LAXON SPEAKING OUT AGAINST METH USE

BRISTOL, Va. ­ Cindy Laxson quit using methamphetamine nearly a year ago,
but she still struggles with her addiction every day.

"Tomorrow, I'll have been clean 11 months," she told members of the Rotary
Club on Tuesday. "It took me losing absolutely everything I loved and
everything I had."

Laxson came home last year to Tannersville, a small farming community on
the Tazewell-Smyth County line, after years of meth abuse in Arkansas and
Missouri, states where suspected meth labs numbered in the thousands.

She returned to a region just beginning to deal with its own meth problem.

"It's definitely an epidemic," she said. "I give Virginia and Tennessee
about another year, and they'll be right up there with Missouri."

The drug cost Laxson her four children, her marriage and nearly everything
she owned. Her experience led her to start speaking out against meth use.

"I don't think people understand until you tell them about it," she said.
"But it's so big now, they're wanting to know more about it."

Laxson knows about the problem from nearly every angle. She smoked meth,
ate it and snorted it. She helped her husband, John, cook it in batches.

"I have sold meth to judges, attorneys and doctors," she said. "I helped do
it all."

Quitting the drug wasn't easy. It took the support of her family and a
renewed faith in God, she said.

That came after she helped authorities bust her husband and send him to
prison for meth-making.

She still hopes to regain custody of her children, who were taken by state
social services workers. And Laxson hopes to take her story to area
schools, civic groups and any other audience she can find.

She believes that might be the only way to make people understand the
drug's dangers.

"It'll hit closer to home that way," she said. "Maybe then they'll think
twice about doing it."