STUDENTS CHRONICLE STARK CHOICES OF METH ADDICTS

In A Bold Documentary, North Clackamas School District High School Students
Show The Drug's Brutal Reality

MILWAUKIE -- A student stands in front of a bank of lockers and explains,
on camera, how to buy methamphetamine on the street.

"It's very easy to come by," he says. "You can just walk up and ask them,
you know, flat out, 'You got any -_-?' And they'll just be like, 'You got
the money?' And there you go, you're good to go."

The interview is part of "Life? or Meth?," a gritty, 17-minute documentary
produced by high school students in the North Clackamas School District.
The students wanted to show teenagers the hard reality of how meth, a
powerfully addictive form of speed, destroys lives and the community.

"If it's a documentary about meth for teen awareness, getting a teenager
who actually does meth is striking," said Robinson Chan, 18, one of two
student producers.

"It's real life, you know?"

Facing the camera head-on, but without being identified by name, the
17-year-old talks about getting caught using meth, facing his mother's
anger, staying in the Donald E. Long juvenile detention center and getting
treatment.

"It was a pretty bad experience," he says in the video. "It's really not
worth it in the long run. I've lost a lot of my friends. I've lost a lot of
my privileges."

The student failed to take his own advice: Shortly after the interview, he
used meth again and was taken into the legal custody of the Oregon Youth
Authority, said his mother, Valerie Taylor of Clackamas.

"I wish he would learn not to do it," she said. "He's good at telling other
people not to do it."

His relapse underscored for students how hard it is for users to break from
the drug.

"It's interesting to see one minute they're normal, and then all of a
sudden they get into drugs," said Robyn Banks, 18, a senior at Clackamas
High School who worked on the documentary. "I didn't think it would
actually be someone that looks normal. He was the normalest-looking kid
that I knew."

Banks said the student who used meth was nervous about appearing in the
video because he didn't want people to think badly of him. But, she added,
"He was willing to speak the truth, and the truth is a lot of teens are
actually addicted to this drug."

Student producers were so determined to show the reality of drug culture
that they risked censorship rather than revise a scene where the student
talked about the casual ease of buying meth.

District spokesman Joe Krumm and Superintendent Ron Naso initially decided
not to air the documentary on the district's cable channel, because, Krumm
said, the student twice referred to meth by its vulgar street name.

"In general we don't allow inappropriate language or things we don't feel
are appropriate for viewers of an educational channel to be watching,"
Krumm said.

Naso and Krumm later reconsidered after watching the documentary and
finding it a high-quality production that provides important information,
Krumm said. They decided to let it air on the district cable channel after
10 p.m. with a warning about the language before the show and on at the
bottom of the screen during the broadcast.

Milwaukie public access cable channel 23 also is airing the show after 10 p.m.

The advanced media communications class at the North Clackamas School
District's Sabin-Schellenberg Center took on meth as a documentary subject
at the suggestion of instructor Deborah Barnes, a former radio and TV news
reporter. She runs the class like a newsroom, with students from the
district's three high schools producing news shows from a studio on campus.

Past subjects include homeless teens, teenage mothers and drinking and driving.

Barnes said she backed the students' decision to keep the teenager's
interview in the documentary "because that's the demographic we're trying
to reach."

"It makes much more sense to have a peer talk about the dangers," she said.
"They relate better."

As students researched meth, they were stunned by the drug's impact.

"The more we got to know about meth, research-wise, the more serious and
big this project got," Chan said. "We put everything into this documentary."

The students interviewed a nurse, a youth outreach coordinator, state Rep.
Vicki Berger, R-Salem, and Multnomah County Detention Center Deputy Bret
King, who has compiled dramatic before-and-after photos of meth users.

The students discovered that 6 percent of 11th-graders said they had used
meth at least once, according to a 2003 survey by the state Center for
Health Statistics.

"We just want to get the message out not to try it, not even once, because
it will mess things up and you will regret it forever," said Jackie
Johnson, 18, a senior at Rex Putnam High who is an anchor of the show.

Chan and co-producer Rolando Cruz, 17, both seniors at Milwaukie High
School, talked their way into a former meth house as it was being cleaned.
Inside the house, they shot footage of a jumble of clothes, toys, picture
frames and furniture covering the floors.

"It was years of family memories just being tossed away because of meth,"
Chan said.