CRYSTAL METH SOCIETY NEEDS RAFFLE TO STAY AFLOAT

Here's what was written on a T-shirt hanging in the window of a Fan
Tan Alley store the other day: "It will be a great day when the
schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a
bake sale to buy a bomber."

OK, the reality is that the military has been starved of funding,
too, but you get the point: There's never enough tax money to go
around. It's something to think of as we watch the people at the
Crystal Meth Society of B.C. resort to a raffle in a desperate
attempt to stay afloat.

Of course, when we say "people," we mean Victoria's Mark McLaughlin,
the executive director. He has pretty much been a one-man crew since
he, his wife Ruth and some others formed the society in 2005. A
volunteer board of directors guides the ship, but McLaughlin, who
himself is pretty much a volunteer, does much of the rowing,
criss-crossing the province to preach the dangers of crystal meth, a
horrible, incredibly addictive and destructive drug that has gutted
many families, including his own.

About 45,000 B.C. students have now seen the society's Meth Info
Show. McLaughlin brought it to Langford's Belmont secondary
yesterday. I'm usually pretty skeptical when a cop or somebody who
looks like somebody's dad marches into a school for an anti-drug
talk. When Officer Friendly issues a warning, some kids just hear instructions.

But, yeesh, each of the close to 300 students in the gym bleachers
should have found something in yesterday's presentation to creep them
out: images of scabby, toothless, twitching, psychotic users. A
needle sinking into an open sore. People who had compulsively picked
scores of holes in their skin.

When someone on-screen talked of getting paid $10 to do things with
fat, hairy, older guys that you

wouldn't do with your high school boyfriend, girls in the audience squirmed.

It was a worthwhile effort. Prevention through education is a good
idea. The society also has programs to track meth-related court
cases, keep meth labs out of rental properties and stem the flow of
the toxic soup of chemicals that goes into the drug. The organization
also played a role in the Salvation Army's six-bed rehab house for
young meth users here.

But the Crystal Meth Society is on the ropes. "We can't stay in
operation much longer without funding," says society president Don
Monsour. The group survives solely on donations. It got a one-time
$50,000 grant from Education Minister Shirley Bond to develop an
anti-meth product for students in grades 4 and 5 (which is when the
older kids said the message should be delivered) but its pleas for
ongoing revenue have been rebuffed. Governments aren't exactly
looking to add to their budgets these days.

Monsour says the society runs on maybe $100,000 a year, 95 per cent
of which goes to program delivery. There's no room to cut.

So now the War On Meth is being funded by a raffle. The society is
selling 4,000 tickets at five bucks a pop. More than two dozen
prizes: a 40-inch flat screen TV, golf passes, dinner coupons. ...
And they could use a hand selling tickets, too.

Meth has slipped out of the public consciousness a bit since bursting
onto the scene a few years ago. Police say meth use has stabilized,
neither increasing nor decreasing, mostly confined to a core group of users.

It is nowhere near as popular as today's street drug of choice, crack
cocaine, the use of which has risen alarmingly in Victoria.

Still, one in five students who filled out a form after watching the
meth info show last year said they knew someone using meth. Almost
half said they know someone using ecstasy. And more than half of the
ecstasy seized by police tests positive for meth. It's common to find
street drugs inter-mixed. It's not like there's a quality-control
agency governing this stuff.

In 2007, several 13- and 14-year-olds were rushed to hospital after
being found unconscious in Saanich's Cuthbert Holmes Park, having
taken what was sold as ecstasy, but turned out to be 100 per cent
meth. A Victoria murder trial last week heard testimony from a
witness who spent a week in the Eric Martin Pavilion after smoking
marijuana laced with meth. Eighteen months ago, a local man raised
$10,000 for the society in memory of his brother, who jumped from a
bridge after taking cocaine cut with crystal meth.

So yes, it's out there, people need to learn about it, and someone
needs to deliver the message. If not the crystal meth society, then who?

To learn more, go to crystalmethbc.ca.