0:00:02 – Speaker 1
Welcome to the nextTalk podcast, where we share real stories and practical advice for parenting the digital world.
0:00:09 – Speaker 2
We’re your hosts, Mandy and Kim. Mandy is an award-winning author and the founder of nextTalk, and I’m the director of nextTalk, a nonprofit organization created to strengthen families through open communication. You can check out all of our resources at NextTalkorg.
0:00:24 – Speaker 1
We’re your wives, moms and friends, tackling culturally relevant topics from a Christian perspective. We’re sharing what we’ve learned and where we’ve failed. We’re so glad you’re here for this conversation.
0:00:37 – Speaker 2
Well, today’s show, mandy and I are really excited to have a special guest. His name is Jermaine Galloway. He’s been a police officer for over 18 years in Idaho. Now, though, he’s a Texan Welcome to our area. He’s an officer who educates professionals and communities on drug and alcohol prevention and enforcement. He does that through events and online webinars. We’re very pleased to have you here. Thank you for being on the show.
0:01:06 – Speaker 3
You’re welcome. You’re welcome. Thank you guys for having me. I’m excited to be here. I enjoy training and training people and what’s going on and how trends are trending. I happen to help you guys out.
0:01:15 – Speaker 2
Before we dig in, can you tell us a little bit about your past, how you got to this point of doing what you do?
0:01:22 – Speaker 3
Sure, i was in law enforcement for 18 years in Idaho. Little bit before that I’m from California, played college basketball, which is what made a long story short, was what took me to Idaho And then, after I went to Idaho, i’d always wanted to become a police officer. So I became a police officer in 1999 and was in law enforcement through the end of 2015. Left law enforcement because I do so much of this. I started a training company during my law enforcement days and it wasn’t really a company. At first I was just doing some local trainings. Then that grew to some statewide trainings and that grew to some nationwide trainings And now I speak in about two to three states a week. I train 75, 80,000 people a year. I do webinars, i do in person community nights, law enforcement trainings, mental health treatment. Parents People ask me who do you train? I say, if they deal with drugs, i train them. So that’s what I do now.
I moved my family and company to the Dallas area within Texas now about four years ago just over four years ago in January. People say, why’d you move there? I say, well, i like warm weather number one. So Texas has plenty of that. I like warm weather, but also, i fly so much that flying out of Boise, idaho, was difficult, being on airports all the time and having connecting everywhere and sitting in other cities. That was not my primary city to be training in, so ultimately, dfw being the fourth biggest airport in the United States, that’s a big reason of why we also moved was I needed to be closer to my work and my work as an airport?
0:02:49 – Speaker 2
So we’re very thankful for the work that you do and we’re excited for our audience to get to know you a little better than the information that you have. Let’s start with fentanyl. That’s really where we want to focus on this show, But for a lot of people we see it in the headlines, we hear about it, we hear about the deaths rising and we don’t exactly even know what it is. Can you start us there? Kind of the elementary version of what is fentanyl?
0:03:13 – Speaker 3
Sure. So fentanyl obviously is a drug. Fentanyl is an opioid. So real quick definition of an opioid is a painkiller. It is a painkiller that affects the opioid receptors in your brain. So there are many different types of opioids out there.
Some start with natural properties and then are synthesized. So the best way to define a synthetic is a drug that’s made by chemists out of a lab. So some opioids do have natural properties to them, but then are synthesized. We call those semi-synthetics, where you have natural and a synthetic both in the pill together. Many of our opioids are actually just straight synthetics though, where there’s not natural properties present at all. This was made by chemists in a lab five years ago or 50 years ago. Many of these chemists are not in the United States. It could have been made or originated out of a different country. Today we’re talking about opioids that are painkiller properties.
So many of us on this call have taken opioids at some point. You had knee surgery, you tore an ACL, you had a tooth removed by the dentist, you had a root canal, and a lot of people prescribe you pain pills and those are opioids. So fentanyl is an opioid, but the only difference it is one of the most powerful opioids we have that is being actively used. So that’s and the way to wrap your head around that is, think alcohol. And if you drink a beer versus, you drank distilled spirits. And you drank eight ounces of a beer or eight ounces of distilled spirits. They’re both alcohol, but one is a lot stronger than the other and everybody knows that. You need to think the same thing when you think opioids.
