brands like Crest and Tide decade after decade. In Procter & Gamble's Navy, Admiral Stark would have stayed. But a cross-divisional management committee would have set the Tenth Fleet in place before the war ever started.

6.

Among the most damning facts about Enron, in the end, was something its managers were proudest of. They had what, in McKinsey terminology, is called an "open market" for hiring. In the open-market system--McKinsey's assault on the very idea of a fixed organization--anyone could apply for any job that he or she wanted, and no manager was allowed to hold anyone back. Poaching was encouraged. When an Enron executive named Kevin Hannon started the company's global broadband unit, he launched what he called Project Quick Hire. A hundred top performers from around the company were invited to the Houston Hyatt to hear Hannon give his pitch. Recruiting booths were set up outside the meeting room. "Hannon had his fifty top performers for the broadband unit by the end of the week," Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod write, "and his peers had fifty holes to fill." Nobody, not even the consultants who were paid to think about the Enron culture, seemed worried that those fifty holes might disrupt the functioning of the affected departments, that stability in a firm's existing businesses might be a good thing, that the self-fulfillment of Enron's star employees might possibly be in conflict with the best interests of the firm as a whole.

These are the sort of concerns that management consultants ought to raise. But Enron's management consultant was McKinsey, and McKinsey was as much a prisoner of the talent myth as its clients were. In 1998, Enron hired ten Wharton M.B.A.s; that same year, McKinsey hired forty. In 1999, Enron hired twelve from Wharton; McKinsey hired sixty-one. The consultants at McKinsey were preaching at Enron what they believed about themselves. "When we would hire them, it wouldn't just be for a week," one former Enron manager recalls, of the brilliant young men and women from McKinsey who wandered the hallways at the company's headquarters. "It would be for two to four months. They were always around." They were there looking for people who had the talent to think outside the box. It never occurred to them that, if everyone had to think outside the box, maybe it was the box that needed fixing.

HOMETHE NEW YORKER ARCHIVETOP

Autism spectrum disorder

1. Difficulty in communication.
2. Difficulty in feeling.
3. Rigid, need routine, odd behavior.

Asberger, PDD

Got Milk

Cow's Milk is the Perfect Food for Baby Calves
But Many Doctors Agree:
It is Not Healthy for Humans
by Michael Dye


People who have been taught that cow's milk is the "perfect food" may be shocked to hear many prominent medical doctors are now saying dairy consumption is a contributing factor in nearly two dozen diseases of children and adults.

Doctors say cow's milk can lead to iron deficiency anemia, allergies, diarrhea, heart disease, colic, cramps, gastrointestinal bleeding, sinusitis, skin rashes, acne, increased frequency of colds and flus, arthritis, diabetes, ear infections, osteoporosis, asthma, autoimmune diseases, and more, possibly even lung cancer, multiple sclerosis and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

In American society, one of the most sacred of all sacred cows is the milk of the cow itself. Cow's milk is more American than apple pie, but that's because apple pie doesn't have Congressional lobbyists and a multi-million dollar advertising budget. Most parents wouldn't think of raising their children without the benefit of cow's milk to help their little bones to grow big and strong. Its silky, white texture is the very epitome of our concept of wholesome purity.

Our "nutritional education" in school (funded in part by the dairy industry) taught us that dairy products are one of the four basic food groups we all need for proper nutrition. And with more than 60 of the most powerful Congressional leaders in Washington receiving campaign contributions from the National Dairy Council, we can be assured that dairy products are well-entrenched as a major staple of our government-sponsored school lunch programs.

Cow's milk is promoted as the "perfect food" for humans, and especially for our children. This advertising has put such a strong emphasis on the health of our children that some people view milk commercials as more of a public service announcement than an attempt to sell a product. These ads have told us "Milk is a Natural," "Everybody Needs Milk," "Milk is the Perfect Food," etc. This advertising has served its purpose well because the average American consumes 375 pounds of dairy products a year. One out of every seven dollars spent on groceries in the U.S. goes to buy dairy products.

But to gauge the full impact of this promotion, we must consider more than just the dollar amount spent on dairy products. We must also consider the impact this massive advertising, promotion, lobbying, "nutritional education" and public relations effort has had by creating a widely-held perception of cow's milk as a very wholesome and healthy product. This promotion has been so effective that it is common for even people who give up meat to still feel that they should continue consuming dairy products to ensure they receive sufficient protein or calcium. People buy cow's milk for their families based on the premise that this product provides essential nutrition, helps to build a healthy body, and that indeed, their precious health may be in jeopardy if they do not drink milk.

If this is the premise on which Americans spend an incredible chunk of their grocery bill to provide for the health and nutrition of their loved ones, we need to further examine this premise.

Despite what the dairy industry has led us to believe, many medical doctors and nutritionists are now saying that cow's milk is not healthy for human consumption, and that it can lead to many serious diseases. When you look at the credentials of the doctors making these statements, it would be hard for the dairy industry to accuse these physicians of being on the lunatic fringe of the medical world.

Frank Oski, M.D., author of Don't Drink Your Milk! is the Director of the Department of Pediatrics of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 19 medical textbooks and has written 290 medical manuscripts.

In the first chapter of his book, Dr. Oski states, "The fact is: the drinking of cow milk has been linked to iron-deficiency anemia in infants and children; it has been named as the cause of cramps and diarrhea in much of the world's population, and the cause of multiple forms of allergy as well; and the possibility has been raised that it may play a central role in the origins of atherosclerosis and heart attacks."

Dr. Oski comments, "Being against cow milk is equated with being un-American," but still he notes, "Among physicians, so much concern has been voiced about the potential hazards of cow milk that the Committee on Nutrition of the prestigious American Academy of Pediatrics, the institutional voice of practicing pediatricians, released a report entitled, "Should Milk Drinking by Children Be Discouraged?' Although the Academy's answer to this question has (as of this writing) been a qualified 'maybe,' the fact that the question was raised at all is testimony to the growing concern about this product, which for so long was viewed as sacred as the proverbial goodness of mother and apple pie."

Another outspoken critic of cow's milk is Dr. William Ellis, a retired osteopathic physician and surgeon in Arlington, Texas, who has researched the effects of dairy products for 42 years. Dr. Ellis is listed in Marquis' Who's Who in the East, Leaders of American Science, the Dictionary of International Biography and Two Thousand Men of Achievement. Dr. Ellis says dairy products are "simply no good for humans... There is overwhelming evidence that milk and milk products are harmful to many people, both adults and infants. Milk is a contributing factor in constipation, chronic fatigue, arthritis, headaches, muscle cramps, obesity, allergies and heart problems."

In Washington D.C. based pediatrician Dr. Russell Bunai was asked what single change in the American diet would produce the greatest health benefit, his answer was, "Eliminating dairy products."

Dr. Christiane Northrup, a gynecologist in Yarmouth, Maine, states, "Dairy is a tremendous mucus producer and a burden on the respiratory, digestive and immune systems." Dr. Northrup says when patients "eliminate dairy products for an extended period and eat a balanced diet, they suffer less from colds and sinus infections."

Dr. Oski's book includes a letter written by Dr. J. Dan Baggett, a pediatrician in Alabama who describes his experience after six years of recommending that all his patients eliminate cow's milk from their diets. He writes, "In general, they cooperate much better than I had earlier anticipated except for the pre-teenagers and teenagers." Dr. Baggett's letter, states in part:

"During the years 1963 through 1967, I referred an average of four appendectomy cases per year. During the past five and a half years, I have referred only two patients for appendectomy, the last one being three years ago. Both of these children were professed milk guzzlers.

I do not have a single patient with active asthma. In fact, I have nearly forgotten how to prescribe for them.

Perhaps the most significant thing I have learned is that Group A beta-hemolytic streptococcus germ will not, under ordinary circumstances, establish an infection in a child kept on an absolutely no-milk-protein dietary regimen. I have been aware of this for the past two and a half years and, so far, there have been no exceptions. Any time a patient of mine is found to have streptococcal pharyngitis or pyoderma, we can establish by history that he has ingested milk protein within five days prior to onset of symptoms or signs bringing him to the office.

I now admit an average of 12-14 patients per year to the hospital. Their average hospital stay is three days. Between 1963 and 1967, I admitted an average of 100+ patients to the hospital per year. Their average stay was five days."

So how can all these medical statements be explained in light of what we have been taught all of our life about milk? Remember "Milk is the Perfect Food"... "Milk is a Natural"... "Everybody Needs Milk." Are we talking about the same food here?

Perhaps we are not. It would appear that promoters of cow's milk are creating advertising statements that are meant to appeal on a subconscious level to our positive feelings and experiences with human breast milk. All mammals, including humans, are intended to be nourished during infancy by milk from their mother. Part of the very definition of a mammal is that the female of the species has milk-producing glands in her breasts which provide nourishment for her young. Each species of mammal produces its unique type of milk designed specifically to strengthen the immune system and provide nourishment for their babies, which are weaned after their birth weight has approximately tripled.

So, absolutely yes, "milk is a natural"... in the proper context. It is perfectly natural for infant mammals, including humans, to be nourished exclusively by milk from their mother's breasts. So if we are talking about human breast milk for babies, yes, "milk is the perfect food." And yes, during infancy when we have no teeth for eating solid food, and as we need to strengthen our immune system, "everybody needs milk."

I have just quoted three of the most popular advertising slogans of the dairy industry and they are undisputably as true as any words that could be spoken on the subject of nutrition... if they are applied to a baby's need for human breast milk. In fact, not one of the doctors I have quoted in describing the terrible problems caused by cow's milk would disagree that milk is a natural, milk is the perfect food or that everybody needs milk, in this context.
But whoa.

The dairy industry has begun with these three statements that we all know are true about a baby's need for human breast milk, and twisted them out of context to apply them to a completely different product they are selling. And the sad result is that most Americans still think these noble statements about our babies needing to suckle their mother's breast milk are true when applied to the advertising claim that humans of all ages need to buy and drink cow's milk.

So, in an effort to undo the damage caused by this manipulation, let us consider the differences in human breast milk versus cow's milk, and further examine the physical problems caused by humans trying to subsist on the milk of another species well past the age when any mammal should be drinking any milk.

A good place to start in analyzing the distinction between milk of different species is to begin to understand how nature works. As Dr. Oski explains in Don't Drink Your Milk! "The milk of each species appears to have been specifically designed to protect the young of that species. Cross-feeding does not work. Heating, sterilization, or modification of the milk in any way destroys the protection."

So, how much of a difference is there between a human baby drinking the milk of its mother versus drinking the milk of a cow? Dr. Oski cites a "study of over twenty thousand infants conducted in Chicago as far back as the 1930s... The overall death rate for the babies raised on human milk was 1.5 deaths per 1,000 infants while the death rate in the babies fed cow milk was 84.7 per 1,000 during the first nine months of life. The death rate from gastrointestinal infections was forty times higher in the non-breast-fed infants, while the death rate from respiratory infections was 120 times higher. An earlier analysis involving infants in eight American cities showed similar results. Infants fed on cow milk had a twenty times greater chance of dying during the first six months of life."

Dr. Michael Taylor, a Chiropractic Physician, doctoral candidate to become a Doctor of Nutrition and fellow of the American Academy of Orthomolecular Medicine, agrees, stating, "It is a dietary error to cross species to get milk from another animal." He notes there is a tremendous difference between human babies and baby calves, and a corresponding difference between the milk that is intended to nourish human babies and baby calves. In an interview on "Let's Eat," a Seventh-day Adventist television program, Dr. Taylor notes that human infants take about 180 days to double their birth weight, and that human milk is 5 to 7 percent protein. Calves require only 45 days to double their birth weight and cow's milk is 15 percent protein.
In addition to the difference in the amount of protein in these two different types of milk, there are also major differences in the composition of this protein. The primary type of protein in cow's milk is casein. Cow's milk has 20 times as much casein as human milk, which makes the protein from cow's milk difficult or impossible for humans to assimilate, according to Dr. John R. Christopher, N.D., M.H.

Protein composes 15 percent of the human body and when this protein cannot be properly broken down, it weakens the immune system, causing allergies and many other problems. Allergies caused by cow's milk are extremely common. In fact, Dr. Taylor states that when a single food can be isolated as the cause of an allergy, 60 percent of the time, that food is cow's milk. Dr. Ellis notes that symptoms of this allergic reaction to cow's milk in infants can include asthma, nasal congestion, skin rash, chest infections, irritability and fatigue.

Dr. Oski's book cites evidence from Dr. Joyce Gryboski, director of the Pediatric Gastrointestinal Clinic at Yale University School of Medicine, who states "they see at least one child a week who is referred for evaluation of chronic diarrhea and proves to have nothing more than an allergy to cow milk."

Another reason many people suffer various symptoms of disease from drinking milk is that, according to Dr. Oski, the majority of the world's adult population is "lactose intolerant," meaning they cannot digest lactose, the sugar in milk (cow's milk and human milk). An enzyme known as lactase is required to digest lactose, and Dr. Oski states that "between the age of one and a half and four years most individuals gradually lose the lactase activity in their small intestine. This appears to be a normal process that accompanies maturation.... Most people do it. All animals do it. It reflects the fact that nature never intended lactose-containing foods, such as milk, to be consumed after the normal weaning period."

In fact, so many people have bad reactions to drinking cow's milk that in 1974 the Federal Trade Commission felt compelled to take legal action against advertising claims made by the California Milk Producers.
The ads claimed "Everybody Needs Milk." The FTC prosecuted the milk producers for "false, misleading and deceptive" advertising. The FTC complaint cited the high incidence of lactose intolerance, allergies caused by cow's milk and the increased risk of heart disease. The FTC won and the milk producers had to come up with a new slogan for their ads: "Milk Has Something for Everybody."

