Found. Let me go ahead and share my screen here. If everyone is see, make sure my volume is all the way up. So today's webinar is going to be on myths, facts and resources. And a lot of these myths and facts are more so what we hear that teenagers think are true about alcohol vaping and marijuana. I'm just kind of was going to want to, you know, relay the message to parents. You know what, you know, what these myths are going around, what kids are really thinking about these drugs and alcohol versus what the facts are. And then I also have some like local resources I really wanted to share with you guys. In case any parents on here in the future end up do having concerns of use for their child, they can always go here and get your child assessed first. Substance use disorder or mental health. They're really good resources. I want to share with you guys at the end and I'll explain more when we get at the end of the PowerPoint. I also have Beth Williams here. She's going to join me this time. I'm trying to. Okay, there we go. Slideshow and play from current site. All right, so I'm going to have Beth start off with the presentation. And again, guys, Q and a questions answered at the bottom. We're more than happy to answer any at the end as well. Also, you can use the chat to make any comments or questions as well. Over to you. All right. Hi, everyone. I'm glad to be back and see, and see that you all are still remaining very interested in these webinars and in the wonderful work that Madison is doing. So we're going to talk today about myths, facts and resources about kind of the most common drugs that are used by our young people. We're going to start with alcohol. Because alcohol is a drug, a lot of times we don't really think about it that way. We like to separate it out from the other drugs. But alcohol is very, as we know, commonly used. Our youth are still using alcohol at high rates. And one of the first myths about alcohol is that it's safer for youth to use alcohol than street drugs. And we would hear often from parents, well, at least they're not using drugs off the street. At least they're not injecting heroin. They're just drinking. What we know is that alcohol is highly addictive. The addiction process can be very similar in any kind of mind altering drug. Alcohol does affect the brain in a way that addiction can occur, as we know, and we do know that one out of ten people in this country do have alcohol use disorders or alcoholism. So the facts are, you know, alcohol is highly addictive. Underage alcohol use harms or kills more people than all illegal drugs combined. And it's kind of hard to grasp that because we hear so much about fentanyl or, you know, things laced with fentanyl or other drugs on the street. But we know that alcohol by kills more young people and really more people in general than all illegal drugs combined. What makes it particularly dangerous for young people is that alcohol use can affect brain. Oh, I spelled effect wrong there. Sorry. Brain development in adolescence since the brain continues to develop around the age of 25. So that explains a lot about youth. As they're going through middle school and high school, their brains are developing, their moods are all over the place. They're changing. And part of that is because their brain is not fully developed, but it is in development. So it's taking all those years for it to finally develop into an adult brain. Long term use of alcohol affects nearly every system and organ in the human body, which is why it is so dangerous when someone is withdrawing from alcohol or wants to quit cold turkey, so to speak. Alcohol withdrawal can be life threatening because it does saturate every part of the body. So just as an aside, we want to always make sure that withdrawal from alcohol is always done medically under a doctor's care. Okay, more myths about alcohol. Someone who has had too much to drink can be sobered up by drinking coffee, walking it off, or taking a cold shower. And what we do know is none of those things work. Alcohol is metabolized by the liver. Our liver breaks down alcohol at a rate of about one standard drinks worth of alcohol per hour. So we can't hurry that up. We can't sober the person up or get that alcohol out of their system any quicker. It takes two to 3 hours for a standard drink to leave a person's body and nothing will speed up that process. So we used to say that, you know, if you, you know, give someone coffee to sober them up, all we're going to have is a, you know, stimulated, wide awake drunk person because it's not going to speed up that metabolizing process. All right, another one. Beer, wine and seltzers are safer than hard liquor. And what the fact is, is that alcohol is alcohol. It's all the same. Ethyl alcohol is the type of alcohol that drinks that we consume are made of that ethyl alcohol. It's not the same as like a rubbing alcohol that you use in your home. It comes in many forms, but all drinks contain the same alcohol. A standard twelve ounce glass of beer is about the same alcohol content as a 1.5 ounce shot of vodka. A lot of people think hard liquor, you know, is, you know, more potent. It has more alcohol in it. It doesn't. It's just the ratio. You're only drinking an ounce and a half of it as opposed to 12oz of beer. So beer just is, you know, watered