0:04:47 – Speaker 1
So this is fascinating to me. So fentanyl can be prescribed by a doctor right, and we see this across the board kids abusing all kinds of different prescription drugs right, but why is there such an increase in fentanyl deaths and why is it making headlines? What do parents need to know? What makes this so different?
0:05:07 – Speaker 3
So, as a parent, i’m a parent too. I have 23 years, all the way down to eight years old, so I have multiple generations here, but with that, here’s the easiest way to understand it. As a parent, there’s two main things that you need to focus on with drug use in kids, and I need to teach you the baseline concept for you now to understand why a drug is trending. And those two main things are this accessibility and price points. So kids don’t go looking for the finest whiskey. Kids don’t buy $70 bottles of alcohol. Kids don’t go looking for expensive drugs. And kids who have higher socioeconomic levels, who can’t afford it more, they still want cheaper drugs. Hence why vaping is an epidemic for us. You can buy vapes for $5, $6. And they’re at every gas station. So availability and price points. So, following that, why is fentanyl so popular?
Most of the fentanyl that we see in the United States is coming from drug cartels in Mexico. We know that It is coming from other countries too, but most of it that we see is coming from there. You’re seeing a lot of media on that. I was just actually at a hotel over the weekend in Dallas. As I’m checking out of the hotel, there’s the Dallas Morning News is sitting right there And as I look at the Dallas Morning News, the cover is fentanyl in North Texas. That was the headline of Dallas Morning News just Sunday morning. Three page spread on fentanyl in North Texas.
So why are we seeing so much of it? It is cheap, it’s easy to get And it comes from relatively close to us. So it’s not coming from Europe, it’s not coming from the Netherlands and not coming from those places. It’s coming from basically our neighbors, which means more accessibility and cheaper price points. So that’s one of the big reasons you are seeing more of it. It doesn’t matter if it’s fentanyl, it doesn’t matter if it’s donuts. If it’s more accessible and it’s cheaper, more kids will use it.
0:06:47 – Speaker 1
So you say accessibility and my mind goes to online ordering.
0:06:53 – Speaker 3
Not anymore. We’re not really seeing that. We do see that Everything’s available online, but you don’t have to do it online. It would be like you buying Coca-Cola or Pepsi online. You say I don’t need to do that, it’s a block away, it’s a mile from that. I don’t need to sit in my computer and do that, i can just drive down the street. I’ll grab it on my way to work. So it’s the same thing there. Your kids don’t need to go online and get it and worry about it being shipped and being tracked to their credit card and their name and showing up at their house or going to the wrong house.
There are fentanyl dealers in high schools. There are fentanyl dealers in our communities. And the bigger thing is why are kids using it? And that’s because perception of harm has changed. Perception of harm is what keeps kids alive and keeps them safe. Perception of harm is what says you look both ways when you cross the street because you might get hit by a bus if you don’t. So a perception of harm goes down, which it has for fentanyl through the normalization and just hearing about it and also knowing people who use it. Therefore, you don’t fear it as much because they didn’t die. Perception of harm has gone down. So you’re seeing more of your kids use it and it also ties back to they can afford it and it’s readily available. So what’s happening now is where we used to hear kids would say, no, i’m afraid of fentanyl Man, this stuff will kill you. We’re getting more comments now from kids saying, no, i knew it was there. What’s the big deal? I knew it was there, so their perception of harm has gone down quite a bit.
0:08:10 – Speaker 2
I feel like this is where the parent piece really comes in the perception of harm. What are some of the things you feel like parents need to communicate to their kids? Because we’re all about open communication here and talking with our kids in an ongoing basis. You know, it’s not a sit down conversation, it’s the day to day opportunities to pour into our kids and talk about the hard stuff, and this is the perfect example.
