QUIT PRETENDING

"I take the pill and scrape the coating off, place it down on the
plate and crush it, make it smooth with the card, and anxiously make
it into a line, I pick up the dirty bill, and roll it up, put it to my
nose, and sniff there it goes.

"My pain, worries, and cares all disappear, just like that, all into
my nose. I'm flying high, never felt better."

For those naive enough to think Rainy River District somehow is immune
to the scourge of drug abuse, the above passage was written by
17-year-old Tara Tovey, a Fort Frances girl who has just finished
rehab for an addiction to Oxycontin.

That's right--a Fort Frances teen.

It's certainly not surprising to local addictions counsellors, who
revealed at a conference here back in November that abuse of
prescription drugs, including Percocet and Percodan, is a real problem
in our area. But their plea to open a methadone clinic here to help
addicts kick the habit has fallen on deaf ears so far.

Clearly there's no more time to waste.

The local OPP and Substance Abuse Prevention Team deserve kudos for
their efforts to bring home the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse to
our children, whether through the D.A.R.E. program or guest speakers
like Don Young--a former drug user and dealer who addressed Grade 7/8
students in Mine Centre, Atikokan, and at J.W. Walker School here on
Friday.

It's a tough job given the fine line between warning students about
the consequences of their choices and lecturing them on the evils of
drugs and alcohol. After all, tell a kid not to do something and
that's the first thing they'll probably try to do.

That's where young Tara hopes to help with her story:

"My eyes are heavy, my pupils are pinpricks, all I feel is nothing,
just high. This feeling is no longer a want, it's a hard-core
depressing painful need, so evil it'll take your soul, so quickly.

"I look in the mirror, at what I've become, my hopes, my dreams all
gone. How did this happen, I was on top of the world, I thought I had
it all. I thought wrong.

"Somebody, please, help me. . . ."

Still want to pretend we don't have a drug problem here?