Steering kids through the tunnel away from drugs

Art Rosenthal, executive director of the Confide Inc. drug treatment center in Rockville Centre, described childhood these days as a dark tunnel. What a depressing metaphor, I thought, but I couldn’t argue with its accuracy.

I interviewed Rosenthal last week at Confide’s office in the basement of a professional building. These days, kids, as naïve as ever, must maneuver through a society that is, in so many ways, looking to steal their innocence. Bad guys — in particular, drug dealers — lurk around every corner.

There likely isn’t a school in Nassau County — no matter how prestigious — where drugs aren’t dealt. Highly addictive drugs. Drugs that bring insanity. Drugs that kill.
Children, Rosenthal said, are unaware of the predators that hide in the shadows of that long tunnel.

Kids happily go about their business, experimenting with their own behaviors to fulfill their curiosity and to better understand the meaning of normal. The predators take advantage of that curiosity. They prey upon children’s multiple insecurities and their desire to be liked — to be cool.

The tunnel metaphor struck me. It was one I had thought about myself.
The objective, Rosenthal said, is to get our children to the other side of the tunnel, into the light, without their getting picked off by the thieves and assassins. The question is, how?

During the Herald’s editorial meeting last week, we were discussing this week’s editorial on drug use among young people. Someone noted a recent statistic that kids are spending up to seven hours a day in front of a TV or computer.

How can parents allow this? The answer, I said, is simple: If kids are in front of TVs or computers, they’re not on the street, where the predators roam. They’re not at the schoolyard after hours, drinking beer or smoking pot or popping pills or injecting heroin. They’re safely hidden from the world.