One medical researcher, Dr. Kevin McGrady, commented, "Milk has something for everybody all right -- higher blood cholesterol, and increased risk of heart disease and stroke."

Three reasons cited by medical researchers that dairy products contribute to heart disease are their high content of cholesterol and fat, along with an enzyme in cow's milk called xanthine oxidase (XO). This enzyme, which creates problems only when milk is homogenized, causes heart disease by damaging arteries. Explaining the significance of XO, Dr. Ellis cites research by Dr. Kurt Oster, Chief of Cardiology at Park City Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut:

From 1971 to 1974, we studied 75 patients with angina pectoris (chest pain due to heart disease) and arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). All the patients were taken off milk and given folic acid (a B-vitamin) and ascorbic acid (vitamin C), both of which combat the action of XO. The results were dramatic. Chest pains decreased, symptoms lessened, and each of those patients is doing great today."

Dr. Oster's article states that Dr. Kurt Esselbacher, Chairman of the Department of the Harvard Medical School, was in full agreement. Dr. Esselbacher writes: "Homogenized milk, because of its XO content, is one of the major causes of heart disease in the U.S."

Dr. Oski warns, "The consumption of cow milk from an early age may have life-long consequences... One pathologist has reviewed the heart vessels of over 1,500 children and adolescents who had died as a result of accidents.... These children and adolescents had not died as a result of disease, yet many of them showed signs of diseased arteries in the heart.... The majority of children with normal blood vessels had been breast-fed; the majority of children with diseased vessels had been fed cow milk or cow milk based formulas. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the differences between human milk and cow milk were responsible for the early changes in the coronary arteries."

But don't we need to drink milk to get calcium? No. The best way to add calcium to your diet is to eat more fresh green vegetables. Cow's milk is high in calcium, but Dr. Ellis explains, the problem is that it is in a form that cannot be assimilated very well by humans. Dr. Ellis states, "Thousands and thousands of blood tests I've conducted show that people who drink 3 or 4 glasses of milk a day invariably had the lowest levels of blood calcium."

Dr. Ellis adds, "Low levels of blood calcium correspond with irritability and headaches. In addition, the low calcium level in milk-drinkers also explains why milk-drinkers are prone to have muscle spasms and cramps. Since calcium is necessary for muscles to relax, a lack of calcium causes muscle cramps, etc."
One of the most serious problems caused by a calcium deficiency is osteoporosis, a condition characterized by the loss of 50 to 75 percent of the person's original bone material. In the U.S., 25 percent of 65-year-old women suffer from osteoporosis. Their bones become brittle and easily broken. They can crack a rib from something as minor as a sneeze.

Our pervasive dairy advertising has led to one of the most commonly held, and solidly disproved, fallacies about bones, which is that the best way to build strong bones is to increase calcium consumption by drinking plenty of milk. Actually, the consensus among leading medical researchers is that the best way for most people to increase their calcium level and strengthen their bones is to reduce their protein intake, and specifically to reduce consumption of animal products. Research has conclusively shown we can do more to increase the calcium level in our bones by reducing protein intake than by increasing calcium intake. The reason is that animal products and other sources of high protein are very acidic, and the blood stream must balance this acidic condition by absorbing alkaline minerals such as calcium from the bone structure. Thus, numerous studies, including those published in the Aug. 22, 1984 Medical Tribune and the March 1983 Journal of Clinical Nutrition, have found that vegetarians have much stronger bones than meat-eaters. Indeed, the Journal of Clinical Nutrition article found that by age 65, meat-eaters had five to six times as much measurable bone loss as vegetarians.

Speaking of minerals, another serious problem caused by consumption of cow's milk is iron-deficiency anemia. Dr. Oski notes that 15 to 20 percent of children under age 2 in the U.S. suffer from iron-deficiency anemia. Cow's milk contributes to this condition in two ways.

First, he notes that cow's milk is extremely low in iron, containing less than 1 milligram of iron per quart. Because of this, he writes that it is estimated that a 1- year-old would need to drink 24 quarts of cow's milk a day to meet his iron requirements, which would be impossible. He states many infants may drink from one to two quarts of cow's milk a day, which satisfies their hunger to the point that they do no have the appetite to consume enough of other foods that do have a high iron content.
The second way that cow's milk leads to iron-deficiency anemia in many infants is a form of gastrointestinal bleeding caused by increased mucus and diarrhea associated with dairy consumption. "It is estimated that half the iron-deficiency in infants in the United States is primarily the result of this form of cow milk induced gastrointestinal bleeding," Dr. Oski writes. "Mucus is frequent and some stools contain obvious traces of bright red blood... The diarrhea impairs the infant's ability to retain nutrients from his feedings. In addition, the changes produced in the gastrointestinal tract by the allergic reaction result in seepage of the child's own blood into the gut. This loss of plasma and red cells leads to a lowering of the infant's blood protein level and to the development of anemia."

The mucus created by dairy products causes other problems as well. It is well-known that dairy products cause excessive mucus in the lungs, sinuses and intestines. Dr. Ellis notes this excess mucus in the breathing passages contributes to many respiratory problems and that mucus hardens to form a coating on the inner wall of the intestines that leads to poor absorption of nutrients, which can cause chronic fatigue. This mucus also causes constipation, which can lead to many other problems.

Two very common problems with infants are colic and ear infections, both of which can be caused by cow's milk. Medical studies have found cow's milk can contribute to these problems either directly, when the infant drinks cow's milk, or indirectly, when the infant breast feeds from a mother who has been consuming dairy products.

Colic, suffered by one out of every five infants in the U.S., is characterized by severe stomach cramps. The July/August 1994 issue of Natural Health reports, "When a mother eats dairy products, milk proteins pass into her breast milk and end up in the baby's blood; some studies have found that cow's milk proteins (from milk drunk by the mother) might trigger colick-like symptoms in infants fed only human milk and no cow's milk."
Concerning ear infections, Dr. Northrup states, "You just don't see this painful condition among infants and children who aren't getting cow's milk into their systems."

The Natural Health article also notes, "Removing dairy from the diet has been shown to shrink enlarged tonsils and adenoids, indicating relief for the immune system. Similarly, doctors experimenting with dairy-free diets often report a marked reduction in colds, flus, sinusitis and ear infections."

Another common problem for children is the bellyache. Dr. Oski states in his book that up to 10 percent of all children in this country suffer from a syndrome known as "recurrent abdominal pain of childhood." He says studies performed in Boston and San Francisco each concluded "that about one-third of such children had their symptoms on the basis of lactose intolerance. The simple solution was to remove all milk and milk-containing foods from the diet and watch for signs of improvement."

