Pubdate: Sat, 03 Sep 2005
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2005, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Calvin White
Note: Calvin White is a writer, poet and high-school counsellor in 
Armstrong, B.C.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

DO THE MATH ON METH IN SCHOOL THIS YEAR

As we start a new school year after months of news stories about crystal 
meth, I wonder if there will be any new strategies in place to help 
students face the danger? Laws in Canada have been toughened for those 
making and selling methamphetamine, and parents groups are certainly 
alarmed about the problem. But will the actual instructional life in our 
schools be different than any other year?

I remember coming home from a summer trip to Thailand with a school group a 
few years ago. We were met immediately in the walkway from our plane by two 
medics on the lookout for symptoms of SARS. At poultry farms where I live, 
there are big signs prohibiting admittance by visitors. Borders have been 
closed to cattle because of mad cow disease. But when it comes to a scourge 
like methamphetamine, which has devastated far more lives in small and 
large communities around the whole continent, we seem content with a more 
hands-off approach -- talk, talk, talk. Punish the "bad guys" harder if we 
catch them. End of story.

The truth is that crystal meth is not going away. It often finds its way 
into ecstasy pills. It's cheap, it offers an intense high and it doesn't 
have the ghetto stigma of crack cocaine. Yet it's far more harmful than 
virtually every other commonly ingested drug. Of these, methamphetamine is 
the only one made from highly toxic materials, so toxic that special 
protective suits are needed by officers who clean up the production labs.

Methamphetamine addicts are plagued by a variety of symptoms of brain 
damage -- recurring visual or auditory hallucinations, nerve damage, 
depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety -- and this list goes on.

A mother I've worked with tells of how her son suffered a stroke, along 
with many other nightmarish crises while he used meth over a three-year 
period. Now, even though he has been clean for several years, she worries 
about a future marked by early onset of Parkinson's or even Alzheimer's 
since prolonged use ages the brain in a fashion that increases those 
likelihoods. It's thought that just a single use of methamphetamine may 
cause some brain damage.

So, what is the hesitation to implement full-scale education and awareness 
programs in our schools starting in Grade 5? The biggest error in our 
current prevention practice is that we term it as drug education. We need 
to help our kids think. They do not figure it out on their own. They need 
to hear from us in precise, accurate and powerful language what we want 
them to learn and take to heart. Marijuana, regardless of its negative 
effects, and there are many, is not at all the deadly problem that crystal 
meth is. But whenever we talk to kids about drugs, we often mean marijuana 
or they think we do. And in today's climate, few kids will be educated away 
from marijuana.

So, we must design specific methamphetamine programs. We must hire and 
train young people who have been meth users and found their way to 
abstinence, to go in teams to our schools and interact. A video, no matter 
how momentarily powerful, isn't close to what a living peer can 
communicate. We need to attack the notion that ecstasy is okay. We need 
ex-dealers to go to schools to reveal how they targeted kids, and how they 
knew that kids' stupidity and bravado could be counted on to ensure a market.

And, hardest of all, we need to break into the teen immortality syndrome 
and its counterpart undervaluing of life. A sobering realization hit me 
during the last school year with a teen I was counselling when I was 
equating the use of crystal meth to a form of suicide. She looked me 
straight in the eye and said, "Yeah, I know." It sent a shiver through me. 
Instead of fearing the potential loss of life, she was ready to risk it. 
Life, clearly, was not so precious to her.

How many others, I wondered, were in a similar mind space? For how many 
others were there home problems, boyfriend problems, school problems or 
inner demons that made the idea of dying not so terrible? Thus, the allure 
of a powerful, self-destructive drug. Thus, also, the ease with which a 
classmate can be a supplier.

"We all die some time, right?"

"It's their own choice, no one's making them buy it."

These simplistic statements make sense to the teen mind. There has just not 
been sufficient life experience and emotional development to counter those 
notions.

So, our task is to go directly at the problem. It is a common trait for 
kids to go to counsellors with their fears when they suspect a classmate is 
suicidal or when a classmate is cutting herself. That same instinct needs 
to be strengthened when it comes to ecstasy and crystal meth. Remember that 
ecstasy, the majority of the time, will have crystal meth in it.

Every parent who gets educated about methamphetamine inevitably feels 
frightened and momentarily motivated to take action. Unfortunately this 
wears off in the busyness of our everyday lives. Our passion is replaced by 
the crossing of fingers.

But the initial dread really is appropriate. And we must empower our kids 
through our schools. Both we and our kids are smarter than methamphetamine 
and those who offer it.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman