DESPERATE MOM'S HOPE IS TO GET TEEN INTO REHAB

Troubled Girl Developed Addiction To Crack, Meth

LIZ Smith's daughter will turn 17 in the Manitoba Youth Centre next
month.

As strange as it seems, her mother couldn't be happier.

"She's doing incredible," says the Island Lakes mom. "She's gained 10
pounds. She's doing school work. She's not high. This is the best
thing that could have happened to her.

"You've got to understand, I used to worry about where she'd go to
university. Now I worry about whether or not she's going to be alive.
That changes your focus pretty fast." Smith (her name has been
changed) recently called me to offer her support for the province's
plan to introduce mandatory, involuntary five-day detox programs for
drug-addicted kids.

She openly admits she's using the youth centre for the same
purpose.

She says that's the only hope for her addicted teenager.

She's fighting hard to keep her kid inside.

Her only regret? That the detox program isn't already in
effect.

"We've got to save our kids," she says. "It just seems like I'm
fighting to do that. Why can't we force them into rehab? We're the
parents."

Sometime in the fall of 2005, Darcy Smith developed a quick addiction
to crack and meth. She got in with the wrong crowd, had clashes at
home and then adolescent rebellion mixed with an increasing, desperate
need to get high.

Smith, a legal assistant, relates their story dispassionately. She
sits in the kitchen of her dream home, a well-kept place in a nice
neighbourhood that hides her secrets. Her little girl has been selling
herself to keep supplied with drugs, she says. She has run away from
home, been kicked out, come back begging.

Darcy, with the sort of looks most frequently described as "angelic,"
was eventually implicated in two crimes. In the first, she allegedly
cased a convenience store before acquaintances robbed it.

In the second, she allegedly arranged to have her parents' house
robbed.

They suspected her, Smith says, for a variety of reasons. The burglars
knew there was cash in the family Bible. Her daughter's room wasn't
searched. The family dog was carefully locked away in a bedroom.

To prove her daughter's involvement, Liz Smith contacted her and
offered to buy back some family jewelry, her son's birth certificate
and a few other trinkets. For 20 bucks, a deal was made.

The cops picked her up, but she was so high they couldn't interview
her.

"You need to understand that we love our daughter more than anything
in the world," says Smith. "We've just been so frustrated that there's
nothing we can do because she's 16. We can't get her away from a
26-year-old boyfriend. We're not even allowed to look at her medical
records.

"She's 16. She's not mature or responsible enough to look after
herself, but we're not allowed to do anything."

And that's the problem. Even as our kids live at home, loving the free
laundry and the cable TV, we're told that we really have no power.
Smith can't force her daughter into a drug rehab program. She can't
chase off the boyfriend. She couldn't do anything, but have her
daughter arrested and refuse to bail her out.

What kind of crazy world is this?

"We've done everything we can think of. We've found long-term,
residential programs, but we can't make her go. As soon as she gets
out, that's it. She's sober now, but we can't do anything to keep her
straight. We need some system changes. We're living through this. Let
us have some input." Darcy Smith entered the remand centre on Feb. 19.
Her court date is set for April 28. When she's released -- and she
will be -- there is nothing standing between her and a relapse.

"She has so much potential," says her mom. "I'm just afraid it's all
going to be wasted because we can't get her into a treatment program."

We need to get the detox program working fast. Then we really need to
give some power back to parents.