METH MADNESS: PREVENTION THROUGH EDUCATION

CIBOLA COUNTY - At the August methamphetamine awareness discussion one
focus was educating our youth and citizens about the drug.

DWI Coordinator Rhetta King and Nicola Martinez, a certified
preventionist from the Cibola County Teen Court are finding prevention
strategies and ways to address the problems here. Grants City Manager
Robert Horacek said both are needed in Grants.

"We have an excellent police force," he noted, but added prevention is
important, too.

King said she and Martinez want to work with the Grants/Cibola County
School District and find out what the parents want to know. They want
to learn which anti-drug curriculums serve Cibola County, but first
they need to gather demographics, institute current anti-drug abuse
curriculums and then evaluate them. Other meeting attendees agreed
that education was important, and suggested programming begin at young
ages and not end until youths are seniors in high school.

Grants/Cibola County School District Superintent Kilino Marquez
thanked Congressman Steve Pearce, R-Dist. 2 for coming to Grants.
Marquez also thanked the local law enforcement agencies for their help
in the schools. He agreed with Grants Police Chief Marty Vigil that
school resource officers are necessary in preventing illegal drug use.

Chief Vigil requested that Congressman Pearce help the city with
funding a school resource officer.

Grants Councilors Martin Hicks, Dist. 2. and Walter Jaramillo, Dist.
4, said they have been coaches in local youth sports and have watched
children slowly deteriorate.

"I agree that it's not a one-agency problem," said Councilor Hicks. "I
think the key to this is education." He said he has been talking to
his children about drugs since they were seven years old. He suggested
showing them what drain cleaners do to the commode, and then asking
them to think of what it does to their bodies. "Show them the real
truth to protect the kids."

The congressman confirmed that by middle school, children have made
the decision whether or not participate in sports. He said it could
take 15 years to educate a child from age two to 15 but added that is
really not a very long time.

"You spend half of your life at school with friends and the other half
with family," Nichola Martinez said. She plans to achieve heart-felt,
anti-drug awareness through teen court and positive reinforcement. She
also plans to provide prevention tactics, even for kindergarten
students, calling them "intelligent." Her main focus now is elementary
school students. Then she will teach at the middle and high schools,
asking different aged students to tell each other not to use drugs.

NMSP Lt. Frank Musitano suggested teaching or training plumbers,
electricians and other people who access homes where meth labs
operate, and then add the court system to include judges. But Lt.
Musitano contends the schools have to shock students'
consciousnesses.

"It's the middle school where the peer pressure comes in." he
said.

(Editor's note: This is the third of a series of articles about a
methamphetamine awareness discussion conducted in Grants in early August.)