0:08:32 – Speaker 3
So, first, the first mistake we sometimes make is we have to sit down, we turn the lights down and we’re all going to sit at the dinner table in this uncomfortable environment and we’re all going to talk about it. It doesn’t work like that. Please don’t do that. Okay? So what you want to do is just like you said, the day to day, or even a couple times a week. Doesn’t have to be every day, you don’t want to saturate something too much either But a few times a week where you take the opportunity. So, for instance, if one of my teenagers in the house the Dallas Morning News article hey, look at this, look who’s in the morning news That’s my opportunity to talk about it. When you hear about the overdose in the school district or the neighboring school district, or when you see it on the news, or when you know you heard that someone got kicked out of school for drugs, those are your opportunities to have that conversation. That’s when you do that. Unfortunately, society gives us way too many opportunities to have that conversation. So you don’t have to worry about those opportunities coming up. You need to have that conversation.
And a big reason why and we kind of discussed this offline before we started is this you have to address the small stuff. Sometimes we have too many parents who say one I did that, so how can I talk about it? Well, yeah, parents, a lot of us made stupid decisions. We are kids. It’s called being a kid. It doesn’t mean that we find acceptable for our kids. Right, we grew from it, we learned from it. Just like our parents made dumb decisions, still told us not to do things. So, with that in mind, you know, having that, set that aside, set aside. I did a drug to, or what have you set that aside?
The other thing is don’t look at drugs as small. Yes, is vape’s a small or issue compared to fentanyl? Yes, but is cannabis a smaller issue compared to fentanyl? Yes, but don’t look at it that way, because everything starts with the smaller issues. If your kids are going to start using a drug, they don’t start with fentanyl knowingly. They start with vapes, cannabis, alcohol, something like that is what they’re going to start with. Now, all of them are not going to move to fentanyl, but some of them might, and what you want to do to reduce that chance of them doing that is take the small stuff seriously, address it, and I’ll give you kind of one example here.
It wasn’t drug related, i don’t remember what it was related to, but my kids did something and it didn’t even bother me, it didn’t even irritate me. All right, the kids thought it did, but it didn’t irritate me. But I looked at my wife. I go, they can’t know that, they can’t know, it didn’t bother me, right? I don’t know if they were throwing a baseball towards the house in a window or something like that. And I know you’re like kids, or kids they’re gonna throw baseball towards house. You know, but it didn’t bother me.
But they can’t know that. They need to think that man, dad didn’t like it when I do that. So I better not take it to the next level because dad really won’t like that. And that’s kind of the philosophy You want to take, because, just like when we were kids, they’re always gonna push it to a higher level than what the standard issue set. So if the standard is way up here that you said, it’s gonna go pretty high. If the standards here, it’s gonna go right here. And that’s really a philosophy, to take a look at it. Even when it doesn’t bother you, they can’t know that. So that’s a big thing with drug prevention.
0:11:20 – Speaker 1
I love that talking point right there because it’s like if your kid comes to you with something little like my friend vaped in the bathroom or this is what happened instead of just Dismissing that as oh, you don’t ever do that Kind of dig in to those conversations and say you know what? that article we read last week about that kid dying from Vettnoll it started with one puff of vape in the bathroom and then that escalated and kind of walk them through so they Understand like my choices matter, these little things that I decide day to day. When my friends are making bad decisions And the peer pressure is real, right, and they feel like sometimes everybody’s doing it, like they only the only one not doing it. That’s how they feel sometimes. But we, you can walk them through, your choice matters, because this could be you in a year If. If you take that puff and then you get addicted and then you want something else and then you, you move along. That’s how addiction works, kind of thing. Explaining that process to them I think is really important.
0:12:21 – Speaker 3
Yeah, and as a parent, you don’t have to be an expert or knowledgeable on a drug topic. I mean, i’m not an expert on on cars, but I know. When my oil light comes on and you take it to somebody who is, i mean, and it’s, it’s that simple, you know, i know how to put air in a tire and I can figure it out. How you don’t have to be an expert on a topic to work your way through it. You can say, hey, let’s Google search, let’s look at this, let’s go to these websites, let’s go this government website, look this stuff up. You can simply do the simple stuff that you do when you’re looking up concert tickets or movie tickets. You sit there with your kids and you guys do it together amidst the same concepts. So, parents, you have to be experts on all this to go navigate your way through it.
