Pubdate: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 Source: Outlook, The (CN BC) Copyright: 2005 The Outlook Contact: http://www.northshoreoutlook.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1433 Author: Denny Boyd Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth) BOYD'S TOWN Every time I read about teens turning their brains into lumps of gristle through crystal meth use, I pull at my hair and rage at the lack of common knowledge. I howl, Good God, everyone knows that stuff is a killer. Don't they read the papers?" Well, no. I don't think they do read the papers. I don't think they watch television news reports, or listen to the tragic first-person confessions of ruined young lives on talkshow programs. Bill Good has just won a prestigious international award for a gripping radio program he did on meth. Some of the interviews would wrench your heart. I listened to it, so perhaps did you, and we had to be alarmed by the first-rate reporting and interviews. Just one problem. It aired in the morning. How many vulnerable teen-agers were listening to a non-music radio station in the morning? The invaluable broadcast was lost on the age group that needed it most. The Vancouver Sun some months ago ran a week-long series on the easy availability of meth, it's diabolically addictive grip from the first taste and the horrific damage it causes. But how many teens read the papers? When was the last time you saw a student reading the morning paper on the bus on the way to school? When you sit near an animated group of high-schoolers at Starbucks, are they discussing an editorial they all read? Not bloody likely. They don't read the papers because there isn't much there for them. So when they eagerly jump into meth to impress their peers (the only group they slavishly believe in) it's not through bravado or a feeling of invincibility, it's from ignorance. They simply have not plugged into the torrent of information on drugs that is available to them, but bypassed by them. I wonder what would be the reaction to a senior student walking into school with a rolled-up New York Times under his arm. A right proper taunting, most likely. Yet the majority of those students will walk into school with an inexpensive cell phone in his or her pocket, a form of communication which dispenses no knowledge whatsoever beyond where the party is Saturday night. Yet they clutch those tiny electronic marvels as if they were Rosetta stones. Their cells are so precious to them that they will clamp them to their ears with no-one on the line, just for the comfort, like Maggie Simpson with her soother. The landline telephone system is regulated by a massive bureaucracy. Pity then that it cannot be law that every cell phone be programmed with a permanent message, saying, Meth wants to kill you. Have a nice day." - --- MAP posted-by: Beth