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I am careful about their use. I now take medication for blood pressure control. My doctor understands that I do not want to take any more than the minimal amount that is effective in controlling my condition. I also understand that my medication does not eliminate my problem. I still have hypertension. The drugs are used to keep it under control, not to solve a problem. I also know that if the drugs are not used properly, they could end my life.

Our educational system provides no moral basis for young people to make decisions about drugs or sex or any of the other thngs that tend to be destructive in their lives. Teaching them about the consequences, which they already know, does little to prevent them from getting involved in life-destroying practices. In order for our western educational system to be useful in preventing this problem, it would have to find a moral basis for its teaching. Since that inevitably demands a theology of some kind, and since we have thoroughly rejected theology from our educational system, schools remain totally powerless in preventing drug abuse.

There is only one plausible solution. We need to allow, indeed, to demand, our public schools to offer classroom time to representatives of responsible theologies to teach moral systems in our schools. Families should have the right to choose which theology they prefer, but morality should be the subject taught regardless of what theology is represented.

Currently our public schools are theologically negative. Because educators try so hard to be theologically neutral, the net effect is that they become theologically negative. That is, they imply by their position that faith is not important, that relgious systems are not for normal people, and that what we know is better for us than what we believe. The problem is that moral decisions become virtually non-existent in an environment so devoid of references to God and faith.

Until teens have a moral base for the decision, they will not reject drugs, sex, violence or any of the other life-threatening practices many of them choose, irregardless of what their third grade teacher told them about such things. Non-moral based education has already failed to be useful as a weapon in the war on drugs.

Learn more about this author, Tom Parsons.
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