0:12:56 – Speaker 2
I’m glad you said that because a lot of times parents feel afraid to have these conversations because they’re like I don’t know all the ins and outs, i don’t know how to explain everything. And I think the other side of that is sometimes parents think if I tell my kid the information or give them the stats, they’re going to be more interested and curious about it. Am I pushing them into trying this drug? Tell us what you think about that theory.
0:13:19 – Speaker 3
Yeah, there is some truth to that. You have to be careful You’re not pushing them into it per se because their curiosity was probably already there. But you can educate your kids or something they didn’t know. So you know, as a drug trainer, i don’t just train on fence on my train on fifty hundred different topics. There are some topics that I you know.
When I call community nights, my open forums, where I’m talking to just parents and some of those parents brainer kids. There’s drugs. I don’t talk about those forms, because I know that there are some drugs their kids don’t know about and wouldn’t know about unless I was Want to tell them about it. So I share that with professionals. With that being said, fentanyl, vapes, cannabis you don’t need to worry about that. Your kids are gonna hear about all those and they’re gonna learn about all those by Time to hit middle school and high school. So that needs to not be a fear a parent has is hey, i’m teaching my kid about fentanyl. No, i got news for you. We have football stadiums full of people dying Those numbers of fentanyl every year. Your kids are gonna hear about this drug.
So when you know it’s a drug, they’re gonna learn about alcohol, cannabis, vapes, fentanyl. You don’t have to worry about that fear of you teaching them something They’re not gonna learn about. For instance, my fourth grader I have not taught talked to him about fentanyl yet, but I will if it comes up. I wouldn’t be afraid to talk to him about it now, because he’s gonna learn about it by the time he hits middle school. He’s gonna know about it. So and we’re only two years from that, so I’m not too concerned about teaching him now. I’m gonna teach him that, hey, you can buy it in these places, and no, i wouldn’t say that. But what I say, it comes in gummy bear forms. You have to be careful, sure. So there’s certain things I would train them and teach them on, even as a parent, because they’re gonna learn it Anyways. So it’s better to learn from you than street level drug culture.
0:14:53 – Speaker 1
I’m all about like educating my kids, trying to get them to understand you know Their choices matter, that kind of stuff and I don’t want to scare them. You know I don’t want. I don’t want to shock, scare them. I want it to be like educational. But there is truth. Right to the to the statement of with fentanyl, i mean, you could take just a little dose and it kill you. Yeah, so talk to us about that. Because, like I think, sometimes when I say that to my kids, they think I’m being over dramatic and and I’m saying, no, this is for real, it is serious. I’ve read stories, i’ve seen it. Kids, they just take one little pill and they die.
Yeah just tell us how I should respond to my kids when they’re like mom, you’re being over dramatic here.
0:15:36 – Speaker 3
Yes, so first scared. Yes, cure tactics don’t work, so don’t use them. But when you are talking fentanyl you’re not using a scare tactic So you can explain that to your kids. I know parents some parents try to scare their kids. We’re not talking about that.
With fentanyl, we know most drugs you don’t use once can kill you. Fentanyl actually can and does. For adults, kids And even adults or kids who have a tolerance to the drug, because you build up more of a tolerance, it’s gonna generally reduce your likelihood of overdosing because your tolerance is higher unless you dose it higher, right? So as you start dosing higher than you start seeing the overdoses. Or for someone like us who doesn’t use fentanyl, does not have a tolerance to a drug, and then we use it like the overdose. So you’re not did. Say in a scare tactic, something to know for fentanyl. If you grabbed a small pinch of Salt, table salt, a very small pinch of that, let’s say I don’t know 20 granules, 25 granules of that, that’s a fatal dose of fentanyl for most people who have no tolerance to the drug. So it’s a very small dose. Now You might hear, hey, but this is used medically, right? grandma was giving fence, was given fentanyl from her doctor. Number one grandma probably had a tolerance to pain killers because most like her doctor and starter with that, she’s probably using something else. So again, that tolerance is going to reduce it a little bit. Grandma compared even you and I right, even grandma’s age in our age is going to reduce it a little bit for her but not for us. So grandma had a tolerance to it. But also that doctor knew exactly the dose grandma was taking.