down more alcohol, but it's still the same amount. So I put this in here just to. It's going to be kind of hard to see some of this, but just as a review, some of you have had the course we did on alcohol a while ago. These all have the same amount per blood alcohol content as each other. So 5% of a regular beer. And by that, I mean like a miller light or a michelob, something like that. Eight to ten ounce beer of like a craft beer or a hard seltzer or something like that. And some of the craft beers actually are higher than that in alcohol. So when you're planning to drink one, you have to look and make sure what the alcohol content is. Some of them may have up to three servings worth of alcohol. A five ounce glass of wine, a three to four ounce glass of fortified wine, a cordial, like a liqueur of some kind, and or brandy or cognac, a small jigger of that, or a one and a half ounce shot of a distilled spirit. Gin or rum or vodka or tequila. All of these will give you the same blood alcohol content because they all basically have the same amount of alcohol and the same alcohol. So that's just kind of a reminder to be more aware of what we as adults drink, if we do choose to drink and how this can build up in our system. Because if you have, say, two glasses of wine, you're pretty much halfway to the legal limit, if not more. Okay, other myths about alcohol. Myth. Most adolescents are drinking alcohol. You know, we've all heard, but all of my friends drink, you know, why can't I drink from our kids? But the fact is, two thirds of underage youth are not drinking, and that's a samhsa percentage or a samhsa data that we got that from. So all of our kids are not drinking. However, two thirds that are not drinking still leaves one third of our youth that are drinking on a regular basis. Everyone has the same risk of developing an alcohol addiction or alcohol use disorder. That is definitely a myth. I mean, obviously, anyone is susceptible, but there are factors that can increase the risk of developing alcoholism. It includes heredity, which we all know. If someone in the family has an alcoholic, you know, if we have an alcoholic relative or an ancestor, that can leave us more susceptible to develop alcohol use disorder or alcoholism. Mental health conditions. And that really is. Can be kind of, you know, spread over many different drugs. You know, someone who has a pre existing mental health condition may be more vulnerable or susceptible to developing an addiction as well. Sometimes they are self medicating for that mental health condition. Sometimes, again, it's a heredity kind of a thing. Sometimes their brain is just not wired the same because of, depending on what mental health condition they have. An age of first use is a very, you know, that is probably the biggest risk factor we're talking about with youth right now, because if they start at age 14 or younger, they have, it's white. And increased risk. I thought I had the number in this slide, but I don't. But it's way up there in percentage, in terms of. I think it's 15%. Will go on to develop an alcohol use disorder if they start at age 14. Okay, so we'll move on. Are there any questions about the alcohol piece? We'll check at the end for questions, just because I have to unshare my screen to check it. Yeah. All right. Okay, so we'll move on to marijuana. The number one myth that we hear all the time is that marijuana is not addictive. We know that that is not true, particularly now, when marijuana has such high levels of THC. And THC is the one of almost 500 chemicals found in marijuana. THC is the one that gives that high effect or that pleasure effect. That is what obviously contributes to addiction. We know the facts are that 17% of adolescent users and 50% of daily users who are adolescents become addicted again. We've done some courses here on the brain and the disease of addiction. It is a disease, and it definitely affects the part of the brain that is what we call our pleasure center, that rewards us for behavior that feels good. When that happens, we want to do it again. And the more people use that substance, their brain actually structurally changes to accommodate that substance. We do know that young people do get addicted to marijuana. Marijuana use won't lead to using other drugs is also one that we hear very often from people. People have a hard time if they're casual marijuana users. They have a hard time realizing that it could be harmful or it could lead to something else. But we know from data and studies that it does. What we know about adolescents is that marijuana users who are adolescent are two and a half times more likely to abuse prescription drugs. Not quite sure what that link is, but anytime you're using any drug and you use it enough and you develop that tolerance where it takes more of the drug to feel that high. You know, if you have used a lot of marijuana and you have some tolerance to it, it takes this person longer to feel intoxicated. They may look for something else that is probably pretty easily accessible, like prescription drugs are, and will give them another kind of a, you know, stimuli, you know, euphoric feeling. Also, sometimes marijuana users, people don't talk about this often, but marijuana is also considered a hallucinogenic drug. So people can use marijuana when they