COMMITTEE URGES ACTION AGAINST DRUGS

A young teen who only identified himself as `Brad' thanks Cobourg
Constable Andrew Allen for catching him smoking marijuana.

It turned his life around, about 150 people heard collectively during
three separate presentations by the Northumberland Drug Action
Committee at St. Mary's Secondary School last night.

Starting high school was a pressure situation and when Brad first
started smoking "weed" it was just casual. He planned to stop
completely by Grade 11, he said.

He got a "warning" when he was caught the first time but peer pressure
got him back into it -- and he added a lot of drinking to the mix, he
said.

It was the second brush with the law that brought Brad into the
Rebound Youth Centre in Cobourg and gave him the support to stop doing
drugs, stop hanging around with the wrong crowd and start making the
right choices in life for the long haul.

"I make my own decisions (now) and I choose my own path," he
said.

A less optimistic story was painted by Stephanie Percival of Brookside
Youth Centre's psychological department. She passed around pictures of
a young woman's 14-year progression from casual drug use to that of
harder drugs.

Notice the sunken cheeks, fallen face, drooping eyes: these are all
signs of brain damage, the group heard.

Regardless of whether you use drugs or alcohol there will be brain
damage, Mrs. Percival said. Frequency, volume, and the different types
and mixes will just speed up the process of decreasing motor and
verbal skills.

And some drugs, like ecstasy, may kill you after just one use, Mrs.
Percival added.

Instead of just saying drugs are bad for you, she drew an illustration
of one of the average three-pound brain's neurotransmitters.

All of our brains are dying right now but "whether you speed that up
(with drugs and alcohol), that's up to you," Mrs. Percival said.

Showing how the drug ecstasy breaks the links in nerve pathways and
how cocaine "burns" the sheath covering neurons, she graphically
showed parents and students the ongoing destruction caused by both
alcohol and drugs.

"You can not get neurotransmitters back," she stressed
repeatedly.

Some of the young offenders whom she tests at Brookside have already
adopted lifestyles that have created irreversible brain damage. They
needed the kind of information about the consequences of drugs back in
Grade 6, she said. By Grades 7, 8 and 9 damage is already done.

Mrs. Percival urged parents to be the example by not smoking or
getting drunk.

And ensure solvents are out of the way so that youngsters don't get
hooked on sniffing paints, gas, glue or bleaches, she said.

"This is the fastest way to damage a brain."

The good news from OPP Detective Sergeant Bill O'Shea, a 13-year
veteran of undercover drug work, was that ecstasy appears to be losing
popularity because of the publicity surrounding deaths caused by the
drug.

While marijuana is "the drug of choice" large-scale grow operations
are bringing a lot of problems to communities, in addition to the use
of the drug itself. These include the molds and fungi created from
indoor operations, theft of electricity and the increased level of
"greed" driven by the increased level of profit to be made, Det. Sgt.
O'Shea said.

Organized crime is laundering this dirty money through clean
businesses. Eighty per cent of what is grown in Canada is exported.

Smaller grows are also operating.

"Lots of people are supplementing their incomes" by growing marijuana,
he said.

"Make no mistake. Greed takes over."