Your home may harbor hidden highs | Families

CINCINNATI (FOX19) - Kids have been finding ways to get high for many years.  Activities like drinking, taking pills, or smoking pot are familiar concepts to most parents, but other trends keep parents guessing, with items like banana peels and bath salts in the headlines recently.

Drug prevention expert John Dail has a very unusual way of looking at what's in a home. Recently he went through the home of Sherry Delvecchio, the parent of a middle schooler.

Dail started under the kitchen sink, where he pointed out aerosol sprays as something that some kids use as a drug. "Anytime you can use an alternative to that, that's usually going to be the best type to use."

Next, Dail looked for danger in the spice cabinet. He says some teens are getting high in nutmeg, which can lead to heart palpitations or a coma.

The Delvecchios have another item which is a well-known risk: dad Dominick Delvecchio is model builder, with a stash of paint and model glue, products that worry his wife. Dail says that kind of material needs to be locked up.

Sherry DelCecchio also had Fentanyl, a powerful pain killer.  Dail says that medicine should be also be locked up, along with the liquor.

Dail says parents shouldn't be afraid to snoop in kids' rooms, since it's their house, and shows the child you care.  "If you feel like something's not right, I've found out about 90 to 95% of the time when mothers trust their intuition, something is wrong."

Dail's most important advice has nothing to do with locks and inspections, and is something the Delvecchios are good about: having dinner together.  "Dinnertime is special here. We try to get dinner time every evening," Sherry said.

Dail says it's kind of hard for your kids to get high at home while you're spending time with them, investing in the children, and showing you care about them.

Dail also urges parents to help their kids lead fuller lives with positive activities that will reduce the urge to try to get high:

One is physical activity, which doesn't necessarily mean an organized sports team, three times a week.

Another is some type of regular intellectual activity outside of schoolwork.

A third: weekly contact with a trustworthy role model outside the family. Dail believes the same lessons parents teach sound cooler when they come from someone outside the family.

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