The Natural Health article also notes that antigens in cow's milk may contribute to arthritis and osteoarthritis. "When antibody-antigen complexes (resulting from an immune response) are deposited in the joints, pain, swelling, redness and stiffness result; these complexes increase in arthritic people who eat dairy products, and the pain fades rapidly after patients eliminate dairy products from their diets. In a study published in Scandinavian Journal of Rheumatology, when people with rheumatoid arthritis fasted on water, fruit and vegetable juices, and tea for seven to ten days, their joint pain and stiffness were greatly reduced. When they ate a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet (including only milk and eggs as animal foods), the symptoms became aggravated and they remained ill."

A 1992 report in The New England Journal of Medicine also notes that cow's milk can contribute to juvenile diabetes and autoimmune diseases by impairing the ability of the pancreas to produce insulin.

The Natural Health article also states a 1989 study published in Nutrition and Cancer found a link between consumption of cow's milk and butter with the risk of developing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system. The article adds, "High levels of the cow's milk protein beta-lactoglobulin have also been found in the blood of lung cancer patients, suggesting a link with this cancer as well."
Dr. Oski's book also cites studies by two scientists from the University of Michigan who have conducted extensive research on factors associated with multiple sclerosis. There is an unusual geographic distribution of MS victims in the U.S. and throughout the world, which has baffled medical researchers for decades. This distribution of MS victims has no correlation to wealth, education or quality of medical care. Dr. Oski notes the Michigan scientists found in this pattern in the U.S. and 21 other countries, "the only significant link was between multiple sclerosis and average milk consumption."

Dr. Oski's book even cites a possible link between excessive consumption of cow's milk and juvenile delinquency, based on a study conducted in Tacoma, Wash. Dr. Oski writes, "When the diets of young criminals were contrasted with those of adolescents from a similar background, it was found that the juvenile delinquents consumed almost ten times the amount of milk that was drunk by the control group. The juvenile offenders ate less fruit, nuts and vegetables."

When a reasonable person considers all this evidence, it would be difficult to still believe cow's milk is healthy for human consumption. So, what do we drink instead? Dr. Oski partly answers this question by writing, "For the newborn infant, there are two obvious alternatives -- the right and left breast of the healthy mother."

After a child is weaned, there is no reason to drink any milk. We shouldn't drink any liquid with our meals because this dilutes our digestive fluids. When we are thirsty, we should drink distilled water. Or, if you want to drink something nutritional between meals, the best choice is freshly-extracted vegetable juice.

Her son is addicted to heroin

All:

As the mother of a recovering opiate addict who could not find effective, affordable, or appropriate treatment for my son because it barely exists in this state, one of the richest states in the nation, my words are sometimes beyond "harsh". As a mother who did not, three years ago, have a clue what opiate addiction was or that opiate addiction was pervasive throughout my son's school and community, I sometimes feel like going postal (just kidding), when I encounter the elaborate lengths of denial that adults, community leaders, legislators, school administrators, and parents of addicts will go to, in order to cover up the problem. Their silence is deadly. Their silence is fatal. Their silence is what will keep the next mother's son or daughter from staying alive. I am not in denial and I am under no false pretenses that another child will probably soon die. As I have stated, the current confirmed death rate due to an opiate related cause, stands at one death every three months for the past three years for Damascus graduates who are under 24 years of age.

We are now aware of the rates of opiate addiction. We are now aware of the death rate in Damascus. We are now aware that we do not have adequate treatment. Therefore, the next death will be on the hands of the community. The adults who would silence those who would warn other parents, the adults who do nothing short of demanding high quality, affordable, effective prevention and treatment programs, the adults who pretend that this problem does not exist in their community are part of the problem. The next death will surely come because nothing is being done fast enough to prevent it. The next death will be on the hands of those who did not speak up and on those who prevented others from speaking up.

Ms. Essich and Mr. Sterling represent two attitudes that all of us who are aware of the problem share on various days. There is not enough being done quick enough to save the next child's life. Now on some days, I am enraged, and I speak harshly. On other days, I try not to offend those whom I think may be able to help and I tip-toe around the problem so as not to upset them. On other days I worry about the opinions of those who may be receiving my emails and whether or not I can trust them to "have my back". On other days I pray that I have the strength to speak honestly and plainly and clearly without my ego or my fear getting in the way. On the night after the the MCPD program, I sobbed. I sobbed for all the lost opportunities to warn all those parents sitting in the audience, as I drove past the Brink Road cemetery where already three Damascus High School graduates Rest In Peace.

I am exceedingly gratetful that Senator Karen Montgomery's staff ignored my "harsh" words (that is an understatement) last summer when I began calling my legislators demanding that my son receive appropriate addiction treatment, regardless of the fact that my insurance would not cover it and I could not get him into treatment on my own. If it were not for her compassionate staff, hearing my plea, while ignoring my "harsh" tone, my "harsh" words, and my "harsh" frustration, I am quite sure that my son would be dead.

The reason that I put Mr. Sterling's response on the table is because, regardless of his "harshness", he is right. Ms. Essich, you are also right. The problem is not that people don't "recognize" the problem, the problem is that people overtly deny the problem exists due to the stigma associated with drug addiction. Mr. Sterling's response to this "lie" is to be critical. Ms. Essich's response to this "lie" is to tip-toe. Frankly, I feel like screaming. When I know that last year's Damascus High School cheerleaders were opiate addicts and shot heroin, but neither the Principal, nor the police addressed that truth, it is frustrating. When I know that last year's graduating class of top Damascus High School athletes were opiate addicts and shot heroin and we have a golden opportunity to inform parents so that they do not have to endure the suffering that I have endured, and we miss that opportunity, I want to just start screaming --but instead I cried. I cried all the way home. I cried hardest when I passed by the Brink Road Cemetery where three Damascus High School graduates who died of opiate related causes already Rest In Peace.

If the police officers did not help to save the next child who will die from an opiate related cause in approximately 1 1/2 months from now, what does it matter if the school allowed them to come in or not. We are still not telling the truths that will save our children. We still do not believe that "The Truth Will Set Us Free". Smoking marijuana will not kill you and it is not physically addictive. In fact, there is pending legislation across the nation intending to legalize it. Those are facts. Opiate addiction is the number one killer in Damascus. Another fact, not mentioned. Intentionally omitted? Why?

Are the police officers aware that the phone numbers they give parents to call if their child is addicted do not get him into treatment and do not save his or her life. Probably not. Do the schools "recognize" that they have a drug problem? I am sure they do. The question is --what motivates them to remain in denial? --to maintain their silence? We do not know their answer. Do the police know that the information found on websites about where and how to access substance abuse services for their child is often outdated and inaccurate, or astronomically expensive. Probably not. Only those who have attempted to utilize those sites would know that. Parents, who are now where I was three years ago, want to know how to help their opiate addicted child. Does Commander Reynolds know the answer to that question? Probably not.

