I spend a fair amount of time walking around downtown Vashon. Not a week goes by, often not a day, that I don’t see someone strung out on a substance.

Occasionally my day begins witnessing a shady business transaction taking place in broad daylight in the center of town. I’ve seen what appears to be meth addicts stumble into our local markets and head to the donut section to get a fix on a drug-induced sugar craving. I’ve been a customer of a small Vashon business while an individual manic on drugs shopped in the store as well. Watching her spin in circles of a drug-induced frenzy made me so physically ill that I had to leave; I felt for the shopkeeper who could not.

I’ve watched a teen who frequently walks around town gradually decline. Once robust, this girl is now needle thin, pale, chain-smoking and has sores on her face. Just the other day, I saw a couple of addicts that I often see walking in town in a parked car. The person behind the wheel wasn’t able to hold her head up straight. At what point does she determine she’s “OK” to drive? Who will cross her path along the way? A child waiting at a bus stop? A person in a crosswalk? As far as I can see, drug use has no peak-usage hours; it’s happening all of the time.

Vashon is not a Utopia nor do I expect it to be, but I imagine that we are as close as you could get to one. And in general, we’re a fairly tight-knit community. Unfortunately for drug and alcohol abusers, this creates a stark backdrop in front of which their aberrant behavior stands out dramatically — much more than it would in, for instance, Spanaway or Auburn or Everett.

I’m not sure what I can do to help these people or if they can be helped, and I’m not implying that they don’t have a right to participate in life strung out on drugs and alcohol. What I do know is that as a parent of two children and a mentor and role model to many more, I can try to prevent the cycle from starting and can use local addicts as a case study for substance abuse.

The message that I repeat over and over to any teen who will listen is this: There is no such thing as experimenting with drugs. To do so is Russian Roulette — meaning that if you mess with drugs you stand a chance of becoming an addict. Try drugs and risk not caring about your family, friends, school work, teammates or dreams. Try drugs and risk being an addict whose sole focus is getting the next fix.

I know many pot-smoking adults will laugh this off as extreme. I’ve had parents tell me they’d rather their kids smoke pot than drink alcohol. Say what? Why should either one be an option? And why is pot the lesser of two evils? One may not get stumbling drunk from marijuana, but there’s a raft of damages that you can’t see — apathy and lethargy being two of the key ones.

What is frightening about marijuana use is that its effects are masked by a seemingly outwardly unchanged shell while wreaking chemical havoc inside the developing teenage body. And I won’t launch into the fact that there is no guarantee what you’re putting in your body when you purchase marijuana.

Many of us who experimented with drugs and alcohol in our youth have a hard time dealing with what we believe is the double standard of telling our kids these things are off limits. I would imagine that other parents are, as I am, striving to raise children who are “new and improved” models of themselves. I can honestly say to my kids, “Yes, I am imperfect; yes I’ve made mistakes. But, my job is to do everything in my power to provide you with the tools, support and guidance to make wise decisions.”

Regardless of how well we believe we’ve prepared our kids for the stormy ride of adolescence, all of them are vulnerable to experimenting with drugs and alcohol. But we owe our kids clearly defined boundaries and an awareness of the harsh realities of using these substances.

There is power in numbers. What would happen if parents began to regularly communicate with one another and united in sending a strong message to our kids about abstaining from drugs and alcohol? By taking away any notion of permissiveness, perhaps we can make it easier for teens to say “no” to drugs and alcohol. They need all they support we can give them. Let’s work together to make a difference.

— Mary Kay Rauma, a mother of two, works for The Beachcomber.