{"id":23475,"date":"2019-05-10T16:56:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T22:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/mad-chemist-lynn-riemer-gives-presentation-at-summit-middle-school-on-disguised-youth-substance-use\/"},"modified":"2019-05-10T16:56:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-10T22:56:00","slug":"mad-chemist-lynn-riemer-gives-presentation-at-summit-middle-school-on-disguised-youth-substance-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/local-news\/mad-chemist-lynn-riemer-gives-presentation-at-summit-middle-school-on-disguised-youth-substance-use\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Mad Chemist\u2019 Lynn Riemer gives presentation at Summit Middle School on disguised youth substance use"},"content":{"rendered":"
Lynn Riemer gives a presentation on trends in youth substance use at the Summit County Middle School on April 25.<\/strong>
Sawyer D\u2019Argonne \/ sdargonne@summitdaily.com<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These aren\u2019t your mom\u2019s substances.<\/p>\n

Lynn Riemer, otherwise known as the \u201cMad Chemist,\u201d gave a presentation to parents, faculty members and others at Summit Middle School late last month, hoping to bring community members up to speed on new trends in youth substance use.<\/p>\n

At the presentation, Riemer discussed a wide variety of substances, from marijuana to drugs like Fentanyl and heroin. However, much of the conversation was based around the ways in which young users are disguising their usage, and how much the landscape of drug use has changed over recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a different drug world today,\u201d said Riemer, who travels the nation to inform parents and students about the dangers and new developments in the world of substances. \u201cKids are very savvy because of social media, and you can Google every drug you know of and there\u2019s somebody glamorizing it on YouTube \u2026 and today, everything is about disguise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps of most concern to parents and others around Summit County is youth use of vaporizers, alcohol and marijuana<\/a>. According to the 2017 Healthy Kids Colorado Survey \u2014 self-reported health information collected by the Colorado Department of Public Health every other year \u2014 Summit High School students consume marijuana and alcohol, and use vaporizers at higher rates than the rest of the state, while the use of other drugs is right on par with other students. Of note, Summit Middle School students reported lower rates of use than the rest of the state\u2019s middle school students across the board.<\/p>\n

According to the report, more than 40% of Summit High School students reported using a vaporizer within the past 30 days, compared to just 27% of students around the state. Similarly, over 41% reported recent alcohol use compared to 28% of the state and 22% reported recent marijuana use compared to 19% of the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe the kids understand all the types of drugs and how bad they are, even the vape pens which may taste good,\u201d said Ann Hough, a parent and school district employee who attended Riemer\u2019s presentation. \u201cI think this education needs to be continual, so all these kids understand that the pot that\u2019s out there now isn\u2019t the pot of 30 years ago, and it\u2019s the same with vaping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hough has a point. According to Riemer, there was a 900% increase in e-cigarette use among high school students from 2011 and 2016, and while there\u2019s no solid science yet on long-term effects, Riemer postulates they\u2019re largely negative.<\/p>\n

\u201cColorado is number one in the nation in teen vaping<\/a>,\u201d sad Riemer. \u201cWe\u2019re still waiting on the science to see how they compare to things like cigarettes, but my questions is has there ever been a scientific study showing that smoking anything is beneficial or healthy? Time will tell, but there are already things coming out showing things like irritation to the lungs, similar to smokers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Likewise, Riemer spoke to the dramatic changes to marijuana since legalization, both in potency and in variety.<\/p>\n

\u201cTHC (the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana) in the bud in Colorado is anywhere from 18 to 45% and rising,\u201d said Riemer. \u201cWhen a lot of us were kids it was only two-to-three percent, and in the mid-80s and 90s it got up to five-to-seven percent. Every other country outside of North America won\u2019t allow marijuana higher than 14% THC. \u2026 And now we have things like concentrates which are extremely pure, like nothing we\u2019ve ever seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the use of marijuana and vaporizer products (both with nicotine and marijuana concentrate) increases, Riemer noted that kids are also getting much more creative in the ways they disguise substance use. She handed out a number of different trinkets to the crowd to demonstrate \u2014 including keychains that turn into pipes, dissolvable THC packets that look like tea and sugar packets, vaporizers that resemble iPods and even hoodies that conceal vape pens attached to the strings.<\/p>\n

Riemer also said that the use of alcohol has become much more difficult to spot, as young people are turning to vaporizing it \u2014 known as AWOL or alcohol without liquid \u2014 in lieu of drinking it, or even inserting alcohol soaked tampons to keep the smell of booze off their breathe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we\u2019re talking about all the fun ways that people are using drugs today, you\u2019re imagination should be endless,\u201d said Riemer.<\/p>\n

For more information on youth substance use trends, or ways in which they\u2019re disguised, reach out to Riemer at trainings@actondrugs.org<\/a>, or at 720-480-0291.<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lynn Riemer gives a presentation on trends in youth substance use at the Summit County Middle School on April 25.Sawyer D\u2019Argonne \/ sdargonne@summitdaily.com These aren\u2019t your mom\u2019s substances. Lynn Riemer, otherwise known as the \u201cMad Chemist,\u201d gave a presentation to parents, faculty members and others at Summit Middle School late last month, hoping to bring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-10 19:53:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIFT - The LIFT FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}