METH HAS CREPT INTO OUR VALLEY

Local high school children are becoming more aware of methamphetamines
(crystal meth).

That's enough to set off a few alarm bells, including coming from David
Thompson Secondary School drug and alcohol prevention counsellor Shelley
Chaney, who has noticed an increase in awareness of meth from students, as
well as growing indifference toward its presence.

Meth is nothing new. Speed, as it used to be known as, has been messing up
the daring, desperate, dense, dim and nearly dead for decades - spanning
back to the 1960s.

Strong messaging campaigns, including 'speed kills,' reduced the drug's
popularity in the 1970s and 1980s. But what also carved into the speed
industry was cocaine.

Meth yields a similar high to 'coke' and is much cheaper. But wise
druggies know that meth is a bad and evil thing. Manufactured in scuzzy
labs, it is the Frankenstein monster gone bad of the drug world.

Why take meth when you can get coke, which is usually purer? The
proliferation of cocaine in the 1970s likely had more to do with the stall
on speed than anything else.

The proliferation of cocaine in the valley has also been a reason that
meth hasn't taken root here.

But the economy has been changing.

Drug manufacturers 're-invented' meth back in the 1990s, giving it some
cool new street names and competing with the sick evil brother of cocaine,
crack. It wasn't much of a stretch for a wasted crackhead to snatch some
meth to keep their addiction rolling.

Now that our economy is in the dumpster, it only makes sense those
money-hungry types, who care not a whit for their fellow person's well
being, will begin cranking crap like meth out in greater volumes.

According to CBC's The Fifth Estate, "police say an investment of about
$150 can yield up to $10,000 worth of the drug."

It also noted that the people who use crystal meth include: "large numbers
of rural and small-town poor across North America; some young people in
the rave and dance scene; some young people who want to lose weight; gay
males involved in the dance scene or who frequent bathhouses."

That meth is popular in rural areas is a product of it being easily
created, as opposed to cocaine which must be imported etc.

Well, here in the Columbia Valley, we are a tad rural. In the last few
years the cocaine suppliers have been stomped on harder than ever before;
and people are poorer than they have been in a while, as a whole, too.

All this is why a new, catchy information campaign must be launched. Times
continue to be more desperate, on a whole. Anyone saying otherwise has
money in the bank and their financial affairs are in strong order.

And considering that in such times people party more, it's a no-brainer
that meth is going to make inroads here.

There is a great deal of information on meth out there. Please take the
time to brush up on what it is and keep your eyes open for signs of it.

Some people may believe that crystal meth is 'just' amphetamines but it
has a "much stronger effect on the central nervous system," The Fifth
Estate reported.

The stuff is - flat out - the worst junk that druggies can stuff into
their bodies. And when you stop to think about it, that is one hell of a
large and sweeping statement because there is a legion of nasty things
people can smoke, sniff, pop or inject.

We need to do all we can to keep this life-destroying garbage out of the
valley and out of our children's hands.

Please do as Chaney recommends and talk to your kids about drugs. Make
them aware of the dangers.