Progress is not being made when misinformation is given to parents --that only confuses parents who are seeking help. Progress is not made when the truth is covered up. We all have approximately 1 1/2 months left until the next mother's son or daughter dies in Damascus. This is based on the death rate for the past three years. We do not have time to wait for this slow "progress" of massaging egos, tip-toeing around the issue, figuring out how to talk about cheerleaders shooting up heroin while trying to keep up appearances, and letting go of false images one finger at a time. How many more kids will die if that is our method?

If we believe that we are "limited" to what we can do and say, that will certainly allow more kids to die before something is done. I have a different proposal that I would like us all to consider. It is simply this: Speak the Truth. Speak the Truth, no matter what.

I have anyone's back who is willing to come out from behind their ego, their job, their organizational rhetoric and help save these kids lives. Mr. Sterling drove up to Damascus and stood on the corner of Main Street and Ridge Road with 25 parents and kids in freezing weather for an hour behind a ten yard banner that read "HOW MANY MORE WILL DIE?" Others joining him carried signs that read: "1 DAMASCUS DEATH EVERY 3 MONTHS"; "HEROIN ADDICTION CAPITAL OF THE U.S."; "OPIATE ADDICTION IS A NEUROLOGICAL DISORDER NOT A CRIME"; and "FOR EVERY $1 SPENT ON TREATMENT TAXPAYERS SAVE $12", etc.

If we all look past the perception of whether Mr. Sterling was or was not "critical" and look at the strategies that he proposed, I think we will all find some validity in the points that he made.

For instance, I guess the officers mentioned the arrests in the Gardens, because they thought that would be better than mentioning the arrests of Damscus High School's top athletes and most popular cheerleaders from white suburban affluent homes in Damascus. However, they missed that opportunity to tell that truth, thereby missing the opportunity to warn parents and to assist in figuring out a solution. They missed the opportunity to tell the truth about white affluent parents selling prescription opiates to their kid's friends, thereby missing the opportunity to tell parents how to handle that.

For instance, the officers probably did lose some credibility with kids when they were talking about "pharm parties". Ask any kid who is using or dealing heavy drugs and they will tell you that they are not about to give away something as marketable and profitable without getting something in return. The response I got from kids is, "Are you kidding me? Throw a bottle of your good drugs into a bowl and take a risk that you're getting someone else's aspirin or heartburn pills." All the police need to do to know this information is to sit down with a kid from Damascus and they will know that these events do not take place in Damascus. Our kids are too capitalistic for a pharm party to happen here.

For instance, these kids do not to take drugs with rat poison or Drano. They are getting and dealing prescription opiates in pill form straight from the pharmacy. Drug dealers in Baltimore do not have to cut heroin. It is cheap to make and they can easily undercut the street value of prescription opiates by selling good heroin and still make a considerable profit, so why risk getting a reputation for selling something low quality. They know these kids are or will be addicted, and they are vieing for their long-term business. Dealers roll out the proverbial "red carpet" when our kids show up in Baltimore. They are looking for repeat business and they get it by delivering good drugs and good service. That is the "truth" about kids in Damascus, rather than the truth about rhetoric found in textbooks and articles.

For instance, you really couldn't hear the video and couldn't really pinpoint the message it was trying to make.

For instance, most parents in attendance probably grew up in the sixties and seventies. As a graduate of Magruder H.S. class of '78, bowls, bongs, and joints were commonly smoked right in front of the school with pot smoke wafting through the classroom windows on a Spring Day. It is my guess that most people there know what devices are used to smoke "weed". What we don't know, what I didn't know, what I wish I had known was what opiates are, how addictive they are, how pervasive they are in Damascus, how easily a kid gets hooked, how dangerous prescription opiates are, how to get my kid into treatment if they do get hooked, and what type of treatment is necessary. I used to not know what a syringe looked like, why I could not find a spoon in the kitchen to save my life, and if I did, why they were blackened on the bottom. I used to not know what a can of Dust-Off was or that you could buy it at CVS if you couldn't get your fix that day.

For instance, my son is a recovering addict who rarely ever had a phone or a Facebook site, much less any apps. So in my case, I could have snooped all I wanted, found nothing on his non-existant phone and web-page, picked up the spoons in his room, lectured him about leaving dirty dishes in his room, walked past the can of Dust-Off presumably used to clean his c.d.'s, and bought his story about his diabetic friend who must have dropped his insulin needle on the floor when he last visited. After that I could have called the pediatrician to make an appointment due to all the school he has missed as a result his recent flu-like symptoms that seem to come and go quite regularly. The pediatrician would not have tested him for opiate addiction, but instead would have given him a prescription for opiates for his muscle pains and migraine level headaches (a result of withdrawal).

For instance, I could picture my kids and all of their friends thinking the exact same thoughts that Mr. Sterling was humorously mimicking --except for the use of the word "clowns" instead of the "po-po". (That gave his age away.) Other than that, he sounded just like a typical teenager in my opinion.

For instance, I want to participate in that meeting that he has so clearly outlined in his "Recommendations" section. Really, don't you?

Mind you, nothing I have said in any way diminshes the fact that people are trying to help --and putting in a lot of time and effort to do it. That is certainly applaudable. Those officers should certainly and whole-heartedly be applauded for their efforts.

The problem is that the people who are trying to "help" have had scattered efforts and have at times very adamantly defended their "turf", or their part of the solution, as seen from their perspective. Sometimes that hurts the efforts of others. Everyone needs to bring their part of the picture and their part of the solution to the same table in order to form a coherent and effective plan, one which acknowledges all aspects of the problem and can therefore address all aspects of the solution.

For instance, are the police aware that 65% of all inmates meet medical necessity criteria for substance addiction and another 20%, while not meeting strict DSM IV criteria, had histories of substance abuse; were under the influence of substances at the time of their crime; committed their offense to get money to buy drugs; were incarcerated for a drug or alcohol violation. Are they aware that treatment, instead of incarceration, is not only cheaper, but more effective in lowering crime rates and criminal recidivism. Mr. Sterling's profession and expertise revolves around attempting to get these individuals treated instead of incarcerated. The parents of Damascus High School athletes, cheerleaders, and one-time gifted and talented students did not raise their kids to go to jail either for having a neurological disorder. We want our kids in treatment instead. What is the police role then? In Virginia, police officers refer cases to social services when they encounter an adolescent with a drug problem. This perspective would probably involve asking the police if they were willing to help us solve this problem by changing the way they currently do business. It may require them to work with people whom they may have once attempted to arrest. Just a thought.

Do the police know that there are only about 100 treatment beds in the entire state of Maryland and most of them are filled with referrals from the juvenile justice system and we cannot get our addicted kids the treatment they need to stop using opiates in on a voluntary basis? Probably not.

Are the police aware that social workers, substance abuse professionals, and government officials have told parents to call the police and report their children for any type of crime so that a judge will order them into treatment, because the parent cannot. Probably not. When I have called the police on my son at the recommendation of these paid "professionals", I have been mocked by police for wasting their time, threatened by them when I tell them that they are not doing their job when they do not charge my son for "theft" of say, my cell phone (something that may get him in front of a judge who could order treatment), and undermined when they tell my son that I do not have the right to kick him out of the house if he shoots up heroin in front of me.

No one is going to understand what the problem really is and what the solutions are unless we are all willing to sit down at the same table. I started Heroin Action Coalition of Montgomery County to work on this problem. A "coaltion" is an alliance between persons or factions. The police were correct when they said they could not "arrest this problem away". Just as the attorneys cannot "litigate this problem away"; just as the parents cannot "consequence this problem away"; just as the schools cannot "suspend and expel this problem away".

Anyone who REALLY cares needs to put the rhetoric, the image, the defenses, the posturing, the public relations, the denial in the closet and step on out. Therein lies the real courage. Therein lies the real solution. To solve this problem, the police and the addicts and the school and the parents and the treatment providers and the health and human services reps and the government agency reps need to sit down at the table and talk about the reality of the problem and talk about solutions that will work and has worked in other places. Otherwise, we are all wasting time.

Consider attending any one of the upcoming meetings and events that I will be posting by tomorrow. It is too late tonight and I need to sleep. A Coalition involves all factions and interested parties. An effective solution involves all factions and interested parties. It is my prayer that we can all get together and work out a plan soon.

I hope this has been helpful.

Lisa Lowe
Heroin Action Coalition



-----Original Message-----
From: Lisa Essich
To: Eric Sterling
Cc: Butler, Tracey ; Young, Celia ; Baker, Meg ; Beach, Sherry ; Bennett, Hardy ; Booker, Jim ; Bransford, Amy ; Coulter, Steve ; Crowel, Raymond L. ; DeTitta, Emily ; Didone, Thomas ; Drotleff, Mary ; Durbin, Kathie ; Ennis, David ; Frazier-Bey, Jimmy ; Gamble, Larry ; Greene, Scott ; Greenhut, Mike ; Greenhut, Sybil ; Hoffman, Kenneth ; Houser, Kathy ; Hsu, Ed ; Jackson, Shantee ; Jansky, Lee ; Kiltz, Julie ; Kiltz, Karin ; Kunkel, Richard ; Lee, Caroline ; Lethbridge, Jimi ; Lin, Nae-Ning ; Lowe, Lisa ; Malagari, Suzy ; McAlpine, Catherine ; Rich, Ed ; Romeo, Melissa ; Rumbaugh, Rita ; Sanders, JoAnn ; Shannon, Gale ; Simmons, Larry ; Stevenson, Damon ; Sullivan, Pat ; Sutton, James ; Talley, Angela ; Trachtenberg, Alan ; Trachtenberg, Alan ; Watt, Margaret ; Westwood, Meghan ; White, Roni ; Wiley-Peterson, Monica ; Wilson, Mary ; Winters, Patty ; Yarborough, D'Artanyon
Sent: Wed, Mar 21, 2012 10:22 am
Subject: Re: March 19, 2012 Damascus High School Anti-Drug Forum by MCPD

Mr. Sterling,

My name is Lisa Essich and I believe we met when my daughter, Lea and I spoke at the AODAAC meeting last year. After reading your email regarding the MCPD anti drug forum at Damascus High School, I felt compelled to respond.

With all due respect, Mr. Sterling, your email with your details of how you felt the forum went were quite harsh.

As I'm sure you are well aware, even getting a MoCo school to RECOGNIZE there is a drug problem in their community is HUGE let alone allowing officers from the MoCo police department to come into their school to openly discuss this problem.

Lea and I have worked with Commander Reynolds on numerous occasions. Lea and I have spoken at at least 20 different venues this past year from MoCo schools, to treatment centers to churches and a Jewish private school we even drove down to the Eastern Shore to speak to a Technical high school. Commander Reynolds was at many of those events.

One thing I have noticed speaking at these different places is that what is allowed to be done and to be discussed varies widely based on where we are speaking. At many of the events, we have been able to do the exercises you suggested, the kids breaking off into groups and presented with different scenarios and how they would handle their scenario. Parents had been given instructions, websites, information and direction on how to talk to their kids about drug and alcohol abuse. Information given on who to call if you think your child might be using and or addicted to drugs.

There have been schools that have let us speak during school hours and schools that have asked us to come after school hours or on a weekend. Commander Reynolds was at all of the events in MoCo. Sometimes volunteering his time to meet with and talk to these kids, their parents and their teachers.

There isn't any one quick fix for this problem as I'm sure you are also aware but progress is being made and that is something NO ONE can deny, not even you.

Everyone speaking at these events volunteer their time because there are no longer any budgets given for alcohol and drug prevention. I take personal days from work, I've allowed Lea to miss school to speak, Commander Reynolds has come to talk on his personal days off so the bottom line is, in the end, we all want the same outcome but are limited as to what we can do.

Perhaps when we speak again (Lea and I have several more engagements coming up 1 of which is at a MoCo Middle school) you can rally some of the professionals you feel should be at these venues, perhaps you can provide us with pamphlets to hand out to the students, perhaps you can attend more than ONE anti drug forum.

There are several people throughout Montgomery County trying to make a difference and it is quite disheartening to see that these same people are getting criticized for doing so.

My daughter and I will continue to work with Commander Reynolds, the Montgomery County police department and other professionals to chip away at this humongous problem.

Although we won't be able to save everyone, we'll be able to save someone.

Respectfully,

Lisa Essich

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 1:52 AM, Eric Sterling wrote:
Friends,
I attended the MCPD anti-drug forum at Damascus High School this evening. There was a nice crowd, perhaps a couple hundred people, maybe more. The auditorium felt well-filled – maybe half full – about 60 percent students and 40 percent adults.
At the suggestion of one of the police leaders there, I wrote down my summary, my reactions, and my recommendations which follow and which are attached.

MCPD Drug Awareness Program
Damascus High School
7 pm, March 19, 2012
Summary and comments of
Eric E. Sterling[1]

SUMMARY

MCPD 5th District Commander Luther Reynolds dominated the first half hour of the program.

He talked about community but said of persons “dealing dope,” “They need to be put out of society!”

He was defensive. He felt the need to tell his own story to attempt to connect, and made statements such as “life is not easy being a teenager.”

Then he made the point that he could not hire persons who exhibited a strong work ethic, excellent leadership skills such as being the captain of their athletic team and having military experience as well as a positive attitude because their record of prior drug use was an “automatic disqualifier.”

He recounted the investigation in Damascus Gardens in which over 8 months 25 undercover buys were made. Then on December 9, SWAT teams executed 7 raids simultaneously.

