METH CONSUMES ENTIRE JASPER FAMILY

JASPER - Ask Juanita Dockins who is doing methamphetamine here and
you get a blunt response:

"Who's not?"

Ms. Dockins, 44, should know. She says she sold the drug to truckers
about eight years ago to pay the bills. She got to know a lot of
people who took meth. Now, three of her four children have fallen
prey to the drug.

Ms. Dockins said that in Jasper, a city of about 14,000, meth was too
easy to find.

"It all goes in a circle," she said. "Everybody knows everybody."

Ms. Dockins, who is disabled with a bad back, said a friend
introduced her to the drug while living in Empire in Walker County.
She started snorting and selling it regularly after she left her
husband and moved to Jasper.

With two children and no job, dealing provided an income. She could
make about $500 a week peddling it to truck drivers in Birmingham,
Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, among other places.

"It was easy money," she said. "It paid the bills. I bought groceries
and it gave you stuff to do."

Ms Dockins said she then quit the business in 1996.

"I was afraid I'd get caught," she said. "But I'm not going to lie.
I'm not going to tell you I don't still do it every once and a while.
If I'm somewhere and everybody else is doing it, I'll take a hit."

In 1997, the drug was brought into her home. She discovered her son,
Christopher A. Dockins, 20, had been getting high on meth. One of Ms.
Dockins' male friends had given her son the drug.

Christopher Dockins has been in the Walker County Jail since being
charged last year with breaking into the Franklin Motor Co. in Jasper
and stealing a freon recovery machine, used to work on car air
conditioners. Ms. Dockins said her son thought the machine could be
used to produce meth.

Her daughter, Kim Diane Dockins, 19, was next. She came home one day
in 1997 and admitted she had been doing the drug, the mother said.

Ms. Dockins' daughter has since been charged with possessing
methamphetamine after a traffic stop in November. She is in the
Walker County Jail awaiting trial. Her two children, ages 2 and 3,
are with her mother.

"Meth has made life hell," the mother said. "I don't have no kids
because of it. Now I have two grandbabies I'm going to have to tell
their mama is in jail."

By 1999, her youngest son, a juvenile, was also on meth. She kicked
Kim Dockins and the youngest son out of the house last year, fearing
they would hurt her. The mother said meth had made them dangerous.

Ms. Dockins, who has no phone in her trailer and is trying to find a
new place to live, said she does not know what the future will bring
to her family. This scares her.

"If you are doing it, it's going to kill you," she said. "When
they're in jail I know they are OK. I expect to get a phone call one
day that they're dead. That somebody has either shot them or they
have killed themselves."