When you take fentanyl out of a pill that comes from a drug dealer off the street, you don’t know what dose is in there. You have no idea. It could be a low dose, it could be a relatively high dose, which could be four more granules, right, so not a lot. So, with that being said, that’s why the DEA has put out a really good program called one pill can kill. Parents can go look that up. It’s very parent-friendly.
And we are seeing fentanyl cut into other drugs, from ecstasy a little bit in cannabis Cut into the m30s are the most popular that we’re seeing the blues, the 30 milligram oxy pills, cut into there, so, and those pills are very popular in schools. So you’re also seeing drugs that kids don’t realize. Fentanyl is present and and it is present and a very small amount of Fentanyl is lethal for a large percentage of society and even for people with tolerance a higher amount It can still be lethal for them. So it’s not like they’re exempt either. It’s just one of those powerful opioids We have ever seen that’s being used at this recreational level. It is an incredibly powerful drug. It’s a good drug for medicine. It’s not all bad. It’s a good drug for medicine under the care of a doctor, after you’ve gotten to a certain point with some pain management. But that’s not recreational. Fentanyl could be lethal for you and I. That’s not recreational.
0:18:22 – Speaker 2
Mentioned earlier, gummy bears too. I mean, it can even come in a candy form.
0:18:27 – Speaker 3
Yes. So any synthetic drug remember it’s made by chemists and comes out of a lab. If you follow this concept, any synthetic drug can be turned into a liquid. Any liquid can be put on a gummy bear. So you just kind of follow some simple steps with it, right? So could a gummy bear be meth? Yes. Could it be fentanyl? Yes, could it be some of the synthetic forms of cannabis We’re seeing? yes, it could really be anything. So you just don’t know.
And you know some people say what about these test strips We’re hearing about? you know, because you might have kids that get a whole of test strips That say I can test it and see if fentanyl is in the gummy, and I know it’s not there and I’m good or I’m safe. There’s different versions of fentanyl that the test strips don’t find and there’s other drugs that the test strips don’t find. So and you can look at that with fentanyl or even without it, saying, well, you’re using a test strip or something else and fentanyl could be there.
So again there, when you talk street level drugs and where our kids are acquiring most of them, there is no one perfect safe highway for that. So there is no. Well, it is a hundred percent safe if I do this. It does not work like that. It just simply doesn’t. And you’re seeing the numbers of overdoses in our schools, which are rising. Fentanyl overdoses and deaths in our schools are rising, and fentanyl overdoses among the age group We’re talking about on our streets, which means you weren’t at school because it was Saturday, but you go to that school but you happen to die at home.
0:19:48 – Speaker 2
So that matters too, and those numbers are growing up you mentioned schools, and I feel like our schools are just Struggling with this issue. What are your thoughts on that?
0:19:58 – Speaker 3
Yeah, our schools are overrun Because they are. They are in the education system. They’re not in the drug enforcement or drug education. That’s not their job. And I you know we have to be sensitive as parents. When you went to become a teacher, you didn’t say I want to be a math teacher so I can deal with drug issues in my school. I didn’t want to be an economics teacher to deal with drugs. I wanted to be an economics teacher. I wanted to work with kids. I wanted to counsel kids on mental health and depression. I didn’t want to be searching backpacks all day. You know they didn’t. They didn’t sign up for this. This is not what they want, but unfortunately, what I’m explaining to schools is the way I tell them. I know you didn’t sign up to be drug enforcement cops but unfortunately, unfortunately, you’re kind of drug enforcement cops and This is not going to get better going into next school year. It actually I’m telling my classes recently as a webinar an hour ago It is going to get significantly worse next year And the reason is it’s more accessible. It’s more available and we’re already seeing perception of harm again go down and we’re already seeing Overdoses in the schools.
