DRUGS SO EASY TO FIND

Jane may be only 17, but she can tell you where to go in Perth to find any
drug you want.

In certain suburbs, dealers prowl neighbourhoods until late in the evening.

"They don't care who they sell to, so long as they get rid of it," Jane
said. "I think older people should know better."

Jane, who does not wish to be identified, is one of four teenagers on the
Yirra program, a rehabilitation service run by Mission Australia in Perth.

All agreed most adults misunderstood why children experimented with or
became addicted to drugs. For the participants, drugs had been an escape
from stress and problems at home.

"Some people think we are druggie scum," another participant, Sam, said.
"But people don't understand the chain of events." For Sam, knocks in life
as he grew older meant he tried, through all kinds of drugs, to capture the
feeling of happy moments he could remember from childhood.

"I have certain memories that make me happy," he said. "With drugs, that is
magnified 10 times."

Participants agreed that speed was popular and readily available and many
young people shopped around doctors to get prescriptions for valium,
dexamphetamines and other drugs.

They said teenagers on drugs came from all walks of life.

"There just has to be a background reason in your life why you are doing
drugs," Jane said.

For Jane, frustration with attempts to get help for her alcoholic parents,
led her at 16 to try marijuana. Within a year, she was doing speed and
became involved in crime to support her habit.

She was referred to the Yirra program after being sentenced for assault and
receiving stolen goods.

"I would now warn someone doing drugs that you are only going downhill - I
could not see my family for months and months and I used to see them every
day," Jane said.

People involved in the Yirra program are a mix of Justice Department
referrals and people who come of their own accord. It is not a
detoxification program and those involved have to want to stay off drugs
and be suited to a program which relies on counselling and new activities,
such as archery, canoeing and graffiti murals.

Mission Australia recently opened a detoxification and respite centre for
young people.