HELP PARENTS HELP KIDS OFF DRUGS

A month from now, Albertans will celebrate Family Day.

It's a statutory holiday, held on the third Monday each February, that is
not observed in other provinces.

Family Day was created by former premier Don Getty to give Albertans a
chance to spend quality time together, strengthening family ties. At the
time, Getty's own family needed a chance to bond and heal together. His son
Dale had gotten into cocaine and had run afoul of the law.

When he created the holiday, Getty said it was a chance for us to celebrate
the values of the pioneers who built this province.

One of the most important traits of pioneer Albertans was their willingness
to pull together and support each other in times of crisis.

Alberta legislators should keep that virtue at the top of their minds as
they contemplate a bill to be introduced in the legislature by Mary Anne
Jablonski (PC - Red Deer North.)

One group of Alberta families won't be happily sharing Family Day together
this year.

They are the parents of children who are addicts - strung out on drugs or
booze, living away from home under the influence of vipers who want to
exploit them, unwilling or incapable of making decisions in their long-term
best interest.

Jablonski's proposed bill will give parents a chance to reel them back into
their family's loving embrace.

She proposes a law that will let parents temporarily confine a drug-using
child in a treatment centre, with or without the child's consent. There are
thousands of these lost young souls across the province.

No family, no matter how loving, how rich, how strict, how wise, has
immunity against seeing their child drawn into the sordid spiral of drugs
and crime.

Jablonski's bill, the Protection of Children Involved With Drugs Act, does
not offer a full solution, but it does offer hope. She plans to introduce
it in the legislature in March

It roughly follows the template of an Alberta law that allows teenage
prostitutes to be held temporarily in custody, to get them away from the
clutches of their pimps.

That bill was pushed relentlessly by Children's Service Minister Heather
Forsyth, who - like Jablonski - was a backbencher at the time. Forsyth's
bill was eventually adopted by the Klein government and pushed into law.

It met criticism and suffered setbacks along the way.

Some civil libertarians argued that the teens, mostly girls, were being
denied their rights to liberty.

Lawyers hired by some teen prostitutes went to court to have them released
from safe houses.

Some of the prostitutes left the safe houses when their time was up,
rejected opportunities for ongoing counselling and went right back on the
street.

But Forsyth's law has had considerable success as well.

Many former prostitutes, returned to their families, went back to school,
began living productive lives pursuing their dreams.

Jablonski can expect the same form of criticism and even higher hurdles to
leap to push her bill into law.

Her goals are the same as Forsyth.

In some cases, the people who would be treated are the same.

A lot of prostitutes are addicts; many pimps like to keep their hookers
strung out and totally dependent on them.

Forsyth's bill allowed teenage prostitutes to be held in custody for up to
72 hours.

Jablonski's Bill 202, if approved as proposed, would give parents with
proof that a child was on drugs the right to have them confined in an
accredited drug treatment centre for up to a year.

If that sounds tough, it is.

But it's nothing compared with the tough life of a drug addict.

It's very easy to get hooked on drugs and extremely difficult to get off them.

We are losing a generation of bright, capable children to drugs.

They and their parents deserve every legislative assistance to break those
killing chains.

Jablonski's bill offers them hope of doing so.