The abuse of drugs and alcohol creates a range of social and individual ills, and those ills are compounded when the abuse starts at a young age. Young people can, in some cases, literally be throwing their lives away when they drink or take drugs.
So it was heartbreaking to read in the Times Free Press about the astonishing rates of substance abuse among young people in Hamilton County.
Here are just a few of the findings from the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey:
• Forty-five percent of male high school students who responded to the survey had used one or more of four dangerous substances — alcohol, cigarettes, cocaine or marijuana — in the past month.
• Thirty-eight percent of female high schoolers had used at least one of those substances in the past month.