METH PROBLEM IMPACTS US ALL

If you've been in a local pharmacy, grocery store or even convenience
store lately, searching for an over-the-counter remedy for a cold or
the flu, you might have encountered a troubling sign of the times.

That sign -- a placard sitting in the slot where cold medicines once
sat, waiting to be picked up and purchased. Now, instead of the cold
medication, you find a card with a note reading something like this,
"take this card to the pharmacy counter."

At the counter you can purchase the medicine, but your name is taken
and, if by chance you've purchased an inordinate amount, then you're
intent to purchase is refused.

As strange as that may sound, such is the world since the rapid
increase in the manufacture and use of methamphetimines.

Legislative action has limited the amount of pseudoephedrine that can
be purchased because that particular ingredient is also used in the
manufacture of meth.

And stopping the manufacture of this highly-addictive drug is one of
the most important steps that can be taken, even if that step has
impacted all of us, even those who've never touched the drug nor
thought about doing so.

As unfortunate as it is that we all have to pay the price, there's
really no other way to help ebb the tidal wave of meth use that has
washed over us.

Stamping out meth use is imperative to all our lives. It's true of any
drug, but we believe it's never been truer or more imperative than
with meth use.

Meth users do become addicts ... nearly the minute they partake of
their first does. Meth users find themselves losing massive amounts of
weight; developing boils or sores; and losing interest in just about
everything except the drug that has taken hold of their lives. Meth
users can't hold jobs. Meth users who try to cook their own drug put
themselves and their families at risk. Meth users likely, without help
and with continued use, will die.

Yet none of those facts seem to faze the growing number of people who
have decided to toss good sense to the wind in exchange for yet
another high, yet another way to escape their lives.

Too many lives have been broken; too many children have been impacted;
too many communities have been torn apart for us not to sound the
alarm and call on others to do the same. We must do our part. Any less
would be burying our heads in the sand and pretending no problem
exist. That may work for a while, but in the end, reality will bite
and bite hard.

So if that means the inconveniences we are now experiencing, so be
it.

Far better to have to endure a small irritation than to let this
terrible addiction continue to infiltrate our communities, tearing
them down with every man, woman or teenager it hooks.