SUBSTANCE ABUSE: TOOL OF THE DEVIL

Have you paid close attention to the police blotter of late? If you have,
you have noticed that thefts all over the county have involved the taking,
not of just one or two items, but of whole housefuls of items and
appliances, or entire shops of tools. I believe these thefts are directly
connected to the drug trade. People who do drugs have an urgent and
compelling need to get their hands on as much cash as possible. They will
do anything up to and including robbing their parents, elderly grandparents
or other family members to obtain quick funding.

One of the things that has concerned me recently is the rash of
drug-related cases in and around our county, and in particular, deaths and
sicknesses of people I know who have problems with substance abuse.

When we think of drugs, we usually think of the hard stuff, that trash
being manufactured by lawbreakers on the corners of our hometown streets or
down at the local body shop, or even out on the backyard barbecue.

When the citizen of average intelligence reads the list of ingredients
which go into the making of illegal methamphetamine, he wonders where the
users were when they passed out brains.

Drain cleaner, cold medicine, anhydrous ammonia, brake cleaner, camp stove
fuel, ethanol, iodine, lithium batteries, lye, and starter fluid are some
of the unhealthy - in fact, deadly chemicals used in meth and are killers
in any combination. Lye and battery acid alone will eat skin and flesh in a
second, and reports I have received say that meth eats away at the body
from the inside!

For whatever reason, people decide to test the "high" received from taking
this trash into their body by several methods - snorting, shooting or
perhaps unknown other ways of committing an early suicide.

And the most deadly drug to come along in some time, oxycontin, has also
made itself known. It is mostly used for pain suffered by cancer patients
who have exhausted other methods of pain relief and can only be obtained by
prescription. This very morning, a news story told of five persons in a
city who were arrested for forging oxycontin prescriptions.

I was told the almost unbelievable story of a relatively young local man
who has continued to go to the dentist to have his teeth pulled - one by
one - so that he can get a prescription for the drug, until he has almost
no teeth.

Recently, I was talking with a young man I have known since he was a
toddler. Since I had not seen him for a while, I was shocked to see that he
had lost so much weight, he was almost skin and bones, but declared that he
had put on weight since his treatment for meth addiction. His skin was
colorless with big circles under his eyes. His pretty smile was gone and
his teeth were ruined. He was sweating profusely as he told me of talking
with an acquaintance who was once overweight and was now thin, also as a
result of being on the deadly drug. The other person had told him that he
was doing the drug on a daily basis because he felt as if he would die from
withdrawal pains.

The sad fact is that he will surely die from doing the drug.

Almost weekly, we publish obituaries of people who have been consumed by
the drug, or perhaps committed suicide or been killed in accidents directly
resulting from their involvement in substance abuse.

Where do we start to control the epidemic of drug use?

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the younger we start education
about drug abuse in the school systems, say even second and third grade,
the better. Young children are very smart and this is one issue that will
not disappear by our ignoring or minimizing it. The dangers of drug use -
and even prescription drug abuse - cannot be overemphasized.

Of course the most valuable tools in the war against drug addiction are
still caring parents and family who know what is going on with their
children. I wonder how this can be when we see hundreds of kids standing on
streets, in parking lots, and cruising malls - both inside and out - at all
hours of the night with no supervision.

There is one thing that remains true. A loving God has given us the most
valuable gift we will ever have here on earth - life. We only have one and
we have been instructed to take care of it because it is the temple of the
soul. I Corinthians 6: 19-20.

And make no mistake about it, the devil "walks around as a roaring lion,
seeking whom he may devour." I Peter 5:8.

Now if we could only get the drug-user to see the picture of himself
walking around with satan by his side, arm around his shoulder, perhaps we
could begin to help him.