An example I can give you is this I read the same news articles You do. People send them to me or I come across some on my own or what have you. The news articles are not doing justice of the numbers We are seeing in schools and this is why Someone notifies the media who then writes an article. On some cases the media is not being notified. Law enforcement is, you know, toxicology labs are, but every school’s not calling the media going, hey, we have this going on. Some of them aren’t telling the media. So what’s happening is these numbers are higher than you think they are. So parents who read an article once a month, couple a month, might say well, that’s just a couple, and those are the big schools. That’s those guys. Those are schools that 3,000 kids. That’s not us.
I can tell you from my trainings guys. I train 75,000 people a year. I train hundreds of school districts a year. We’re seeing it in rural America. We’re seeing it in schools that have 600 kids in it. We are seeing it in large schools. We’re seeing it in inner city schools. We’re seeing in schools in the country. There is no one who is exempt from where. We are seeing fentanyl cases right now. We are seeing them everywhere. We are seeing deaths in the middle school. We are seeing deaths in the high school. We are seeing overdoses. We’re seeing Narcan administered. We are seeing all of it. Okay, and these are face-to-face conversation. I’m not going to, of course, name the districts, but many face-to-face conversations that I have with superintendents and principals, they go this is what happened, this is what we’re seeing. That number is not going to go down next year. I’m telling schools you need to prepare for the numbers you’re going to see next year. They’re going to be up. Okay, they’re going to be way up. So you need to start preparing for that now.
0:22:24 – Speaker 1
You mentioned Narcan. Can you tell us what that is and why it’s important for schools, people who work with kids on the front lines, what that is and what they need to know about it?
0:22:35 – Speaker 3
Yeah, so Narcan is an opioid reversal drug. The easiest way to think of Narcan is this When you take fentanyl or other opioids, heroin is an opioid too. So theoretically heroin is a painkiller. So when you take heroin or other opioids, it binds to the receptor in your brain. What Narcan basically does is kicks it off the receptor in your brain. So it’s a reversal drug. Basically, people have overdosed and are dying or have died and Narcan brings them back and reverses the drug.
It’s one of the best drugs we actually have on our streets is Narcan. It is, say, hundreds of thousands of lives. So many schools are starting to carry it. Usually the nurse has it A lot of times your school resource officer will have it If you have one of those, sometimes assistant principal, you can get it free through a lot of health departments. A lot of states are issuing it for free States of grants for it. So your schools don’t necessarily even have to pay for it. They can get it for free. One of the hurdles with Narcan is it is temperature sensitive. So you can’t you know soccer mom can’t just leave it in your car in Texas in August and you can’t leave it in your car in North Dakota in January. Right, it’s temperature sensitive, so generally people have to keep it indoors or on their person or in a climate controlled environment. But it works really well. It works for kids and adults.
The unfortunate part not to get us too far past fentanyl, but we have a drug called xylazine now, and xylazine well, long story short, is an animal tranquilizer that is being used with fentanyl and spikes the high of fentanyl. As a fentanyl wasn’t strong enough anyway, it spikes high of fentanyl. And what’s happening when people are using drugs like xylazine is xylazine is not an opioid. I laid kind of down one opioid. It’s not an opioid but it spikes the high of opioids, so it’s reducing the effectiveness of Narcan. So now, where we were administering Narcan to some people when xylazine is present, it’s not reversing. And why share this is? we are seeing xylazine and fentanyl being pressed in the pills, which means if your kids use it, there’s a chance or a shot it’s going to. Narcan is not going to work at all for some of them. So we still do this for Narcan, but in some cases it’s not going to work Due to xylazine or other drugs being present.
0:24:48 – Speaker 2
Would you suggest that parents ask their schools if they have Narcan? Is that something we should be asking?
0:24:54 – Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, i mean, if my child’s in a school, i want to know, and I know ours do. So if my child’s in a school, i want to know. I want to know if it’s there. I mean this is or even at least the local police department or a first responder. I mean it’s going to be hard pressed to have a first responder who doesn’t have it in today’s day and age. Most do, not all most do, and you know I live in the city, so response times from EMS to my kids will be three or four minutes. Someone’s going to be there, right? So, with that being said, i feel comfortable that there could be a quick enough response to it. But some you know I’m sure you guys have some parents from rural America watch this and some of those response times are 20 or 30 minutes. So that’s some stuff you’re going to want to know, absolutely.
