Thursday, October 23, 2008

Would you sniff your kids?

Sniff Dogs rents drug-sniffing canines to parents for $200 an hour. It was started this year by Debra Stone, who says her five trained dogs can detect heroin, cocaine, crystal meth and ecstasy. The dogs' noses are so sensitive that they can smell a marijuana seed from up to 15 feet away and marijuana residue on clothing from drugs smoked two nights before. One of the selling points of this service? Avoiding the kind of confrontation that comes with a drug test. Drug-sniffing dogs aren't the only measures parents are using to keep tabs on their children. There are now Global Positioning System devices that can be sewn into children's clothing to monitor how fast they're driving, and software that allows a parent to read text messages. But some psychologists say these surveillance techniques can backfire. "There are major repercussions for this type of intervention," said Dr. Neil Bernstein, a Washington, D.C.-based clinical psychologist and author of the book "How to Keep Your Teenager Out of Trouble and What to Do if You Can't ." Source: abc

3 comments:

Evelyn said...

Nice idea but not away to avoid confrontation with their teenage kids.
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Unknown said...

Goodness, what happened to parents actually talking to their children about drugs and their lives? Police need drug-sniffing dogs to find criminals; parents need to be parents, not the police.

DNS said...

Even parents who talk to kids about drugs can find themselves with a teenager who has gotten caught up in the drug scene at school. If my instincts were telling me that there was a drug problem in my family, I'd hire the Sniff Dogs woman and her dogs right away. I'd rather take control of the situation instead of hoping that everything was OK. This is a good way to avert a more serious crisis.