There is another wrinkle to this that perhaps should be considered:
There actually (and sadly) exists the chance that the supplier of said illegal substance is an employee of an educational institution:
A fair example might be steroids.
I am not sure there's a perfect right answer - you might turn in one kid (maybe that protects them and maybe it does not) - and the problem will continue to grow until you get to the dealer and those covering for them.
I do agree with the others - if you have direct evidence of illegal substance abuse you should not cover that up - just be sure you follow it up till it gets dealt with.
Also - now that I am done with my work schedule I can link some documents in relation to the previous requests, though again the risk I see here is that at the core statistics can be abused:
1:
"
Income distribution and risk of fatal drug overdose in New York City neighborhoods"
Be sure to note this:
"The relation between income distribution and mortality has been controversial (Wagstaff and van Doorslaer, 2000; Mackenbach, 2002). Although studies in the early 1990s demonstrated this relation in a number of ecologic studies, later work suggested that this effect was due to the relation between income (Osler et al., 2002) or education (Muller, 2002) and mortality. Other multilevel studies failed to demonstrate an association between area-level income distribution and mortality (Fiscella and Franks, 1997)."
2:
This is also relevant but I can't find a reasonable public source for it:
"Depressive symptoms, negative urgency and substance use initiation in adolescents"
"Depression levels are associated with lifetime use of a variety of substances in early adolescence and targeting this risk factor with preventive efforts may be useful in reducing risk. Negative urgency may be an important target for interventions aimed at alcohol and inhalant use."
3:
So what about income versus depression:
"Depression and socio-economic risk factors: 7-year longitudinal population study"
"Conclusions The study showed a clear relationship between worsening socio-economic circumstances and depression."
"All coefficients are bivariate and controlled only for the inverse Mill’s ratio. An increase of subjective financial strain (e.g. from ‘with difficulty’ to ‘with great difficulty’) or in deprivation was associated with statistically significant changes in both depression score and the likelihood of being a case of major depression. Becoming poor resulted in a statistically significant increase in depression score (but not in cases of major depression). Increase in income or becoming unemployed were associated neither with a change in depression score nor with a change in cases of major depression. Changing civic participation was associated with lower depression score only, to a statistically significant degree. Change in living arrangements was associated with change in both depression score and change in cases of major depression."
Which to the point - bad things happen to people 'with money' to.
How much is 'with money' to you?
Sometimes people hear that people like doctors make $250k and think wow - I'd never have a worry.
Take a look at their student loan payments each month and you can see where it can go.
Let's add this cause I turned it up on Google out of curiosity:
4:
Towards the point I made above. Remember that doctors don't start out making $250k.
They make very little during residency and still have access to the pharmacy:
"
The Secret World of Drug-Addict Doctors"
5:
Mentions income versus overdoses in a graph for Washington State:
"
Drug Abuse and Overdose"
6:
Reinforcing the reason that long term drug use as mentioned in the previous links, in particular with relation to heroine, has cumulative negative impacts on health.
"
How heroin kills you"
7:
Cumulative health impacts can feed back into depression (or vice versa) (see #2, 3 and 6 for the reason this is here):
"
The Relationship Between Mental and Physical Health"
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