Editor’s Note: This is the final installment of a five-part series on DACI’s In the Known event.
BY DEBBIE PAGE
“Youth who have parents that talk with them about substance use are less likely to experiment when approached by friends,” Regina Propst of Insight Human Services said during the recent DACI In the Know event.
The organization’s Hidden in Plain Sight: Bedroom Project aims to help parents learn the often hard to spot ways that teens hide vapes, alcohol, or dangerous street drugs.
Drugs or alcohol can be concealed in fake containers easily purchased online. Fake Arizona Tea or soda cans with screw tops or toiletry containers can conceal alcohol or drugs. Flasks may look like cellphones, tampons, or hairbrushes, and ponytail scrunchies may have compartments to hold pills.
Teens conceal vapes with a toilet paper tube, dryer sheet, and rubber band. If parents see these items in their teen’s room, they should be suspicious.
A hand mirror may be used for cutting drugs or snorting cocaine. A watch device or Star Wars figurine may conceal a grinder. Slits in stuffed animals, a rip in a sneaker tongue, or hollow books may conceal drugs.
Teens may also conceal substances behind pictures or in the battery compartments of electronic devices or alarm clocks.
TALKING ABOUT VAPING
Vapes are now concealed in a variety of devices that look like pens, flash drives, toys, or other small devices.
Though teens may try to claim vapes are safer than cigarettes, Propst pointed out that being safer than cigarettes is not really safe.
Few adults are glad they started their nicotine addiction and struggle to stop smoking, vaping, or chewing, even though they know these substances are unsafe for their health.
Though teens may believe the vape’s “water vapor” is harmless, parents can point out that it contains harmful ingredients such as nicotine, a highly addictive chemical; propylene glycol, which is found in antifreeze and used pharmaceutically; glycerin or vegetable glycerin found in frozen foods, makeup, and deodorant; and diacetyl, a flavoring banned in Europe because of its cancer-causing properties.
To combat the “everyone’s doing it” argument, parents can counter with the fact that most students choose not to vape.
Because peer pressure is more pervasive with both in person and online sources in 2025, teens may feel intense coercion to vape, but just because everyone’s doing it doesn’t make it right, added Propst.
TALKING ABOUT MARIJUANA
Many youths perceive marijuana use as a low-risk substance to use, pointing out that it is less harmful than other drugs and is legal in other states. Because of its glorification in music, media, and entertainment, pot is undergoing societal norming.
Teens also see marijuana as easier to conceal, especially with odor-free edibles, and less likely to earn serious consequences from their parents or law enforcement.
Marijuana edibles look like foods or candies available in any store, packaged and branded to look like popular candies or sweets like SweeTARTS, Jolly Ranchers, Rice Crispy Treats, cookies, or chocolate bars.
The potency of edibles varies, with effects lasting six to eight hours after ingestion.
However, negative outcomes are still very possible, including lacing with fentanyl. Overconsumption of edibles can require medical attention. “Pranking” from friends who slip the teen an edible is also a possibility.
TEEN ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION
Alcohol is the number one substance misused by youths.
Two out of three youths report that they have easy access to alcohol in their home or in the homes of friends or other relatives. Three out of four teens report drinking alcohol at home or in the home of a friend.
Thirty percent of high school students had their first alcohol drink before the age of 15.
Marketing campaigns glamorize alcohol, and social use is considered normal in many homes and in society as a whole, added Propst.
Alcohol is more easily accessible to teens and has a low price point. Because they have limited ability to purchase alcohol, underage drinkers rely on older friends, willing adults, or their parents’ liquor cabinet or fridge as their sources.
Teens believe few consequences will result from drinking because they think parents will not miss the alcohol or that law enforcement will likely not catch them. Since parents often drink alcohol, youths feel its use will be more easily accepted.
They also do not believe that alcohol will harm their developing brains and bodies like illicit substances, and they may overlook the risky behaviors in which they may engage under alcohol’s influence.
Some parents, wanting to stop their children from driving under the influence, will allow parties with alcohol use by underage teens in their homes. However, parents can be charged with a class one misdemeanor and lose their homeowner’s insurance for such actions.
Propst said that research shows that youths who wait to consume alcohol until the legal age of 21 are less likely to develop alcohol dependence as an adult. “The longer a teen waits to consume alcohol, the less likely they are to develop a drinking problem,” she said.
LEARN MORE
Insight is teaming up with the Drug-Alcohol Coalition of Iredell (https://www.daciredell.com/) in a local “Talk It Up/Lock It Up” (https://talkituplockitup.org/) campaign to urge adults to keep alcohol inaccessible to underage youth.