DRUGS NOT A PROBLEM? THINK AGAIN

Result is always the same: trouble says 18 year old

Lequita Twete is a survivor of drugs - so far. She has smoked pot.Snorted
methamphetamine.Dropped acid.Shot up heroin.And she is barely 18 years old.
"I've lost so much to addiction that it isn't funny," said Twete, an
outgoing redhead with an easy laugh. On a recent crisp winter morning, she
and several others in Deschutes County juvenile custody were working on a
Habitat for Humanity duplex in northeast Bend.

"If I could get a message across to kids in junior high or elementary
school, it's that drugs are totally not cool."

Think that drugs aren't a problem in idyllic Central Oregon? Think again.
Although Twete's level of drug abuse still is rare, authorities say, she
isn't the only one whose young life has been turned into a nightmare.

"There are 11 year olds who are smoking pot, eating acid and doing crank
(methamphetamine)," said Twete, who was born in Redmond and raised in Bend.
" Drugs are a problem no matter where you go. You can find drugs anywhere."
" Out there in the real world, it wouldn't surprise me that the age of kids
being involved in drug use is dropping," said Don Minney, Deschutes County
Juvenile Department facilities manager. Convicted twice of forging checks
to obtain money for drugs, Twete soon is due to be released from juvinile
custody.
She'll still be on parole, however, and looking for a job and a place to
live.

Her mother, Diane Twete, has had enough of her daughter's lies, stealing
and repeated attempts to break her addictions. Lequita won't be allowed to
return home. " I've been dealing with this for four years and we're in the
same place we were four years ago", said Diane Twete.

" I support my daughter and I love her dearly, but she has a disease
she'll be struggling with the rest of her life and she has to learn how to
take care of herself. I'm not going to be part of the problem."

For Lequita, the problem began in eighth grade when she first tried
marijuana. She didn't get high the first time: " I did a Clinton. I didn't
know how to inhale."

But within a year, she was a regular marijuana smoker. She tred LSD, then
methamphetamine. Previously a decent student, she couldn't keep up with
high school work while high on drugs.

"I never did it at school, but I went to school tweaked sometimes," Twete
said.
"I'd just say I was going to the counselor's office and I'd leave."

Twete was a freshman when she first was convicted of forgery. She completed
a diversion program for young offenders, but couldn't stay clean. Her
parents finally sent her to Rimrock Trails, a residential drug and alcohol
treatment center in Prineville.

It didn't work. The first day she returned to Bend, Twete took the $20 she
had earned doing odd jobs at Rimrock Trails and bought a "quarter" -1/4
ounce of methamphetamine.

Her life then careened out of control.

In the span of a couple of years she was on and off drugs, mostly on. She
ran away to Washington state, where she was doing cocaine and heroin when
police tracked her down and returned her to Bend.

By the summer of 1996, she was a frequent intravenous drug user. She spent
two more stints in treatment programs, but she was unable to break the
addiction.

Finally, after violating parole a year later, Twete was sent to the
Hillcrest School juvenile corrections facility. She was released back to
Deschutes County on Jan. 5.

Twete has been clean since returning to Bend. She's lucky - she didn't
contract any diseases such as AIDS while shooting up.

But she knows she's at risk and running out of time.Now that she's 18, her
next screw-up will land her in adult jails.

"I'm doing OK but I'm nervous about returning to the same town," she said.
" But all my friends are in prison."