get that high feeling. They may also have hallucinations or have a stimulating effect depending on the strain of marijuana. And certainly if people are walking around very stimulated all the time, they may want something like a prescription opioid drug to calm them down. So we definitely know that that occurs. Okay. I hear this one all the time from young people about marijuana, that it's not harmful. You know, if it were harmful, why would it be legal? And why would it, you know, it's from nature, it grows naturally, and, you know, it's good for the body, etcetera. But also, coming back from that, I love telling kids this. It's a plant. Right. It comes from a plant. Right. So is tobacco, so is cocaine. And obviously that's not good for opioids. So do opioids. Many of them, yes. So just because it's a plant comes from a plant doesn't mean it's not harmful. That makes no sense to me. So. Yeah, but a lot of kids really do think that it's a plant, so it's fine. Right. And even when we were going through the legalization process and they were having hearings and all of that, that came up quite a lot. You know, well, it's from nature. You know, it's just grown naturally, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, Madison is absolutely correct. Most drugs, or most of the drugs that we hear about are coming from plants. Yeah. You know, even the. What's the one that they chew in South America? It's the one that they chew. We did a thing on it. I'd have to think about what that was. Cat. Is it cat or cot? Caught. Why is caught somewhere familiar? But anyway, there are, you know, anything from somebody picking the plant and chewing the leaves to it being processed or semi processed. You know, most of these pharmaceuticals come from a plant source. Okay. And we also know that cannabis use disorder, which is in the DSM five, which is kind of the diagnostic manual that mental health experts use to diagnose a mental health crisis or situation. So cannabis use disorder is in the DSM five. It is a diagnosable illness or condition, and it can result in tolerance, withdrawal, and overdose. And you may remember, we did something on marijuana overdose, and it's called greening, but it can happen. I mean, people can get very, very sick if they use too much. People can develop a tolerance to marijuana, and they can develop or have withdrawal when they try to quit. So often we don't think about that with marijuana, but that's really with almost any addiction. Those are kind of the cornerstones of addiction, is tolerance and withdrawal. Also, another fact is that marijuana smoke can cause chronic coughing, lung irritation, and bronchitis, and that, you know, sometimes that will go away, or sometimes someone will have a really lingering cough for a long time. You have to think, if you're smoking marijuana, there's no filter on that unless you're vaping it. But that's, you know, you don't have a filter if you have a marijuana cigarette or a joint. So that hot air and that smoke is getting directly to your lungs without anything to kind of screen some of it out. Marijuana use can increase risk for mental health issues, including psychosis and schizophrenia. Someone who smokes often, you know, is a regular user and has any history in their family of psychosis, can develop, have four times the risk to develop schizophrenia. So that's very severe illness, obviously. And there are other issues that occur, just like with any other addiction, you know, problems with their education, their social life, social skills, family issues, workplace, et cetera. So, of course it's a health issue, but there are also other kind of mental and emotional health concerns that occur with frequent or chronic marijuana use. It can lower dopamine levels that result in less ambition and motivation. And again, dopamine is that chemical in our brain that is released from that pleasure center in our brain and makes us feel good about what we're doing. We eat something really good, we get a little rush of, oh, that was so good. If some people run a marathon, and when they're finished with the marathon, they get that rush. It's a reward center in our body, and dopamine is what runs that reward center. And when dopamine is depleted, it results in not being able to feel those pleasurable feelings, less ambition, less motivation, etcetera. And what happens is, if you've ever known anyone that chronically uses marijuana, their motivation is gone. You know, they just don't seem to have the energy. They don't feel like doing anything. We used to call that amotivational syndrome back in the day, where people just don't have the motivation to do anything. It's whatever, you know, so. Okay. Okay. Oh, are we on vaping already? Okay, one more about marijuana. I didn't see it skip a little bit. Yeah, it looks like it skipped. Okay. Okay, skip two slides. Okay, I think you're good. Here we go. Okay, another myth, marijuana can't kill you again. You know, back in the day when people used in the sixties, seventies, even toward the eighties, the amount of THC was very low. It was 5% to 7%. If you could get 7%, that was the good stuff. And now we know that THC levels are upwards of 50, 60, 70%. There's even some strains that are close to 80% of THC. That's huge. That's five, six, seven times more powerful or more than what was smoked