Pubdate: Sat, 02 May 2009
Source: Daily Observer, The (CN ON)
Copyright: 2009 Osprey Media Group Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/udQyY8Mp
Website: http://www.thedailyobserver.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2615
Author: Rev. Eric Strachan

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY FOR YOUNG TEENAGERS

One Pill, Two Pill, Three Pill, Four, Five Pill, Six Pill, Seven Pill, Floor."

Turn to page 372 in The Concise Oxford Dictionary and there it is, 
sandwiched somewhere between 'economy' and 'ecstatic' - the word 'ecstasy'.

The wordsmiths who laboured over definitions added this behind the 
seven-lettered word -1. An overwhelming feeling of joy and rapture. 
2. A trancelike state. 3.Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, a powerful 
stimulant and hallucinatory drug (MDMA).

On the streets of our cities, kids and dealers label the drug 'E' or 
XTC, some call it euphoria or love doves.

It gives users a 'high' that can last as long as from four to six hours.

That's long enough for the duration of a teen dance when you can 
loosen up, get rid of those post-pubescent teenybopper inhibitions 
and feel warm and fuzzy all over.

At five bucks a pill, ecstasy is the drug of choice for many teens 
hanging out at the dance scene and let's face it, where there's 
demand, there you'll find a dealer.

Cassie Williams was hanging out at The West Edmonton Mall last week 
with her teen friend Ashley Morin, they had come for the Mall's Rock 
N' Ride Party.

Parties and drugs are like Siamese twins in the youth culture, you 
can't have one without the other, and for Ashley and Cassie, $50 
spent on 12 ecstasy pills would make the night one of those "wasn't 
that a party" nights.

Problem was both kids are only 14, they haven't really been around 
the block, don't know much about the labs where guys and gals as 
twisted as a corkscrews make ecstasy.

Guys and gals should I say who don't give a hoot if kids overdose and die.

No, drug labs whether they be in this country or abroad are filled 
with callous, cold-blooded criminals, racketeers and parasites who 
profit from the inner pain in the hearts of kids like Ashley and 
Cassie, pain that drives kids into the world of 'quick fix' street drugs.

Cassie Williams looks like a fun-loving kid. Her long blond hair 
tipped with red borders a smile as wide as the Ottawa River.

She looks like the kind of kid a guy would love to call his daughter 
- - a grandpa, his granddaughter, but she's just a kid, short on wisdom 
and street smarts, just a tad, or more than a tad naive, she's only 
been around after all for less than 170 months, and "Gee!", to 
rephrase a line from songster Cindy Lauper, "Kids just want to have fun!"

That's the blinder isn't it? The pursuit of fun in the North American 
climate of hedonism blinds you to so much - such as, when you buy 
some ecstasy pills you don't exactly know what you're buying, for 
some dealers mix the man-made drug with other drugs.

Kids like Ashley and Cassie often stuff drugs down their bras so they 
can pass security.

As the two headed into the mall's Rock N' Ride dance party last week 
they downed six pills apiece, $25 to get a real four-hour high.

At some point, Cassie began to shake and convulse, the shaking went 
on non-stop, just minutes before the two elementary junior high 
school students overdosed.

Both girls were whisked to the hospital where Cassie was put on life support.

Last Saturday they took 14-year-old Cassie Williams off life support 
- - and that was it, game over - at 14.

Cassie's friend Ashley survived - amazingly!

Don't expect a wreath at this funeral from a drug dealer or a lab 
rat, those who make the stuff, don't expect a sympathy card from the 
guy who traffics this stuff, you know, the guy who drives around in 
that shiny 75 grand automobile, it just ain't coming, empathy and 
drug dealing are about as far apart as North America and the moon.

But make no mistake about it, there's blood on the hands of more than 
one drug dealer in the city where you live, the teen blood of kids 
like Cassie Williams, kids who were just kids, kids who thought that 
this would be a great high, but it wasn't all ecstasy, far from it, 
it was mostly agony, an agony that will take a long time to go away 
for those the teen leaves behind. Cassie William's casket proves that 
beyond any shadow of a doubt!
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