COMMUNITY-WIDE RESPONSE SOUGHT FOR CRYSTAL METH PROBLEM

With 20/20 hindsight, 17-year-old Devon Fuller from Houston wonders why
anyone would want to take the extremely popular and highly addictive
methamphetamine known as crystal meth.

But what he knows now and what he knew back in May are worlds apart. Back
then Fuller spent the entire month high on crystal meth - at one point awake
for 13 days straight.

"I lost 30 pounds in one month. I couldn't sleep or eat," he said.

Although he claimed he tried to stay away from the drug, most of the friends
he has known since childhood were doing it and he started to.

"When you're on it you just want to do it again," he added.

The drug produces an exquisite high, a spike of dopamine that stimulates the
highly addictive euphoric period of pleasure. But what follows is a crashing
low of hallucinations, paranoia and psychosis. The only relief from the
crash is to take the drug again, creating a snowball effect.

"I started to get really paranoid. I felt things that didn't touch me. I
would walk down the street seeing people come toward me that I thought were
going to beat me up, but there was no one there," said Fuller.

According to Fuller, the drug is easy to come by in Smithers and Houston and
one friend of his has already died because of crystal meth.

This is exactly the type of information that prompted community members to
put on a forum in Smithers last week to discuss the issue that is sweeping
through this area and others across B.C. and the continent.

The drug is cheap, easily produced and gives a sustained high, lasting up to
10 times longer than other euphoric drugs like cocaine.

Crystal meth works by activating serotonin and dopamine production which
stimulate the pleasure centres in the brain. But dopamine also kills brain
cells and some researchers believes that in young users it halts the
development of the part of the brain that links cause and effect.

More than 40 different social service providers, educators, RCMP officers,
youth, parents, ambulance and firefighters came to what organizer Nathan
Cullen called a first step in the response to crystal meth in the community.

"This is an effort to wrap-around services and provide a cohesive response
to the kind of compassionate work that needs to be done to get a kid to
where they need to be," said Cullen, who first became aware of the issue
after The Interior News reported that the drug had fuelled a rash of
break-ins early in the summer.

The group heard from Corporal Scott Rintoul, a drug awareness co-ordinator
with the RCMP in Vancouver, who had been involved in a similar forum that
recently took place in the city.

"This is great - a small community taking the initiative on this problem,"
said Rintoul, who suggested that Smithers might be the envy of the north
because he hasn't heard of any other places where such a proactive approach
has been taken.

And Rintoul was quick to point out that this is a community-wide problem
because it affects all members.

Police, emergency departments, social workers, business owners, users and
non-users alike are affected by crystal meth - by the health problems and
the crime that using the drug can lead to.

School trustee Bob Haslett attended the forum and said his concern was that
there is a direct correlation between drugs and drop-outs.

"They miss sections of school because of drug use, then they fall behind,
they fail tests and they get frustrated," he said.

For Haslett the frustration is that kids aren't able to live up to their
full potential. He, like most of those at the forum, agreed that education
is a large part of prevention. But it is not just the kids that need to be
educated; it's the parents, too.

"Once the school gets involved it is usually too late in the process," said
Haslett.

Cullen agrees that awareness of the issue has to be raised on many fronts,
including shop owners who sell the easily attainable supplies needed to
produce the drug in basement labs.

The group of people that attended the first forum have agreed to come
together again to discuss how to target different groups, in the hopes that
awareness may help save some young lives.

Charged with a recent robbery, Fuller decided while in jail that he didn't
want that kind of life and chose to get off crystal meth. His probation
officer suggested he attend the forum.

Fuller said that this forum was the first place he found any real
information about the drug. He experienced first hand the periods of
psychosis and other harmful physical effects, such as how it burns the skin
on contact.

But he was unaware, for example, that the drug is thought to bring on
schizophrenia in those predisposed to it.

Fuller had been diagnosed, before his crystal meth binge, with bi-polar
disorder - in other words manic depression, - and wonders what effect the
drug has had on that part of his life.