back in the sixties and seventies. So people can overdose, especially if they're smoking very high levels of something with high. Something with high levels of THC or a strain that's got more of those chemicals that make you feel high. So death can occur, obviously a result of overdose. There's a condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, which really just is a long way of saying uncontrollable vomiting. Again, we talked about this when we talked about greening. Greening is what they call the overdose. Because I've had too much marijuana. That happens, especially if someone is using marijuana and combining it with alcohol, they can get just uncontrollable vomiting from that. As well. As we talked to hallucinations and the respiratory illnesses, there was something we also used to call behavioral toxicity. That is, when you're under the influence of a drug, you do things that maybe aren't real smart, maybe aren't real safe. Maybe on a dare, maybe you're hallucinating and you're doing something relating to that hallucination that is not safe. So that can definitely happen with marijuana. And oftentimes people will have accidents because they're under the influence. Their brain is not clear. Marijuana makes me a better driver. And I remember when the legalization hearings and all were going on, people would say, well, it's better than driving when you're drinking alcohol. And you know, one is not better than the other. Alcohol still causes more dwis, more accidents, more injuries from driving under the influence. But marijuana can cause issues too. And there are people that drive under the influence of marijuana that do have car crashes. I mean, it's just, you know, it happens not as frequently as under alcohol, but pretty, you know, pretty often. Marijuana causes impairment in every performance area that we use while we're driving safely or trying to drive safely, you know, tracking something, coordination, you know, being able to see clearly, distance, you know, how close we are to that car in front of us, you know, how close we are to the line, etcetera. Accidents are typically caused by slower driving or suddenly slow driving, or, you know, alternating speeds where they're driving fast and they slow down all of a sudden and poor lane control. And if you've ever driven down, you know, route 50 in Easton, one, you can smell it from coming from a car, and two, you can see with a person that's driving. You know, I've experienced this quite a lot because I crossed the bridge a lot. You can see someone driving very, very slow, you know, kind of curving in the lane a little bit, those kind of things. So, you know, it does impair driving, definitely. And that, again, is dangerous with our young people because they're not very experienced in driving. Okay. All right. Okay, I'll turn it over to Madison. You're going to talk about myths and beeping, which is, again, the bigger problem at schools. So, you know, kids, when I talk to kids or you hear, you know, kids talking, they think, hey, vaping is safer than smoking a regular cigarette. No. So I actually. I like to say that partly, I think vapes are worse than smoking a cigarette at this point because I like to show kids. I should have saved that picture. Actually, I'm thinking of it. So, actually, it says it here on the slide. One small pod from a babe, which is about this big, is the same thing as another thing. Two whole packs of cigarettes. And you can obviously, like, just by looking at a small pod, a child can easily go through a small pod, and now they're smoking between one to two whole packs of cigarettes. It used to be only the equivalent of one pack of cigarettes, which is about 20 cigarettes in a pack. But now they're saying, I guess, because there's more chemicals and just bad stuff being put into the babes, it's saying that it's equivalent to two packs of cigarettes. Um, so, really, a child could be smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, or four six packs of cigarettes a day, technically. That's horrible. Um, also, there's something called, like. So when you're smoking, when you're using a vape, um, kids get mixed up where they think it's actual smoke coming out. And it's actually called aerosol. Um, and aerosol is all those chemicals. Um, chemicals and then nicotine in the vape that they're inhaling, um, in their body that also cause irreversible lung damage. There's something called a popcorn lung, which, you know, kids can get popcorn lung, where vaping. This can happen if a child just first starts vaping, or they've been vaping for six months, a year, a couple years, whatever, where their lungs really tightly, tightly close up to the point where they have to go to the hospital and they're on, like a breathing machine, and it's kind of up in the air because it's irreversible lung damage. So they may not ever be able to breathe on their own again. And this is the main cause is from vaping, is what studies are showing. Also, there's these heavy metals being put into vape. Some nickel, lead, chromium, tin, aluminum. Obviously, that's not going to be good for your body. No one wants to inhale metal into their body. It doesn't even sound like it's beneficial to you at all. Myth. Vape flavors are safe since the same chemicals are used to flavor food. Yeah. So I like to. When I'm teaching