I caught my 14 year old niece experimenting with marijuana. She's a good student and a good kid, and it caught me completely off guard. Now - how much right does she have to privacy, and how much right do I have to keep her safe and secure and away from the risks of drugs?

With the FDA announcement that 2.4 million American teens have tried dextromethorphan, and that the drug was now available in pure capsule form at the street level, parents have real cause for concern. How can we protect our kids when the "dealer" is only as far as the local pharmacy?

While parents have long worried that by giving children medications like ritalin, they may be increasing their risk of addiction - they can at least rest easy knowing that the opposite is in fact true. Appropriately medicated children with ADHD are less likely than unmedicated children to develop later in life addictions.

Is your kid using inhalants? Learn what they're using, what it can do and how you can know if they are.

Your kids will hate it, and they may even resent you for doing it, but if they have a history of drug or alcohol abuse, a drug test is the only way you can be sure that they remain sober.

It's a frightening time to be a parent, and when access to potent drugs is but a mouse click away, parents have just cause for concern about the very real dangers of pill abuse.

It's not often that I find myself on the same side of a policy argument with our esteemed president, but when President Bush started promoting further use of drug testing in schools, I cheered of concrete action being taken to help reduce the risks of drug and alcohol use behaviors in a group of people so very at risk to develop substance abuse problems and dependencies.

Teens who use drugs other than only marijunana are three times as likely to have suicidal thoughts.

Scary stuff...

Should we let the pharmaceutical industry self regulate? Here's yet another troubling story that points towards no.

DARE drug education programs are a failure - is there a better way to teach drug prevention in the classroom?

USC researchers decided to experiment with student led learning - and the results, were very interesting. Sometimes - we don't want students teaching other students what to think about drugs!!

Kids aren’t dumb, they may not know much, but they have a funny way habit of learning stuff, and they also seem to remember what we tell them. So why do we lie to them?

Not all drugs are the same, and if we scaremonger on marijuana - we end up with zero credibility on meth.

Kids aren’t dumb, they may not know much, but they have a funny way habit of learning stuff, and they also seem to remember what we tell them. So why do we lie to them?

Not all drugs are the same, and if we scaremonger on marijuana - we end up with zero credibility on meth.

A new study conducted throughout New England health care clinics that was looking to evaluate teenage substance use prevalence brings us some astonishing…and worrisome, results.

Don’t want your teen to drink, smoke or do drugs? Well, there's no easy one answer, but one easy step in the right direction is as simple as sitting down at the dinner table together, as a family, 5 or more times a week.

Recent research from the University of McMaster in Ontario Canada adds to the body of data indicating that the age of first use of illicit drugs, tobacco and alcohol is strongly correlated with later in life problems with drug addiction and alcoholism.

Too many grandparents are placed into a role of primary caregiver, their grandchildren, sadly, drug orphans. Many more watch with concern as their grown kids put drinking or drugging above parenting, and the grandchildren suffer.

Here's what The National Association for Children of Alcoholics says grandparents should do when their grandchildren are at risk.