Andy Vaughan
andyv@isb.ac.th
Recently we hosted Stephanie Kootsikas from Freedom from Chemical Dependency Prevention Works (FCD) to work with all our HS students on Drug Education and Prevention. Stephanie gave presentations to our grade 10-12 students and ran sessions with all our Freshman along with running sessions with parents and counsellors, health teachers and administration.
We have now received some follow up information from FCD for parents as was requested in the parent meeting. The presentation that was shown in to parents in our parent session can be found at this link. As a follow up FCD also compared our survey results with other International Schools worldwide and some other International Schools in SE Asia the results to this comparison can be found here.
FCD have also provided a few more resources as requested by parents these are linked below:
- Ideas for parenting for prevention can be found here.
- Technology Addiction Information
- Teen Technology Addiction Fact Sheet
- Information for parents on how to help with transitions to College can be found at this link.
Recently we have also become aware of a trend that is happening in Bangkok within some International School Students, where students are taking a drug called DXM. Some students have been reported to be taking as much as 50 Tablets at once. At that dose, DXM is more than just a stimulant and begins to have hallucinogenic and dissociative properties similar to PCP or Ketamine. This information is very concerning to us and we feel it is important to share this with parents due to the concern of an overdose. In most western countries access to this drug is now limited, but in Thailand it is an over the counter drug available at a pharmacy and is part of many brands of cough medicine. We will be contacting local pharmacies to ensure they are not selling medicine to students containing DXM in any large dose. A link to more information on this drug is found here
Please feel free to contact Andy Vaughan (andyv@isb.ac.th) with any questions regarding either FCD or DXM.