Pubdate: Fri, 12 Aug 2005
Source: Hamilton Spectator (CN ON)
Copyright: 2005 The Hamilton Spectator
Contact:  http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/181
Author: Robert Howard
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

SCARE KIDS AWAY FROM LETHAL DRUG

The maximum penalty for making or distributing crystal methamphetamine is 
now life imprisonment. That's the same maximum penalty as for making or 
distributing crack cocaine or heroin.

Look how well that's worked.

The announcement of new penalties this week by the federal justice and 
health ministers is a good first step in sending a message, particularly to 
the many young and "amateur" producers and sellers of crystal meth.

It's a step police, users' families and antidrug advocates welcome, because 
it gives public profile to a terribly destructive drug problem.

But it's not enough. The life-imprisonment penalty is the maximum. Maximums 
are rarely imposed in this country unless there are hugely aggravating 
circumstances and many prior convictions.

A more effective move would be minimum sentences. Send a message: If you're 
caught making or selling crystal meth, you will do a minimum of five, or 
10, years in prison.

The maximum penalty for users rises from three years to seven. Users are 
the victims of the makers and sellers, and that penalty does seem sufficient.

What would be far more useful to deter users of this terrible drug is an 
in-their-faces education program in grades 7, 8 or 9.

Show youngsters what crystal meth does. Show them photos of the damage done 
to brains, of the rotted teeth and toothless mouths, of the welts and 
lesions from scratching at hallucinatory bugs.

Get the police to bring in photos from their files of what addicts -- once 
people who thought they could control the drug rather than the other way 
around -- look like. The gaunt, skeletal look. The waxy pallor of an addict 
on the slab in the morgue.

Police and schools -- this could be done on local initiatives and doesn't 
need a federal bureaucracy to make it happen -- could hammer home the 
message that crystal meth is a drug you don't want to mess with.

Police and schools cannot -- and should not -- give even implicit 
permission for youngsters to use marijuana or so-called "soft" drugs. But 
they can be told there's a massive escalation of risk, of a ruined life, in 
crystal meth. There is a boundary here that they just don't want to cross.

Parents, of course, can and should send the same message. But educators and 
police can be more effective, with resources and experience to get inside 
kids' heads -- and that's what is needed.

Imprisoning users is a last resort. We need to stop it before it starts.

To resurrect an old maxim: Scare the kids straight.
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MAP posted-by: Beth