Preventing Addiction
Addiction, whether to so – called soft or hard drugs or to alcohol or tobacco, is a problem of only a small number of adolescents. Opinion is divided about whether drugs like marijuana cause permanent brain damage, but there is no doubt that whether or not a child develops a drugs problem depends as much on his personality as on the drugs.
If a child has been brought up in a stable home background, and has been allowed to develop within a disciplined framework, where the socially acceptable drugs (tobacco and alcohol) are not abused, and where self medication is rare, then he is less likely to resort to drugs than is a child who has no frame of reference, who is used to drunkenness as acceptable behavior, and whose family faces every problem with a pill.
By far the commonest form of drugs problem in children and adolescents is alcoholism, and this is undoubtedly related to their family experience.