Educating our children about the harmful effects of substance abuse is a serious matter. It’s challenging enough just making sure that they apply themselves properly to their school work, adopt proper attitudes about personal values, and get through their developmental years armed with a healthy sense of self-worth and confidence. Keeping them safe from self-destructive habits is just one more important task that parents must be concerned with.

It’s an especially daunting challenge when our very culture is inundated with conflicting messages about the pros and cons of certain behaviors. We can lecture until we’re blue in the face, but kids are keenly aware of what the media, and the popular culture in general, depicts as being not only acceptable, but in some cases desirable behavior.

Smoking kills, but Marlboros are macho. Alcohol abuse can ruin lives, but let’s raise our glasses for New Year’s. The scourge of illicit drug use has devastated whole communities and ramped up the crime rate to intolerable levels, but “mother’s little helper” is only whispered about behind the scenes. The kids take note of all of this, so we often face an uphill battle when it comes to keeping the facts straight and our own credibility intact.

There is no simple solution to this conundrum. As Americans we cherish our rights to live as freely as possible while doing as little harm to our neighbors – and to ourselves – that we can. The best we can hope to do is to explain to the kids that living in a free society is not entirely free of risk. That some people will make poor choices, while the smart ones will do otherwise.

It is unfortunate that bad role models exist in the popular culture, and that the messages of excess and risk are glorified by certain segments of the media. We must do our best to set good examples and explain as well as possible the realities of the world we live in.

Also, an honest examination of the concept of “do as I say, not as I do” should rank highly in our list of things to do.