He bragged that one person pled guilty and is serving a 20 year sentence. He said that there is an open homicide and there have been drive by shooting in order to make the point that drug use is not a victimless crime. He was proud of the tremendous enforcement effort of more than 50 additional arrests.

The purpose of this meeting is to take the veil off the problem. There are lots of problems and lots of ignorance. He was insistent that this was not a problem in Damascus but a problem all over the country, all over the county. It is not just the school but the whole community.

He asked if people knew what a “pharm party” was and then went on to describe it saying it happens frequently and that as a result a “certain percentage of those who attend overdose and a certain percentage are addicted for live.

He noted the observation of someone who conducts prison ministry who laments about all the lives that are ruined by drugs.

He exhorted, we care about you, we care about this community.

Drugs, he said are contaminated by Drano, rat poisoning, PCP. Marijuana, cocaine are cut. That what “they” do with lots of these drugs.

Bath salts fry your brain. Then he awkwardly told of his own difficulty reading and writing to ask why someone would want to use drugs.

He then introduced Officer Jeremy Wojdan.

The officer began by saying that “We want to have a conversation. We want you to be empowered.
He asked the athletes to stand up, and most of the students present stood. (I was told by a parent that the school principal had told the coaches that they tell all teams that attendance was mandatory.)
Give yourself a round of applause, the officer said.
If this program saves just one life, it is totally worth it.

They then attempted to play a video. (For several minutes they could not get the audio to work which made a terrible impression of incompetence.)

The video with the caption, “Be a part of the solution, get involved today!” was a terrible mishmash of snippets of dialogue. In barely comprehensible rapid-fire fashion, a person would utter a sentence fragment followed by another person and another sentence fragment. Snatches of thoughts were expressed: I got a rush. He was angry. Marijuana. Cocaine. Heroin. Shared a needle. Parent fears were expressed. Dui. Jail sentences. Crying. As music begins to rise, people start identifying family members who have died.

Then a slide of “Alarming Statistics” was presented and repeated orally in dire, ominous terms.
US teens smoke more marijuana than tobacco.
75% of teens will try drugs.
20% of them are addicted.

A silly exercise was engaged in: ten students are asked to stand. Then some are told to sit and the officer suggests that they could get marijuana in one hour, others are made to sit and a another statement is made about them. The students are not asked to participate other than to serve as props for assertions made about them.

90% of addiction starts in teen years.

Then there was a rather silly dialogue between two police officers about “It’s just marijuana,” stress and spring break.

Then the officers condemned “cool parents” who sponsor drinking parties.
And mocked comments like, my parents let me drink. None of this was coherent or put in any kind of nuance or context that might reflect real families or real situations.

How many of you know alcoholics? the parents were asked? Almost every adult raises a hand. How many of them wanted to become an alcoholic when they had their first drink? the officers ask in an utter non sequitur.

Then onto the dangerous internet and social networks!
Parents were exhorted to demand, tonight, that their kids give them the passwords to their facebook and youtube accounts and if they don’t, shut off their access to the Internet. Same with their phone text records.
Parents, you pay the bills. These are yours, not your kids.
He mocked the idea that students might have an expectation of privacy in these accounts if their parents are paying.
“You have every right to go into what they are going into!”

And parents were mocked, “Parents have no clue.” Parents were asked if they knew about Text+ and voxer applications.
You would be shocked at what go into your kids phones.
Be proactive, he said.

He warned that kids have two Facebook accounts – one of family trips to the beach and the other under an assumed name filled with drug and alcohol use images and messages.

Who is influencing your child? He wanted to know? E.g., picture of Michael Phelps smoking a bong, although no one seemed to be able to identify him.
Look at the record of your kids’ searches on Google.

Then the Drug Paraphernalia 101 drill.
A student volunteer is brought forward to explain how Phillies cigars are converted into blunts and what a blunt is. What a “bowl” is, what rolling papers might look like.

“Snoop in your kid’s room” we were told. If you find an empty water bottle it may be a makeshift pipe. If you kid is using Visine it is to disguise the effects of smoking and drinking.

Then the concluding slide with URLs:
www.drugfree.org
www.urbandictionary.com
www.dea.gov
www.abovetheline.org
www.teens.drugabuse.gov

[NO MENTION OF THE PROJECT AWARENESS HANDOUT PREPARED FOR THIS FORUM WITH USEFUL INFORMATION ON COMMUNICATION, ASSESSMENT, THE COUNTY CRISIS CENTER OR OTHER RESOURCES!]

If your kids refuse to give you the passwords to their accounts, block their access to the Internet.

Then, How could a young kid get hooked on heroin?
They get pharmaceuticals from their family, they experiment. A “certain percentage” get addicted. They like the feeling, but it is too late; they are now addicted. It is expensive. They can’t afford the drugs, even when they steal and commit crime. So they get heroin because it is less expensive but the same high.

Then Andrea McCarrin, the TV reporter who got death threats for exposing the liquor store in DC where teens from Montgomery County could buy alcohol.
People don’t understand what is right and wrong!

Then saying he did not want to get into the political question of whether alcohol licensing should be allowed in Damascus but mentioned that one opponent feared that if alcohol is sold, then there will be field parties.

Look for good role models, we were told.
We [MCPD] have a lot of skin in this game.

Then the principal came forward.
He concluded by saying that we want to have a conversation.

People were dismissed but encouraged to talk one to one with a police officer.

# # #

[1] Eric E. Sterling, President of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, Silver Spring, MD is also a member of the Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Advisory Council of Montgomery County. He has over 35 years of experience working on substance abuse issues as an assistant public defender, Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Crime, and with numerous non-profit, civic and professional organizations ranging from the American Bar Association to NORML and Al-Anon. He has been active with the PTA, the Girl Scouts, taught at George Washington University and American University, William Penn House, and led wilderness canoe trips for boys, among other groups. esterling@cjpf.org 202-365-2420 cell

COMMENTS

No woman spoke. No health practitioner spoke. No one gave a phone number for where to call for treatment, for help or for confidential guidance. No person of color spoke. No parent was called on or spoke. The students were props, not participants. It was classic anti-drug propaganda.

The speakers promised repeatedly that there was going to be an opportunity for questions, but that promise was broken without apology. A lame explanation was offered that the students had to go home to study.

If this forum had been taped and posted on YouTube it would have been posted as a caricature of a stereotypical community forum of police officers talking to parents and students about drugs. No cliché was skipped. It was judgmental, earnest, strident, exaggerated and dishonest. It was tragic and offensive. It was well-meaning and ineffectual. It was classic!

Most obvious and troubling, there was complete confusion about who the intended audience was, what the purpose was or what the message really was. Thus it was counterproductive. To say that this is the beginning of a conversation assumes that someone would willingly come to another session like this and reasonably expect a different outcome. Not likely.

Was the audience the parents?
Parents were given the following advice: snoop in the kids rooms, insist that they have no right of privacy in their text messages, email or facebook, and if they resist, take away their internet access.

