The suggestion for today's topic comes from Laura, who is a school counselor and M.S.W. in North Carolina. Laura works with some youngsters who are dealing drugs. Here is Laura's request:
"I'm looking for tips and information on working with kids who are dealing, and happy with the money they make. Any information/suggestions would be helpful. Thanks for your service."
Laura, this is an easy topic for us. In our live class, we sometimes slide into nearly a half hour of creative strategies for this problem. While we can't fit the whole half hour of ideas into a single article, we will have space for some of our best. By the way, most of the strategies that are below, will work equally well for some other similar problem areas. For example, by changing a few words in each of the following interventions, you may be able to also use these strategies for students who steal, burglarize, and engage in other apparently lucrative, but illegal behavior. We'll throw in a at least one tip for these other areas too.
Since drug dealing is not a small, inconsequential problem area, but is quite serious, note that many of our strategies in this area are deliberately hard-hitting, dramatic, unusual or forceful. Use good judgement to evaluate whether a method is a good fit for you to use with your students in your setting. Also, make sure you are really knowledgeable about conduct disorders, a topic that is heavily covered in these articles. You need to have razor-sharp skills with conduct disorders because many students who are successful dealers, may also be conduct disordered.
Including Unpaid Vacations Even though your students may claim to earn much money dealing, that probably is mostly wishful thinking. The typical full-time dealer earns $24,000 year, but be sure to tell your students that amount is before deducting for "guns, ammunition, lawyers and unpaid vacations..." The next few strategies also address financial gain. (By the way, car thieves earn about $18,000 burglars and robbers net about $3,000 annually.)
Seize the Pay Dealers can lose all the money they earn at any time. State laws also usually permit the seizure of more than any money earned illegally. Police can also seize any items that they believe may have been secured with the proceeds of crime. Further, federal law permits the government to seize items not even involved in a crime. For example, a teen only slept over at his grandma's house, but did not do any illegal activity there. In some situations, the feds may still seize Granny's home. Do your dealers know they can lose all they have and more?
Count on This Dealers may think that they are earning a lot of money, but compared to what they will earn if they simply finish high school, they are earning very little. If the energy instead went into graduating, the student stands to earn $329,000 more than a dropout. Best of all, when you finish high school and get a job, no one can seize that money and just take it away from you.
Find Out Now What You'll Know Later Dealing works because it is illegal. If drugs were legalized, the dealer is "toast." "Won't happen," the dealer says. Help the dealer make a nice long list of all the things that people have said wouldn't happen. Top the list with "they will never legalize alcohol," which bootleggers once said. As I type, I type in Oregon, where possession of marijuana is not a serious offense, and is legal for some medical problems. If I was typing in Amsterdam, I could type in a "coffee shop." That's the euphemism that they use there for a café where it is legal to use marijuana. Whenever we hold our workshops in Canada, we notice that marijuana is getting closer to legal in that country. Shouldn't your dealers know that their sole occupation could one day just vanish?
The Cost of Dealing Ask your dealers to calculate how much they can earn each year. Next, ask the dealers to determine how many years they can deal before being locked up. Next, ask them to determine how many years they might be jailed. Now that you have the data that you need, figure out the true cost of dealing. Typically, a dealer will say that he cab earn about $25,000 for 3 years without being locked up, and would only be locked up for 2 years at most. Here is the math: That makes 3 years of dealing at $25,000 per year. That's $75,000 total. The 3 years of dealing and the 2 years of jail total 5 years. Divide the $75,000 by the five years, and your dealer is earning a measly $15,000 per year-- assuming that the police didn't seize it first.
Would You Die For This? If you use the intervention directly above, your dealers now understand that they are earning less than half the typical high school graduate. Now, help your dealers realize that they may put their life on the line for that small amount of money. To help students realize how little $15,000 is, have them make a budget of what adults need to survive. By the time you are done, your students should have come to realize that dealing is a drag, hardly a delight.
Subscribers to our internet magazine, The Problem-Kid Problem-Solver– the source of the articles in this book)-- keep sending us great suggestions for topics to cover. (To subscribe to that magazine free, visit http://www.youthchg.com/guest.html.)
Ruth Herman Wells MS is the director of Youth Change. Get hundreds more resources at http://www.youthchg.com. You will find countless resources including many more innovative, problem-stopping interventions (just click the link above). For classroom management tools, visit http://www.theclassroommanagementsite.com. Ruth is the author of dozens of books including the popular Temper and Tantrum Tamers, Turn On the Turned-Off Student, Last Chance School Success Guide and Maximum-Strength Motivation-Makers. She annually trains hundreds of teachers, counselors and youth professionals in staff development workshops, conferences, seminars and inservice throughout the country. With Ruth's solutions, working with difficult students doesn't have to be so difficult.
» left by Jessica from Miami, Fl (2 years 233 days ago.)
Thanks for this article. My brother who is gifted, lives in middle class suburbia, and has a full-scholarship to a university next year started dealing drugs because he wants "easy" money to keep up with his rich friends. Needed this advice. Respond to this comment
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