Graduating from heroin to happiness

This weekend, my wife, Gena, and I attended a few graduation ceremonies for family members. While incredibly proud of their accomplishments, I am very concerned for other youth around the nation, and for a statistic about opioid use that is ravaging their generation.

RedAlertPolitics.com had an excellent report on the status of college graduation in the U.S., according to the National Center for Education Statistics. However, I wish it had better news when it came to the global status of U.S. graduation.

Of the 16 countries listed below, only Hungary and Sweden have lower graduation rates than the United States:

United Kingdom, 82 percent

Denmark, 81 percent

France, 80 percent

Germany, 77 percent

Finland, 76 percent

Netherlands, 76 percent

Turkey, 75 percent

Belgium, 73 percent

Czech Republic, 72 percent

Norway, 71.5 percent

Slovakia, 71 percent

Portugal, 67 percent

Poland, 62 percent

United States, 59 percent

Hungary, 53 percent

Sweden, 53 percent

Red Alert Politics explained, "The Department of Education prefers to cite six-year graduation rates, as the four-year graduation rate is 39.4 percent and many students don't complete a four-year degree in four years."

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and I pray the youth of today continue to fight those spiraling statistics to build up their generation and our nation to a rank worthy of their heritage.

I think it's also high time local and private education officials quit turning to Washington and other bureaucrats for the answers and fight like hell to solve educational issues and bolster youth on their own personal and community level.

Another obstacle facing America's younger generations is the epidemic of opioid use, particularly heroin. It is literally a battle for the mind and heart of America's posterity.

Chuck Norris provides real solutions to our county's problems and a way to reawaken the American dream in his best-seller, "Black Belt Patriotism."

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, "Opioids are Medications that fall within this class include hydrocodone (e.g., Vicodin), oxycodone (e.g., OxyContin, Percocet), morphine (e.g., Kadian, Avinza), codeine, and related drugs."

Heroin is also an opioid but is illegal.

Today, legal opioids or prescription painkillers are often times gateway drugs for heroin, according to health and drug experts.

"Dr. Jason Jerry, an addiction specialist at the Cleveland Clinic's Alcohol and Drug Recovery Center, estimates that half of the 200 or so heroin addicts the clinic sees every month started on prescription opiates," according to the New York Times.

But opiates come in greater potency than heroin. For example, fentanyl, the most powerful painkiller on the market for cancer patients, is the drug that we now know killed the singer Prince. Experts say that fentanyl, which is also available on the streets in an illicit form, "can be 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin."

The Times also reported that, "Rates of prescription opiate abuse have risen steadily over the last decade, while the number of people reporting that they used heroin in the past 12 months has nearly doubled since 2007 to 620,000, according to government statistics."

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that deaths from overdoses of prescription drugs and heroin continue to be the leading cause of unintentional death for Americans, rising 14 percent from 2013 to 2014. Opioids were involved in 28,647 deaths in 2014 and opioid overdoses have quadrupled since 2000. A staggering 78 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose.

As devastating as those statistics are, the most alarming statistic to me is this: Approximately 80 percent of the world's opioid supply is consumed entirely in the United States. That's 80 percent of all opiates consumed by only 5 percent of the total world's population! There were about 300 million pain prescriptions written in the U.S. in 2015, which is almost one for every American if distributed evenly (which, of course, we know they are not).

Among young people nationwide, 17 percent (or roughly one-in-five) students had taken prescription drugs (e.g., Oxycontin, Percocet, Vicodin, codeine, Adderall, Ritalin or Xanax) without a doctor's prescription one or more times during their life," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Survey, an annual report conducted each year since 1991.

Why is opioid use skyrocketing among youth and our nation? There are a host of reasons, including a few valid ones, like genuine chronic pain relief. But among those reasons that are invalid is a restless, discontent and hedonistic nation unable to weather tough times and difficulty without an instant stress and pain reliever or "happiness pill."

Dr. Peter Ubel, a physician and behavioral scientist, posits this explanation: "Even though many addicts are miserable, this misery doesn't mean that their use of heroin or crack is irrational. As Becker and Murphy put it: 'People often become addicted precisely because they are unhappy. However, they would be even more unhappy if they were prevented from consuming the addictive goods.'"

Two things that young people today can definitely learn from older generations: the power of perseverance (weathering pain and difficulty), and the ability to find true happiness and contentment outside of a quick and temporary fix. I encourage more older adults (including of course parents, guardians and grandparents) invest more time in the near future to encourage these character traits in the younger loved ones in their lives.

We are proud to teach these personal qualities and values to middle-school students through our nonprofit foundation, KickStartKids.org. But because the program is not available yet outside of the Lone Star State, let me encourage another wonderful resource for the rest of the country.

If a lack of happiness is contributing to the core of addictions to opioids and other drugs – and I believe it is, then I highly encourage people everywhere to master the art of being happy and content by reading the latest best-selling book, "Happiness," by my friend and prolific author Randy Alcorn. (It's available right now at half off through his website.)

"Happiness" is one ginormous resource to discover yours and others' true happiness, and regain health and balance in our souls, households, communities and nation. I also encourage people to listen to Randy's "Happiness" audio and video messages and check out the resources on his "Happiness" blog, where his series of "Happiness" articles are available free of charge.

In light of the epidemic drug use in our nation, Randy couldn't have put it better when he addressed how we are hardwired for happiness but with one serious flaw: "I argue in the book the problem isn't they're trying to be happy. Rather, God wired us to seek happiness. The problem is we seek happiness in the wrong places …"

We, patriots, know it is one of our unalienable rights as Americans, as the Declaration of Independence states: We are "endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Now, that's a happiness to which we all should graduate!

Chuck Norris provides real solutions to our county's problems and a way to reawaken the American dream in his best-seller, "Black Belt Patriotism."