lessons, too, with kids, I also like to say, so the flavoring chemical in a vape is actually the worst, the most toxic ingredient in the vape, most addictive piece in the vape. The flavors are what really select the flavors. They come in, the fruity flavors, the tobacco flavors, but it's mainly the fruity flavors that gets kids addicted. That's the main ingredient to doing that. And obviously, the flavors also poison your lungs, your body, your brain, very, very, very toxic chemicals. So, yeah, while they might taste good, that's the whole point of driving kids into it, to get addicted to it. So just because it tastes good, it doesn't mean it's good for you. Myth. Not that many young people use vapes. I can tell you from just working with Talbot county public schools. A lot of kids are vaping. A lot of young kids are vaping. This goes from elementary school all the way up to high school. From what I see, you know, one in seven high school students and one in 30 middle school students currently use e cigarettes as of 2022. Youth use e cigarettes. E cigarette remains as a serious public health concern. Yeah. So I can. I can see the study, as, you know, even being in 2024 now, this is. This is accurate. This is what I mean. And even now, there's, even now, like what I see in the schools and you know, there's even more kids vaping than what, you know, we see what we catch in the schools. There's, it's, it's, there's a lot, there's a lot of vaping. Nicotine, vaping, marijuana. It's really, really unfortunate. And it's only getting worse because everyone thinks it's okay. Myth. I could see if a young person was vaping. Fact, popular devices are small and come in various shapes. Yeah. So including USB drive. So, no, so vapes are really easily, they can be very easily hidden. Like when they first came out, the jewel looks like a usb and a lot of them do look like USB's. But even like, I've noticed that a lot of these vaping devices are getting smaller and smaller too. So like kids are hiding it in their hoodies or just like in like the palm of their hand and like you can't even see it in their face or just like doing it. And because the nicotine vapes, they don't smell, it's harder to catch it since you're not even smelling it on them. But yeah, so some of them have like a low, low aerosol amounts, but you also got the same which also enables discrete use. So you can't, like I said, you don't always see the aerosol coming out of the vape either. So they're getting trickier or getting smarter and smarter with the new vaping devices coming out. If you can't get addicted to vaping, yes you can. So fact, since they contain nicotine, users can become addicted. Yeah. So along with the other toxic ingredients, the flavors, the metals, cancer causing them, all that, all that's in a vape, nicotine obviously is very, very, very addictive. Same thing with smoking regular cigarettes. Nicotine in vapes reaches the brain in 10 seconds. I tell kids your first time using a vape, you can become addicted just like that. Then your brain is constantly craving. It's mainly the nicotine that your brain is craving. It disturbs brain development. It can lead to behavioral concerns or issues in school, in the classroom when they start vaping, when they may not have used to have those behavioral concerns before in school. Since dialysis and brain is still developing up to about 25, 26 years old, before their brain is fully developed, they are more vulnerable to addiction. We can start out with something as simple as vaping and then they want to experiment to more and more marijuana. Vaping marijuana, different forms of it and go to, you know, opioids, prescription drug use, and it can just, it can just keep going, you know, depending on, you know, the child. And like Beth was saying, they know mental health conditions if it's, you know, if there's past history of addiction in the family, things like that. But, yeah, it just takes one time with a vape to be addicted to it, too. So I'll say one more thing. Yeah. Just to add on with what Madison is saying, it used to be, and I believe it is still the case, that nicotine is the most addictive substance in our community, in our culture. They're more addictive than heroin, more addictive than any of the other drugs that are out there. Now, that being said, you know, as Madison was alluding to these chemicals, you know, they're making them more addictive. So, you know, to be more addictive than nicotine. Yeah. So, like, the combination of, like, in the aerosol mist that the kids are inhaling, it's the nicotine plus all those chemicals combined. So it's super, super risky and addicting. Yes. There. Yeah, obviously that's gonna, you know, that's gonna. Your lungs are very much gonna suffer because of that in your brain. Yeah. So let me. I. So, like I said, I'm gonna do questions at the end when I can view the question screen. I really wanted to share with you guys some of these, like, local adolescents substance use disorder resources say you have a concern for your child using this to go from vaping to anything else. These four resources are the only local resources on the shore that will take kids who have these concerns and also provide mental health. On top of that, they will do drug testing, they do groups, the one on one. They'll offer different. They'll