As the editor of a small town newspaper, I find myself privy to all sorts of stories and information, some legitimate, some merely gossip, sent to me though official channels like emails, text messages and voicemails but also off-the-record, at grocery stores, parties, bars, coffee shops or going about my daily errands around Sedona and the Verde Valley, off the clock but always on duty.
Due to my involvement as an organizer with the local art scene, many teenagers also give me news tips or talk to me off the record about their views on growing up in the Verde Valley or changes made by adults and city leaders that directly affect them.
Of course, the biggest complaint local teenagers have is that there’s nothing to do, but it doesn’t take a journalist to know that — ask any of them. Teenagers all explore hobbies, be they the arts, skateboarding, playing video games, reading, mountain biking, writing poetry or playing music but always looming are the ease with which they can acquire and abuse recreational drugs.
Teens experiment with the substances at hand and sometimes make dumb decisions, like we all did, but an increasing trend some teens have noticed and confided in me is a recent uptick in the use of heroin. Marijuana use and underage drinking puts students at risk of DUIs, arrests, hospitalizations, sexual assaults or car accidents, but heroin and heavy drugs open the possibly of a sudden and fatal overdose, especially if teens graduate from smoking heroin to injecting it.
We can talk to our teens about the dangers of underage drinking and drug abuse, but that only alleviates the symptom, not the cause and certainly does not remove the temptation. The real means to solve the problem is to give teens a venue or activities where drug use is the lesser of two options.
While we adults see the Verde Valley as a collection of relatively separate communities based on demographics and dominant economic industries — tourism, ranching, small businesses, wine, art — our teens are far more socially integrated. Students transfer schools as their parents move or have family spread across the Verde Valley. Students from Camp Verde have friends in Sedona who have friends at Mingus, etc., easing the migration of positive and negative social trends, including drug use, making the increase in use of a particular drug or dangerous behavior a Verde Valley-wide concern.
In the Verde Valley, there are few late-night venues where teens are free to hang out and be themselves. Many coffee shops used to stay open late, but now they close early. Bars are off-limits. The skate parks are packed but close at dusk and don’t really appeal to non-skaters. The Verde River and local parks offer a lot of day activities but nothing after the sun goes down.
Local businesses, parents, the city and those of us who care about our kids need to work together to cater to the after-school needs of our teens not just to keep them away from heroin or other drugs, but to nurture the artists, engineers, entrepreneurs, musicians and community leaders they are destined to become.
