As a counselor, I have a unique perspective on the world. I have this perspective because I get to talk to people from every walk of life, political party, socio-economic status, religion, etc. I would argue that no other profession has a better feel for the heart beat of a nation than counselors. Our only goal is to help so people have a tendency to be honest with us and check all of the BS out of the door.

What I hear people talking about is not fear of illegal immigrants, terrorism. or globalism but rather fear of their children getting addicted to drugs, being depressed and committing suicide, getting bullied, fear of the influence of the internet, being taken advantage of by sexual predators, etc. That is what people worry about and who would blame them? Every year suicide & drug abuse rates go up and despite new awareness and money going towards these programs the numbers keep rising.

Just look at these statistics, according to the CDC suicide rates are growing at their highest rates and in 2016 alone 46,000 Americans age 10 or older committed suicide. That is not including the rash of well publicized cases of under 10 year-olds committing suicide due to bullying.  A NSDUH drug abuse study found that over 21.5 million Americans ages 12 and older are struggling with addiction with the CDC reporting 72,000   Americans dying from drug overdoses in 2017 with 2018 trending to top that number. One would think that the news would be covering this non-stop but the problem is that the political rhetoric of border safety, globalism, democrats, republicans, etc. sucks all the air out of the room. They are talking about theoretical consequences of these problems while very real people are dying every year and at increasing numbers.

Why is this not a bigger issue? Maybe its because we think because we hear something about a billion dollars being spent on a program that we are absolved from worrying but guess what? If those programs would work they would have by now. Putting more money in a program like this, is like flapping your arms harder and hoping to fly. We have a huge problem in this country and the media and politicians are distracting us from what we really talk about in private what worry us and its time we change the conversation to the very real threats now. We need to do border security but damn it guys, I want to have a conversation about what really might hurt my 4 year-old daughter in the future and its not some illegal immigrant.

To help me with this discussion, I am going to be joined by our good friend Ron the Opinionated Veteran to help us discuss this all too important topic airing

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