Pubdate: Tue, 25 Oct 2005
Source: Mount Forest Confederate (CN ON)
Copyright: 2005 Mount Forest Confederate
Contact:  http://www.mountforest.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2203

METH USE A COMMUNITY PROBLEM

In the OPP report, published in last week's Confederate, was mention 
of a 23-year-old Mount Forest man charged with, among other things, 
"Possession of Crystal Meth for the Purpose of Trafficking."

The following is from an editorial which appeared in a recent issue 
of the Listowel Banner, after Stratford Police Services drug 
specialist Det. Const. Mike Bellai told an information meeting held 
in Listowel that meth 'is everybody's problem."

Whether it's called by its chemical name, methamphetamine, or a 
nickname like crystal meth or just meth the reality is there's a new 
scourge on our streets and in our schools, and it's a drug like 
nothing we've battled in rural Ontario before.

The highly addictive drug is produced using ingredients and equipment 
easily obtained, usually through theft, in rural areas. Because the 
Ontario countryside can also offer some great places to hide illegal 
activity, meth is not an imported problem; it's made right here and 
flows directly into the local drug subculture, as well as on to the 
surrounding cities.

It's a problem for parents, who lose control of and, sometimes 
literally, lose children to the drug.

It's a problem for law enforcement officials, who must devote massive 
resources to the often-dangerous battle with drug dealers and producers.

It's a problem for businesses targeted for break-ins because they 
stock some otherwise innocuous product that can be used to create meth.

It's a problem for health care providers who find meth users showing 
up in small town emergency wards, where personnel are unused to 
dealing with violent stoners on bad trips.

It's a problem for politicians, who need to look at changes to the 
legal system to ensure meth producers and dealers are penalized 
severely enough to provide some deterrent.

Detective Constable Bellai offers the sobering assessment that meth 
can't be eliminated -- only suppressed. That's hard to accept. If, as 
a community, we work together to pus the meth trade to the very brink 
of elimination, we can at least maintain hope it will fall over the 
edge for lack of support.

New laws, more police resources, better security for retailers who 
stock potential meth ingredients, public education -- all these 
elements can help fight the meth problem locally and the citizenry 
needs to support such efforts.

But perhaps our greatest weapon in the fight against meth, is the 
very fear such drugs instill. Society has done a good job of 
stigmatizing other ultra-addictive and deadly drugs, like heroin, as 
killers and life-wreckers to the point even the most ardent partiers 
in the drug culture generally shun them. We must ensure meth attains 
the same status. Through the media, through our schools, through 
whatever means available, we need to create an atmosphere where meth 
inspires the same level of fear in potential users as heroin, or for 
that matter, cyanide.

This stuff is death. And everyone needs to be clear on that.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman