Middle schoolers are struggling with addiction. They need help, not punishment.

By Muhammad Memon, Wayzata High School

It was a warm summer night. Mary was at a public park, meeting a guy she’d met on Snapchat.  He pulled out a glass pipe and a rock. This was her introduction to hard drugs. Mary was about to start high school. She had been using since she was nine, but this was the first time she tried something stronger. She took a hit.  

You might wonder why a 14-year-old would be using hard drugs. Weed wasn’t for her anymore. But Mary’s story is not unique.  

More kids are falling through the cracks, and while addiction is not new, substance use is showing up earlier than ever. Some kids start using as young as sixth grade. This is why middle schools need drug reforms, programs that offer support, not punishment. We need real programs for these kids where they can tackle their issue at the heart of it with real help. They need to have trust that they can talk about their lives and not get caught up in trouble. 

Substance abuse can be a taboo topic for students in schools. Students fear being criminalized or suspended if they admit to using. This is why we don’t hear about middle schoolers using drugs. They don’t talk about it.  

In Minnesota, as many as 1.6% of eighth graders already meet the clinical criteria for a substance use disorder (SUD). Yet, policies designed to help these students often push them further into the shadows.  

The crisis is so urgent that some schools are changing how they respond. Edina High School, for example, recently started allowing students to carry and administer Narcan to their peers, in the event of a suspected overdose. While that’s a high school example, it signals how serious the issue has become for young people. 

Mary was my friend. When I met her, she was in active addiction. She told me how she started using drugs at nine. Her stories shocked me, but I knew they were real.  That’s why I felt I needed to talk about these issues. Youth who use drugs at this age often carry layers of trauma and unmet needs.  

While such hard drug use is rare among this age group, Mary’s situation underscores the intersection of her high-risk behavior and intense vulnerability. Her actions, while far beyond typical experimentation, highlight the critical need for immediate, intensive psychiatric and chemical health intervention to save her from lifelong consequences. 

Some might argue drug education or offering Narcan encourages use. But having important supplies and teaching kids safety only saves lives. But as KSTP reported, Edina High School’s support services said “while we hope that none of our students are using opioids, and we want to help anyone that has an addiction, we know that we also don’t want anyone to die because they are unable to carry this life-saving treatment.” 

Others argue that stricter policies are necessary to maintain order and deter other students from using drugs. They believe that if the consequences for drug use are severe, it’ll keep schools safer. While safety and deterrence are important goals, this punitive perspective misses the core issue: addiction is a public health crisis, not a simple disciplinary problem.  

Suspending or expelling students like Mary, only removes her from the support structures she needs like education, counseling, and mentorship, and it pushes her toward further isolation and relapse. This makes such disciplinary policies a risk factor and contributes to a cycle of addiction and behavioral problems. 

Reliable, judgment-free help exists through organizations like the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and MN Adult & Teen Challenge. But stigma and restrictive school policies from getting help. Minnesota school districts and state officials shift their focus from punishment to public health. 

We need mandatory, ongoing, and non-punitive intervention programs in every middle school. That means funding for confidential mental health screenings and on-site counselors trained in adolescent substance use. 

Every student deserves a fair chance to grow up healthy.  You have the power to protect kids like Mary by lobbying your school board members and local representatives to reallocate disciplinary funds toward mental health and substance use.