DRUG ADDICT'S WARNING LEAVES TEENS IN TEARS

Seventeen-year-old Sarah said she turned to prostitution to feed her
cocaine and ecstasy habit. Fifteen-year-old Rylie said she did "bad
jobs" and stole to pay for her snorting.

The two girls, whose names have been changed, said they saw bits of
their lives in Jade Bell's story.

Bell, 31, can't see, walk or speak. He rolled into Sacred Heart High
School yesterday from Vancouver to tell his story of a mainlined hell
to Grade 9 students who sat enraptured by the multi-media
presentation. Some cried afterwards, many said they would never do
drugs, not even puff on a marijuana joint.

Bell went into a coma after shooting up with cocaine and heroin. He
woke to a crippled body and now travels the country preaching his
gritty anti-drug message.

"Each time I tell this story it's like opening a wound," Bell said in
a prerecorded, computerized voice during the presentation. "If you
haven't started, don't bother starting."

That is the same message Sarah and Rylie, who are patients at the Dave
Smith Youth Treatment Centre, want students to hear.

'I CAN'T REALLY STOP'

"I don't remember how I got started into doing drugs. I just tried it
because I wanted to and I tried a lot," said Sarah. "Even though I
wished I never started, I can't really stop."

Rylie said both of her parents were drug addicts. "I just kept on
doing it more and more and I ended up not in a very good place."