also, you know, offer you different resources out in the community. New Day start is the newest provider out there that will provide adolescent, like, assessments, therapy, treatment groups, all that for kids. And they are also getting ready to. They're going to do summer programs for kids, kind of like camps, but for mental health and substance use. They're going to be doing that, I believe they're going to start this summer, and then they're going to be doing. They're going to be coming to east and high and east and middle and providing transportation both ways from school and home is their plan. And they're going to be doing, like, after school things with them, after school activities, stuff like that with them. But definitely keep that in mind if you're interested. I think they're super great resource for kids. But so are, so are all of the course is the Corsica Torchester County Behavioral Health offers adolescent support resources Life Energy Wellness center offers therapy, treatment groups, all that same thing as needed. Newstart so super great resources out there. If you have any questions for me, if you're interested in hearing more information, you can definitely contact me. I'll be happy to discuss in those options with you. Send those referrals off. If you want to get in contact with any of these, I'm more than happy to help assist with that as well. And then this is not just substance use resources also for mental health as well, because, you know, I believe, you know, with the kids are using for reasons the mental health all, you know comes with that, the whole package. So let me go ahead. If anyone has any questions, I'm going to try to do this. There's one what are done to children who are caught vaping? So in school, the policy, so it's kind of changed a little bit because of the legalization from July with marijuana, but because the kids are also vaping marijuana, from what I'm seeing, kids are either way with the vapes, regardless if it's nicotine or marijuana they're getting suspended for, depending on the number of offenses they've had in school, between like three days, five days, ten days, they're getting suspended. If they're caught with vaping marijuana, that gets, I believe that gets reported to the resource officer they have at the school, and then that goes to either possibly teen court or DJ's, depending on the qualifications for either or. But because of the new laws that from last year from marijuana, you know, policies are in the process of changing meaning. But marijuana is still absolutely illegal. You know, no tolerance for drugs in school, very much illegal for kids. But the consequences surrounding vaping and marijuana use won't be the same as like this past school year, how it's always been. And kids are mainly getting suspended. And unless they are dealing marijuana, they're selling marijuana, they're not going to be up for expulsion unless they are selling, distributing. So yeah, that is that. Does anyone have any other questions? They can give it a minute. Oh, and to also add on to her question, now that I'm thinking of it, they also get referred to me. I get all the referrals for any kind of drug concerns or situations going on in the schools. I get all the referrals. I get parents a call, you know, the child can also, I meet with the child about the situation, and I can also, I offer, I offer parents support and resources out in the community, such as these four listed on the screen here for resources. Resources support in case there are more serious concerns, abuse for the child. I need that as well. I don't think. Is there any more questions? Don't think so. Again, if you guys come up with any more questions, feel free to shoot me an email. I can share that in the chat again, like I normally do that right now. And if you have any suggestions for other presentations that you would like, maybe about a specific drug or about, you know, prevention or anything like that, please let Madison know. We're always happy to, you know, come up with new subjects and topics and to keep, you know, keep things timely. I think there is. Is that for Talbot county school? Yeah. Yeah. So this is for Talbot County Public Schools where, where I work. Beth is with a different, different agency, but I'm with Talbot county public schools. So that is my email. I share the chat. If you guys have any questions, concerns want to chat about, maybe if you have concerns for your child or again, what Beth was saying, if you have any ideas of what you guys want us to do, more webinars on, we're more than happy to do so as well. Any more questions or comments? All right, well, again, my email is there if you guys think of any more. Thank you guys for attending. And we will have another webinar next month in May, and that's going to be on, you know, what to look out for if you suspect your child is using in like their bedroom in the household and their book bags. Signs, symptoms to look for, but different, just recognizing if you see anything for where that your child may be, like having their bedroom or that they may be doing differently, like we're going to be going over things like that. Just signs to look for in the house or the child in general. All right. Well, thank you. Everybody has a great afternoon and a great weekend. Let me go ahead and stop the shooting.