GOOD ON YOU, MAYOR

Editor, The News:

Re: Trustees Refute Meth Claims (The News, Sept. 16).

Shame on the school trustees for sticking their collective heads in
the sand on dealing with the drug issue.

Whenever this cancer is acknowledged , we see game playing, like how
much is too much, and labeling the concern as fear mongering.

It is not fear mongering if it is your child who walks into a train
in despair. It is not fear mongering if your child is the one dragged
for miles under a car by someone in a drug-induced state. It is not
fear mongering if you see the video of that drug's affect on a car
thief, trying to discharge his revolver while weaving through traffic.

We all witness it and, yet, when it comes to focusing on a problem we
have the collective attention span of a gnat.

Get real, people. Drug busts are routine and hardly news anymore, and
it is not 80-year-old grandmothers being recruited to use them. We
have become a society of facilitators. True, it is not the kids but
rather their parents and teachers. Witness the two teachers recently
busted for growing marijuana.

I have been to two poorly attended PAC committee meetings in this
town, one as president. I showed the principal and parents a crack
pipe found within 100 yards of school property and brought to their
attention drug use more than once. Every time it gets swept under the carpet.

The diversion that we are not as bad as the other guy is as juvenile
as teachers subjects who will segue out of every confrontation.
These are our children and they deserve to be saved.

I applaud the efforts of Maple Ridge Mayor Gordy Robson and other
whistle blowers who want to clean up this town, and I wish trustees
would listen more to him rather than be swayed by complacency and a
$6 billion a year drug lobby.

Phil Cartmel

Maple Ridge