Crystal Clear:

PRAY THAT YOUR KIDS DON'T DISCOVER METHAMPHETAMINE, A POISON AND A KILLER

As summer comes upon us, our kids will be seeking evening excitement.
Let's hope they don't discover methamphetamine. This is a drug that
has become epidemic in many northern U.S. states and threatens to
become a similar scourge in Canada.

There are drugs and then there is methamphetamine. And that's the
problem. That's how we let down our kids and how we risk their lives.
We don't make a distinction. In our zeal to fight the "war on drugs,"
we have become lazy. In our desire to come across as streetwise, as
"with it," we embrace the cool jargon and terminology of users. In so
doing, we erase distinctions and leave our kids to conclude that there
is some homogenous enemy called drugs.

The 40- and 50-year-old adults of today grew up in the heyday of
toking and dropping. Weed, acid, mesc and magic mushrooms were where
it was at. Even if foregoing the psychedelic experience, all in that
generation saw drug usage as part of their times, part of their
liberation. Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and every bell-bottomed freak
were testimony to the legitimacy of what was simply seen as the
experimentation with self. The very word psychedelic is not negative,
let alone menacing.

This is part of why kids today resist so strongly that drugs are, in
fact, an enemy. It wasn't the case in the '60s and '70s. Why now? And
drugs still play a significant role in kids' need to rebel against the
older generation, against the establishment.

Drugs and alcohol signify a teenager's coming of age, form a
declaration that they can carve their own path. They allow kids to
enter into a euphoric, high state that is their very own. Wow! That
feels good. That's liberation.

And thus, when methamphetamine came into popular usage, we embraced
the flashy term, crystal meth. Recognition got out in the adult circle
that crystal meth was bad stuff. But we still called it crystal meth.
We lumped it in with all the other categories of drugs -- the
narcotics, the opiates, the hallucinogens, all those adult definitions
that turn off kids and convey a homogenizing message. Crystal meth
does sound kind of enticing doesn't it? Who doesn't like crystals?
They create rainbows.

We've failed our kids in not getting out an accurate message, in not
alerting them to the facts about methamphetamine. We need to
reconsider our language and stop calling it a drug, stop treating it
the way we treat the other drugs. After all, kids are not keen
discerners, they're not thinkers who do their own analysis. We've
successfully made them into voracious consumers. They look for
pleasure, for excitement.

Methamphetamine is fairly cheap and the effects are incredible -- it's
been described as having four times the impact of crack (which is in
itself significantly more intense than cocaine), as initially having
the blast of 10 orgasms. Of course, teenagers would be curious and
attracted to such a payoff. Especially if it's just another drug.

But methamphetamine is a poison. It is easily made from highly toxic
substances -- Draino, battery acid, paint thinner. The toxicity of
methamphetamine labs is so high that the clean-up teams risk their
health by entering the area. They wear full-body protection suits.
Look on the internet to see graphic photos of the physical damage done
from spills and accidents in methamphetamine labs. You'll see flesh
eaten away, scarring, stripped skin. That's why we need to cease
calling it crystal meth and simply including it in the pantheon of
drugs that people get addicted to. Morphine, cocaine and heroin can
stay the bogeymen of drugs. They're hundreds of years old; they come
from the natural world. They don't necessitate a decontamination unit
when there's a bust.

Methamphetamine does produce an intense psychological high. But it
also destroys. A regular user suffers long-term, maybe permanent,
brain damage. We can talk about interference with dopamine production,
or reduced neuron activity, or any other technical description, but
that just makes us feel better. If we tell it like it is, we'll say
there is actual brain damage and especially so in developing
adolescent brains, and that we aren't sure how much. This is not
debatable, not a scare tactic. The old guard of the love generation
may have dropped acid hundreds of times and be doing just fine today.
It ain't so with methamphetamine. How could it be otherwise
considering its makeup?

Users can go days without sleeping, days without eating, days without
defecating. Rage fits and erratic behaviours leave a wake of carnage
and death. Death is also possible from the physiological stress of an
overdose or from ingesting an adulterated hit. It leaves serious users
suffering from recurring hallucinations and depression for years after
discontinuation. Ask any methamphetamine user if they still don't see
things.

Methamphetamine is crystalline and the crystals do not break down in
the body. Frequent users describe how the crystals have to eventually
make their way out of the body. They move through the bloodstream and
through the cells to find a particular, created pathway and emerge as
boils or lacerations. It's common to be picking the crystal shards
from the eyelids or the tongue. Preliminary rehab from methamphetamine
takes months. Does this still sound like a drug?

Methamphetamine use is spreading like an insidious
plague.

The Pacific Northwest states, the Vancouver area of British Columbia,
small towns and big cities throughout North America are facing the
expanding threat.

At raves, the drug of choice is Ecstacy. But at any given time it can
be laced with methamphetamine. There is a calculated interest in
spreading the addiction. Somebody is raking in the cash.

But kids do have brains, and they can protect themselves. What they
need is for the adults in their lives -- the parents, the teachers,
the counsellors, the clergy and the media -- to stop confusing them.
We need to drive a wedge between methamphetamine and drugs. We need to
separate it from marijuana and "shrooms," from coke and acid. It's not
a drug, it's a poison.

Until we make this shift in our language, kids won't get it. We need
to go overboard in making it absolutely clear that methamphetamine -
what they call crystal meth, crank, ice - is a poison. It's a killer.