COUNCILLORS SAYS TEENS PICKED ON IN METH DEBATE

According to Andrew Tolchard, crystal meth addicts aren't roaming
schoolyards, they're not feeding their habits between classes.

The Pitt Meadows councillor figures there is too much focus on school
aged youth using drugs like crystal meth, when in reality, he said,
those numbers don't bear out.

Tolchard, a retired RCMP officer, spent eight years working as a
school liaison officer in the district, and just about his entire RCMP
career focussing on keeping youth clean and productive.

Most of his charges, he said, are upstanding citizens. Very few, he
maintained, are experimenting with crystal methamphetamines.

"It seems like they're making this a youth issue," he said of crystal
meth. "That discredits a majority of youth in the community. It's
labeling everybody."

Crystal meth, he said, is "probably the worst drug that has been
manufactured by humans to poison other humans." But it is not a
scourge in local schools as some might suggest.

"It is an ugly, dirty, dangerous drug that has destroyed an awful lot
of people's lives, but what upsets me is how organizations and groups
are trying to label it as a drug that's being used by youth in our
schools."

Experience, he maintained, suggests the opposite is
true.

"It isn't a drug that is showing up in any great amount in
schools."

During his time as a youth liaison officer in local schools, Tolchard
said he encountered everything from students using alcohol and
marijuana, to the odd student experimenting with cocaine and heroin.

"I did not encounter crystal meth.

"It is not the epidemic (in schools) that it is being made out to
be."

Young people in general aren't opting for the highly addictive
substance, he said.

"The youth that are susceptible to that kind of behaviour are not in
schools...they are disenfranchised, they don't have that positive
connection in school."

Making crystal meth seem like the drug of choice among teens, he said,
"is a mistake."

"I just really object to this constant negativity toward youth,
particularly in schools."

Meanwhile Alouette Addictions Services prevention co-ordinator Robb
McGirr spends much of his time counselling school-aged youth.

While he agrees that kids in school aren't using crystal meth to a
"significant degree," he maintains it would be mistake to discount how
prevalent drug use is in the school system. Crystal meth has received
the dubious distinction of becoming an unpopular choice among youth,
and that distinction is due to how much community attention has been
focused on it.

Today, he said, "most kids, when you say 'crystal meth' they say 'bad
drug.'"

Problem is, however, that same association is not true for other
drugs.

"When you hear the word ecstasy, you hear 'cool.'"

The trouble with that, said McGirr, is much of the time, young people
who are ingesting ecstasy are inadvertently ingesting crystal
methamphetamines.

"Crystal meth, while highly available, is not the most common drug of
choice for teenagers right now," he said.

"If you want to try to suggest that there aren't kids attending school
who don't have serious issues with drugs, that's na=8Bve."

Alcohol, marijuana and cocaine are the more popular choices for teens,
McGirr said, who added that "there are a significant percentage of
kids in the school system trying these drugs."

And McGirr said it is possible for some of these addicted youths to
keep up appearances for the short term.

"Are they going to remain in school? Probably not for very long, but
kids don't end up getting alcohol and drug dependent after they leave
school."

Often, he said, drug addiction starts in high school as "a coping
mechanism."