0:25:33 – Speaker 1
As you’re talking about. You know new drugs coming on the scene. I hadn’t even heard of this one, right, this new one that’s being mixed with now fentanyl. It makes parents overwhelmed, like how do we keep up with all of it? Because there’s always going to be something new that they’re adding to the drugs. And then it takes me back to the little things matter, the little conversations matter. What other preventative things would you say? when your kids are little, when they’re listening to you, you know and I’m talking late elementary, early middle school they still think you’re cool. To me, that’s a perfect time to dive into a lot of cool subjects. You know deep subjects that you can really instill some foundational truth with them on some things. And so what other preventative things would you tell us, as parents, to do? Because I feel like the more we can do it before it becomes a problem, before they start walking down a path of numbing themselves with drugs and alcohol and just wanting an escape, what are some preventative things that we can do other than just the little conversations matter?
0:26:35 – Speaker 3
Yeah, start early and also pay attention to what you’re saying. Because here’s what happens. I’m having a conversation with my child. I say the little stuff matters, blah, blah, blah. But then I’m talking to my spouse and my child happens to be watching TV, or at least I think they are. They’re watching TV and they’re listening to this conversation I’m having with my spouse. I’m going I don’t see why everybody thinks that’s such a big deal. Why is it such a big deal? They only do this. Okay, what’s happening when we do that as parents is we’re normalizing something, and I’m not telling parents what philosophies they need to have. I’m telling them what philosophies they need to be verbalizing.
So many parents have their own opinions and I’ve always had the opinion, even as a trainer. You’re an adult. I’m not changing your mind on anything. I’m gonna change your mind on politics. I’m not changing your mind on your vision, your vision on drugs that you know about. You know I might teach you something you didn’t know about that you know. Now say, wow, that shouldn’t be on our streets. But I’m not changing your mind on a lot of things. Right So, and I respect that.
But you got to be careful what you verbalize. You got to be careful what you verbalize, because you tell your child one thing but they see you be an apathetic to some other stuff and they go really mom doesn’t care. Look at, look at the way she said about this. She really doesn’t care. And you want your kids to think you care. And because you care about your kids and you care about their health, which means actually you do care about substances they might be putting in their bodies. So that is one thing I would share, because you know I’ll be standing there talking to parents or all here people I’m in airports all time all here people talking about drugs And just the way they’re talking.
At first I said I know you have no idea what you’re talking about because that’s not accurate. But you know, other times I’m thinking, if this is the way you’re talking in front of me and I’m a stranger, how do you talk in the comfort of your own home And what are you saying there? And your kids are receiving all of this, and then when your child starts doing something, you’re going to be shocked by that. You’re going to be shocked and, oh my god, horrified by it And you go.
You know most of the stuff our kids learn. They learn from us at this age group. Once they hit college and a little bit later, yeah, they start learning a little more from the streets and their professors. But when your children are in middle school, elementary school, early high school, they’re learning mostly from you and the kids on school property. That’s where they’re learning most. So when you sit back and say, how did my kid learn this? They learned it from you most likely. So just keep that in mind on what you say, how you say it and your attitudes towards things, especially in the drug world.
0:28:49 – Speaker 2
I love that because it’s so true It’s being normalized on campus with friends and you know, even in cartoons and joking around The drug culture is very normalized And if we’re not setting that standard then we just play right into that and help create the problem You know we recently talked about. You can’t stop what you don’t know. Tell us a little bit more about that, because I love that saying.
0:29:13 – Speaker 3
Yeah, that’s my tagline. You know, if you don’t even know what you’re looking at, what you’re dealing with, where to find it? I mean where drugs is being sold in gas stations, shopping malls, smoke shops, online through apps? I mean and I’m not mean online, not the dark web, i mean online apps that you guys probably used over the weekend. You know that have drug products there. So if you don’t even know what you’re looking at, you don’t even know where it is, you don’t even know its impact How are you going to stop anything? So that’s why it’s helpful. You can’t stop, but you don’t know.
