Pubdate: Sun, 20 Jan 2002
Source: Birmingham News (AL)
Copyright: 2002 The Birmingham News
Contact:  http://www.al.com/bhamnews/bham.html
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/45
Author: Adam Goldman
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

METH CONSUMES ENTIRE JASPER FAMILY

JASPER - Ask Juanita Dockins who is doing methamphetamine here and 
you get a blunt response:

"Who's not?"

Ms. Dockins, 44, should know. She says she sold the drug to truckers 
about eight years ago to pay the bills. She got to know a lot of 
people who took meth. Now, three of her four children have fallen 
prey to the drug.

Ms. Dockins said that in Jasper, a city of about 14,000, meth was too 
easy to find.

"It all goes in a circle," she said. "Everybody knows everybody."

Ms. Dockins, who is disabled with a bad back, said a friend 
introduced her to the drug while living in Empire in Walker County. 
She started snorting and selling it regularly after she left her 
husband and moved to Jasper.

With two children and no job, dealing provided an income. She could 
make about $500 a week peddling it to truck drivers in Birmingham, 
Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, among other places.

"It was easy money," she said. "It paid the bills. I bought groceries 
and it gave you stuff to do."

Ms Dockins said she then quit the business in 1996.

"I was afraid I'd get caught," she said. "But I'm not going to lie. 
I'm not going to tell you I don't still do it every once and a while. 
If I'm somewhere and everybody else is doing it, I'll take a hit."

In 1997, the drug was brought into her home. She discovered her son, 
Christopher A. Dockins, 20, had been getting high on meth. One of Ms. 
Dockins' male friends had given her son the drug.

Christopher Dockins has been in the Walker County Jail since being 
charged last year with breaking into the Franklin Motor Co. in Jasper 
and stealing a freon recovery machine, used to work on car air 
conditioners. Ms. Dockins said her son thought the machine could be 
used to produce meth.

Her daughter, Kim Diane Dockins, 19, was next. She came home one day 
in 1997 and admitted she had been doing the drug, the mother said.

Ms. Dockins' daughter has since been charged with possessing 
methamphetamine after a traffic stop in November. She is in the 
Walker County Jail awaiting trial. Her two children, ages 2 and 3, 
are with her mother.

"Meth has made life hell," the mother said. "I don't have no kids 
because of it. Now I have two grandbabies I'm going to have to tell 
their mama is in jail."

By 1999, her youngest son, a juvenile, was also on meth. She kicked 
Kim Dockins and the youngest son out of the house last year, fearing 
they would hurt her. The mother said meth had made them dangerous.

Ms. Dockins, who has no phone in her trailer and is trying to find a 
new place to live, said she does not know what the future will bring 
to her family. This scares her.

"If you are doing it, it's going to kill you," she said. "When 
they're in jail I know they are OK. I expect to get a phone call one 
day that they're dead. That somebody has either shot them or they 
have killed themselves."
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