Pharm Parties

If you're a parent and you're not familiar with pharm parties, you should be. Here's a story from Australia, posted at The Drug Report:

A dangerous new party game is sweeping Townsville — and your kids could be playing.

Local teens have been concocting their own party drug, mixing a potentially lethal combination of alcohol and prescription drugs.

A concerned father alerted the Townsville Bulletin to the deadly new fad sweeping teen parties.

The father, who would not reveal his identity to protect his teenage daughters, said local teens were playing with fire and all parents and teachers should be made aware.

The father said he learned of the terrifying new trend as he spoke to his daughters, trying to shed light on the senseless overdose death of Townsville teenager Melanie Boyd [right] last week.

‘’We spoke to many parents and friends over the weekend to try and help the girls come to terms with this. I learned some things and every parent needs to know what’s going on out there,'’ the father wrote.

He said ‘Pharm’ or pharmaceutical parties were common among many Townsville teens. He described the party as follows:

‘’Each attendee brings a ‘pill’ from home. They are crushed up, mixed together and all placed in a bowl. Each child takes a dose and washes it down with a shot of alcohol. The winner is the first to throw up.

‘’Welcome to the real world. Have you got any prescription tablets missing from home?'’

Pretty scary stuff, huh? The post really hits home because it attracted a comment posted by the father of Melanie Boyd:

As Melanie’s father, my anger at my daughter’s senseless and avoidable death rages unabated.

No-one appears to be taking this seriously. Melanie was fed a deadly mix of alcohol, cannibis, prescription drugs and, finally, speed by fellow students from a supposedly “exclusive” school. The response from the school? “Not our problem - it occurred after school hours.” The school has no drugs awareness program. They have lied to the press about that.

The two students who supplied Melanie with the drugs have wealthy parents. They will not be expelled. Instead, they are offered counselling to help them “cope with” Melanie’s death. Both these spoilt little brats have shown no remorse - indeed, they are bragging on the internet chat rooms that “it will all blow over in a week”. They will both graduate and claim the prestige of the school as their own. My Melanie will never graduate.

Where is the Justice?

Where, indeed? Mr. Boyd is not alone in his grief and anger, as pharm parties are becoming increasingly popular not just in Australia, but in the U.S., too, with similarly tragic results.

Now that you're forewarned, if you've got kids as young as 12 or 13, you need to warn them. I'm biased because my Incredible Wife produced and directed it, but you won't find a better drug education tool anywere than Voice of the Victims. Whether you use it or something else, don't assume that just because your kid is a great kid he or she isn't capable of making a wrong decision about drugs, or of just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Related Tags: Pharm, Pharm parties, Melanie Boyd