DRUG IS HURTING CHILDREN

"It's time for the community to wake up! It's a horrible, horrible
thing!"

Brenda Umphrey's call for action and description of methamphetamine's
effect upon the community has a chilling and somewhat stronger impact
when you understand her experience.

Umphrey works for the DeKalb and Marshall County Departments of Human
Resources as a Childcare Worker in Family Support. She is also a state
licensed foster parent and a mother of five children and has five
grandchildren.

Umphrey has seen meth's devastating effects first hand in the life of
one of her own children.

"My now 30-year-old daughter, became involved with methamphetamine at
age 22 through the influence of friends and/or co-workers."

Her daughter entered a rehab program in Tuscaloosa.

For 19-months she participated in a program that made her face up to
her problem and, with the tough and loving support of her mother, she
connected with "an inner strength" making it possible to over come her
addiction.

The daughter has been "clean" for several years and now lives and
works in the Huntsville area.

Umphrey said her daughter "learned several of life's hard lessons."
One of them is a "drug record makes acquiring many things in life very
difficult."

Umprhey's experiences with her daughter and others, regarding meth,
has provided one very important insight; "Those using meth and
attempting to go for a higher experience with the next hit-are chasing
an unreasonable goal. They can never, no matter how many hits they
take, achieve a higher experience than the very first one. It's an
illusive lie! They can never achieve it again."

In her position with Family Support, she has the responsibility to try
and "reconstruct families" and "teach them how to be human beings"
after they have been devastated by any number of situations assaulting
American families today.

Umphrey said with conviction, "The community needs to answer the wake
up call; parents and others cannot bury their heads in the sand and
live in denial of the reality--people are losing lives every day!"

Alice Henderson is a coordinator with the Tennessee Valley Family
Services (TVFS) in Guntersville.

TVFS works with children who have been removed from homes, by DHR, for
a variety of reasons; from simple behavioral problems to parents
involved in illicit drug activities.

It is Henderson's experience that more and more children are being
removed as a direct result of drug activity. At least 50-percent of
those cases she said could be attributed to methamphetamine use.

Henderson told of one teenager's experience that illustrates the
problem and at the same time offers hope.

She told how a17-year old male, was forced to drop out of school, by
his parents, to help with the family business--manufacturing
methamphetamine. The teen eventually rebelled against his parents and
ran away. Shortly thereafter the parents were arrested and two other
siblings were removed by DHR and placed with the grandmother. The
parents, back on the streets, returned to their former trade because
the court, ostensibly, would not return the children or the teenage
son to their custody.

Today, the young man who made the choice not to engage in the illicit
activities of the parents or engage in the use of meth, has obtained
his high school G.E.D., acquired a job, a girl friend and is
successfully moving on with his life.

Henderson's assessment of the current meth situation in the community
was similar to Umphrey's, "The community needs to know this 'really'
is an epidemic!"