The first thing of really drug prevention is educating yourself to the best of your ability. When you see that Dallas Morning News article highlighting fentanyl, don’t just walk past it. Pick it up and read it. Sit there and read it. Even my wife, who understands a lot of this she sits through hundreds of my trainings learns stuff from that article. She goes, wow, i didn’t realize that she learned stuff from that article. You have to read that stuff. It’s out there for a reason. Okay, they’re not putting on the front page of a newspaper because, yeah, no one’s doing it. It’s there for a reason. So look at that and educate yourself, and then you can expand your education.
0:30:14 – Speaker 2
And we want to be relevant because our kids are hearing it and if we don’t know what’s going on, they’re not going to respect us or think we know what their world is dealing with. And so, yeah, getting the education I agree completely And then talking to our kids. like you said, we have got to keep that conversation going. Is there anything else that you would want our parents to know?
0:30:35 – Speaker 3
Yeah, keep your head up, parents. Every kid is not using drugs. Most kids don’t use drugs, and even when they do, there’s different levels of it. There’s I tried it, i experimented, i do it a lot, i mean and then there’s addiction, which is kind of the final part, which that’s usually what a lot of times might lead to death also, not always, sometimes it’s just trying to once. But every child is not using drugs. So don’t lose your mind thinking, oh my gosh, the world’s not ending. But for those who are using drugs it is much more alarming.
So your goal is to keep your child healthy, even healthier than you and healthier than the things you did, and view it that way and do the best, because failure doesn’t mean an F, failure can mean a C minus. like, well, my kids kind of doing this, but I’m still fighting the fight. Don’t just give up going where they’re vaping and using all stuff, anyways, i get none. No, no, no, no. It is a marathon, and for parents who are struggling with addiction themselves or with their kids, it is a marathon also. It doesn’t end overnight. It didn’t start overnight. It’s not going to end overnight.
So don’t go to one treatment provider, one meeting, and think your kid is quote unquote cured. You’re not really cured from addiction. It doesn’t work like that. So keep your head up, fight the fight. Be the parent. Don’t expect society to raise your kids, because they’re going to let you down. If you expect people outside those doors to raise your kids, you’re going to be a highly disappointed parent. Don’t expect society to do that. Do your job and raise your children, and your goal is to make them healthier than even you were. That’s your. That’s your end goal.
0:32:02 – Speaker 2
That’s great. Jermaine, agree completely. We so appreciate you being on the show. You’ve got webinars and resources on your website. Tell people how they can get ahold of you and find out about your resources.
0:32:12 – Speaker 3
Yeah, thanks, go to. Tall Cop says stop. So it’s easy. Remember if you forget all of it, google search Tall Cop. Okay, tall Cop says stops my website. You can email me through there. If you want to schedule class, you can do that through there. If you want to book a webinar, you can do that through there. Or I have an email list on my website. So go to contact us, plug in your information, hit submit. That’ll get you in my email list. I send out for free drug and other drug updates once a month, so the next one’s going to be the 420 edition that’s going out talking about a lot of cannabis stuff.
0:32:41 – Speaker 2
Fantastic. We can’t thank you enough for being on the show today and helping our parents feel equipped and know more about fentanyl and what they need to know to keep their kids safe.
0:32:52 – Speaker 1
Thank you so much for joining us, listening and sharing our podcast. Because of you, this show is in the top 5% of over 2.9 million podcasts.
0:33:04 – Speaker 2
We have lots of resources for you, from counseling to live events. Or if you have a show idea or a question for our team, visit our website at nexttalkorg. We’d love to hear from you.
0:33:15 – Speaker 1
At nextTalk. We’re more than cyber parenting. It’s conversations to connect.
0:33:20 – Speaker 3
This podcast is not intended to replace the advice of a trained healthcare or legal professional, or to diagnose, treat or otherwise render expert advice regarding any type of medical, psychological or legal problem. Listeners are advised to consult a qualified expert for treatment.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
