BATTLING THE DRUGS SCOURGE

There is an awful lot of glib talk to be heard from time to time about
how much better it is to have fences at the tops of cliffs than
ambulances at the bottom, says an editorial in the Manawatu Standard.

Which makes a mockery of what is happening to Drug-Arm in Palmerston
North, forced to close its student support group because its funding
sources have dried up. Yet Drug-Arm says it is getting up to 15 calls
a week from parents who are desperately seeking help for their children.

It was a service that lasted for eight years and at its peak even
employed three full-time youth workers plus volunteers, who included
one young man who committed up to 30 burglaries a week to finance his
drug habit.

So at the very time we are being warned of the new
methamphetamine-fuelled epidemic that is said to be raging in
Palmerston North and around New Zealand, a vital service which is
rescuing some of its victims has been forced to close its doors.

Drug-Arm is presently calling for volunteers so its youth arm Thatz
Enuff can at least function at some level.

The new generation of drugs on the streets is creating havoc because
of their side-effects, their easy availability and their cost. They
are highly addictive, can cause users to become psychotic, are
made-in-New-Zealand, so are rarely in short supply - and cost a bundle
if you are a regular buyer.

If that doesn't add up to a recipe for social dislocation, then it's
hard to see what will. Massey University researcher Chris Wilkins was
just the most recent in a long line of people to warn that today's
drugs are not to be compared with yesterday's because of their much
higher toxicity and longer lasting effects.

Education - sending people into the schools, for example, to talk to
students - obviously has a place in fighting the problem, but it is no
substitute for the kind of work being done by the likes of
organisations such as Drug-Arm. Co-ordinator Lew Findlay as good as
invited anyone who doubts the extent of the problem to go see him and
be put right. It does seem a little ironic that when $150,000 can be
found to research the impact contemporary drugs are having on society,
there is apparently not enough cash around to keep afloat the kind of
street-level work Thatz Enuff does.

This is not to cast aspersions on the value of the Massey project, for
it is clearly vital to our understanding of what's happening.

But it does serve to highlight the continuing social anomaly of groups
that are doing equally vital work having their effectiveness crucially
blunted for want of a lot less than $150,000. Even if some of those up
to 15 parents who weekly ring for help are repeat callers, that still,
over a period of a few months, adds up to an ever-widening circle of
people in our community who badly need help. If that aid is not to be
forthcoming, our society will reap even more of a whirlwind of crime
and damaged people than it is currently enduring.

There is no easy answer to tackling the scourge of drugs, but a
multi-agency, multi-pronged strategy does seem the most promising -
with a place for the Drug-Arms of this world.