I read an article today by an NBC news correspondent about a 15 year old Texas girl, Mariela Torres, who just completed treatment for heroin addiction – cheese heroin. The reporter was alarmed by her story, and by the fact that heroin dealers are targeting kids before they even get into high school. Obviously, the drug scene is not his usual beat. Mariela is now drug free thanks to drug detox and a three-month drug rehab program, but thousands of high school kids in Texas are still in trouble.

She was offered ‘cheese’ – a mixture of black tar heroin and Tylenol PM that looks like parmesan cheese – when she was 13 years old. The “friend” who gave it to her told her it wasn’t really a drug, it just makes you feel happy. Two years later, a heroin addict, she was lucky enough to get into a drug detox and drug rehab that sorted her out.

She told the reporter that when she sees other kids using cheese heroin at school, she still wants to take it, but she knows she shouldn’t and, so far, has resisted the temptation.

Parents educating their kids about drugs is a major influencing factor on whether or not kids take them. Kids are 50 percent less likely to use drugs and alcohol if their parents teach them about the dangers. But parents also have to understand the drug scene and know what to tell their kids to expect.

More than 5000 school kids in Texas have tried cheese, according to a recent study by the Dallas Independent School district, and more than two dozen have died of overdose. Check your kids out carefully, become familiar with the drug scene, the terminology, how they can get it – and make them aware that someone who tells them it’s not really a drug isn’t telling them the truth. Find out if your kids are trying it, or other drugs and, if so, get them into a drug rehab program fast before the situation gets worse.

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