No one said what to do if you find paraphernalia. No one provided any guidance on how to hold an effective conversation with your kid about drug or alcohol use!
No one provided any guidance to parents about what the goals of such conversations might be!

Be frightened that your kids will go to “pharm parties,” frying their brains on bath salts, it’s easy for the kids to get drugs and lots of them are doing them. Be on the lookout for drug paraphernalia. Watch out for marijuana and heroin. Go to government websites for information.

The take away message, such as it was absurd: “Be part of the solution, get involved today!”

The subtext was you are ignorant of what your kids are probably doing, they are in grave danger, its not just Damascus, it is all around. There are all kinds of new, mysterious threats from “pharm parties” to terrible apps you never heard of for smartphones and computers.
If you are not invading your kids’ privacy, you aren’t doing your job as parent.

Was the audience the students?
Students were given this advice: If you use drugs, you will never get a job. If you use drugs you should be put out of society. We are on the war path: arrests with the SWAT team, 50 more arrests of people like you. If you don’t know what a pharm party is, you aren’t in the know.
Drugs fry your brain.
We want to have a conversation. (Well, not really. We want to pretend to have a conversation, but we won’t take your comments or questions.)

Give yourself a round of applause for being here because you care (Duh, I was ordered to come by the coach who was ordered by the principal.)

Oh you clowns can’t even get the sound to work on your fancy, special audio-visual equipment set up.

Ah, a slide of statistics. Is this on the exam?
Wait, 75% of teens use drugs? What’s wrong with me that I am not one of them? I’m not normal? So, everybody IS doing it.
Some fraction of kids can get drugs in some amount of time. 20% of some number of adolescents is addicted? We’ve studied how statistics can be misused, it’s part of the MCPS curriculum.

What are you trying to say about alcohol? No one should drink because some become alcoholics but they did not know they might become alcoholics?

“It’s just marijuana.” What are you saying, that marijuana is really as dangerous as heroin or “bath salts?”

Wait, you are telling my parents that I have no expectation of privacy!?!? You are telling my parents to snoop in my room?! You are telling my parents that if I don’t give them my passwords they should threaten to take away my access to the Internet? Uh, are you crazy? They can’t make that a credible threat – I need Internet to do my assignments, to access Edline. The school and my teachers EXPECT that I have access to my Internet.

Oh, wow, I should make sure that I set up a dummy facebook page right away.

Oh drug paraphernalia 101. Are you lame? What is bowl? What are rolling papers used for? What is a blunt??? Give me a break. When is this going to end?

Tell my parents to go to www.urbandictionary.com to learn how to talk to me? Do you think we are some kind of aliens?

So when do we get to ask questions? So when are we having the conversation you say you want? Oh, no conversation.

This program illustrated why D.A.R.E. and most prevention programs that have actually been evaluated have been found to either ineffective or counterproductive.

What was the take away message for the students? Cops say drugs are bad. Cops think like cops: kids are suspects, they need to be investigated. Parents should behave like cops – Oh God!

I know that kids are dying from drugs in Damascus, but you don’t really seem to have a clue about what to do about that.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The police have a great deal of respect and credibility. As you can see, if they sponsor an event, lots of people will come. But their communication content and style is lousy and antiquated.

Police should be prominent in the inviting and hosting. After a VERY BRIEF welcome by a police leader, a professional communicator or educator should take over. The audience should be divided. The students should go to one room and the parents stay where they are. There should be two different programs for the first half.

Have prevention and education specialists run the meetings, NOT cops!! Start by asking each audience, what would make this evening most valuable? What would they like to know about substance abuse issues in this community and in general. Then be prepared to make sure that those questions get addressed quickly.

For parents, instead of the litany of how to detect if your kids are using drugs by searching their rooms and conversations, focus on the kinds of techniques to keep communications open and how to communicate values not to use to drugs that don’t come across as preachy, accusatory or argumentative. What are the techniques for effective communication?

Encourage parents to role play. Set up a scenario: A parent has found a marijuana pipe or rolling papers or a bong or some marijuana in their kid’s room. Have the audience divide up into pairs. Have half play the kid who has been caught and half play the parent. Goal: express to the kid disappointment and try to get the kid to appreciate the risks and consequences, and see if the kid is willing to promise to stop.

Debrief: how did it feel? Who can share some successful techniques.

What if they kid denies the paraphernalia is theirs? What if the kid accuses you of invading their privacy – how do you answer effectively?


Now in the other room with the students, what is an effective program? Certainly none of what was presented tonight!

Have the kids tell each other, in their own words, what the risks of drug use are. They know. They don’t need to be talked down to! Let the kids carry the message, it is much more effective.

Then divide the kids into pairs. One kid plays a parent who suspects or has evidence that the kid is using drugs. Have the kid role play how the parent can express his/her concern and fears in a loving manner. Let the kids hear the reasons for parental disappointment from another kid. They know what their parents would say. The other kid role plays the kids role: denying, lying, squirming, feeling bad.

Debrief: What messages worked well? What did the kids hear that made sense? What did they hear that was counterproductive? How did the kids playing the parents feel? How did they feel about their kid using drugs? How did they feel about their kids reactions? Angry? Forgiving? Concerned? Alarmed? How did the kids feel who played being caught by their parents? Ashamed? Stupid? Defiant?

The kids DO NOT need a lesson on paraphernalia! They don’t need a lesson on cultural influences. These are high school students!

You might have someone who is not a cop but a nurse or a doctor answer questions about the scientific effects of certain kinds of drug use and drug use behaviors. You might ostentatiously say, the cops are leaving the room now. You are encouraged to have an honest conversation about what kinds of drugs are being used in this community and in this school.

Then have the two groups rejoin. Have some kids tell the parents what they did and what they learned. Have some parents tell the kids what they learned and what they felt.

You have built community and trust!

# # #


Eric E. Sterling
Representative of the Legal Profession
Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Advisory Council
Montgomery County, MD (term expires 2012)

Admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States only.
Memberships:
American Bar Association
Maryland State Bar Association
Washington Council of Lawyers
Association of the Bar of the City of New York

President, The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation
8730 Georgia Avenue, Suite 400
Silver Spring, MD 20910-3649
Tel: 301-589-6020 Cell: 202-365-2420
Fax: 301-589-5056
esterling@cjpf.org www.cjpf.org
www.justiceanddrugs.blogspot.com

[1] Eric E. Sterling, President of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, Silver Spring, MD is also a member of the Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Advisory Council of Montgomery County. He has over 35 years of experience working on substance abuse issues as an assistant public defender, Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Crime, and with numerous non-profit, civic and professional organizations ranging from the American Bar Association to NORML and Al-Anon. He has been active with the PTA, the Girl Scouts, taught at George Washington University and American University, William Penn House, and led wilderness canoe trips for boys, among other groups. esterling@cjpf.org 202-365-2420 cell