Unabashed zaniness.
That?s how Phillip and Janna Zuber describe their son, Justin, a 16-year-old adventure lover who died after huffing air freshener five years ago.
The Bowie couple joined Maryland officials and other heartbroken parents of inhalant victims Tuesday to launch a statewide education campaign on potentially deadly household products.
“We received the phone call no parent ever wants to receive,” Phillip Zuber said. “Huffing is very real. It kills.”
The campaign, which includes kits that will be distributed to every Maryland school that aims to teach parents how to educate their children on inhalants, is the product of a state law adopted last year.
About 20 percent of all children have used an inhalant by the eighth grade, according to the Alliance for Consumer Education.
In Maryland, inhalants are second only to marijuana for eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders and are the drugs of choice for sixth-graders, with use rates twice that of marijuana and other drugs, the alliance said.
But children of parents who speak to them about inhalants ? frequently household items such as canned whipped cream, glue and gasoline ? are 50 percent less likely to abuse them, experts said.
“We need to make parents aware of the dangers in their kitchen right now,” said Del. Tawanna Gaines, D-Prince George?s, who sponsored the legislation.
Gaines named the law for Avin Mackenzie Glamp, the 15-year-old daughter of a General Assembly legislative aide who died from inhalant abuse in 2002.
Both Glamp?s mother, Pamela Powers, and the Zubers described their children?s? inhalant abuse as innocent and experimental.
They said they had never discussed the potential dangers with their children.
“I had no idea,” Powers said. “Kids talk amongst themselves all the time, and we have no idea.”
