|
 States
Grapple With Growing Teen Meth Use
Martha Irvine, The Associated Press, April 10, 2005
For more articles like this
visit
https://www.bridges4kids.org.
They sit at a
cafeteria table, gossiping and snacking during a school field
trip. "Have you seen him? Has he gained the weight back?" one
girl asks. "Yeah, he looked so good," replies another from
across the table. "His cheeks filled in." It's no casual
lunchtime conversation. The teen they're talking about is a
recovering methamphetamine addict — and so are several of the
teens at the table, all of them students who attend alternative
high schools in the St. Paul area and who are trying to get
their lives back on track.
While the methamphetamine epidemic has often been associated
with drug labs hidden away in the countryside, today's users
frequently defy that image, whether they are urban professionals
or suburban homemakers.
Minnesota has been dealing with all of the above and is home to
another scary trend: Here, many young people and experts who
monitor drug use agree that meth is steadily replacing marijuana
as the teenage drug of choice.
"Meth is THE thing — it's what everybody wants to do," says
Anthony, a 17-year-old student at Sobriety High School in St.
Paul who first tried meth at age 13 and has been in recovery
since he overdosed last summer. He and other students from
alternative learning programs were allowed to speak on the
condition that their last names not be used.
While statistics show that meth use among teens and
middle-school students has been level for the past few years,
experts caution that those numbers can be deceiving, since meth
seems to spread in pockets, leaving some regions or populations
relatively untouched while others are devastated.
"Meth is an oddball in that way," says Caleb Banta-Green, an
epidemiologist at the University of Washington's Alcohol & Drug
Abuse Institute. "You never know where it's going to hit."
But when it does, it often hits hard — with few states evading
meth's reach in one population or another, including young
people.
In Nebraska, for instance, two 20-year-olds who were high on
meth froze to death after getting lost in a snowstorm in
January. And in Oregon, officials recently reported that meth is
now second only to marijuana — surpassing alcohol — as the drug
that sends the most teens to treatment in that state.
Nebraska and Oregon are among the nearly two dozen states that
have entrenched meth problems, most of them in the West and
Midwest, according to state-by-state advisories the Drug
Enforcement Administration released this year. And the DEA says
meth is a growing concern in sections of nearly every other
state.
"It's here and it's ravaging our kids," says Dave Ettesvold, a
drug counselor at two high schools in the St. Paul area,
including Harmony Alternative Learning Center in Maplewood.
Already in Minnesota, a fifth of addicts who entered drug
treatment for meth use last year were younger than 18, according
to Carol Falkowski, a researcher at the nonprofit Hazelden
Foundation, who tracks the state's drug trends for the National
Institute on Drug Abuse.
Another recent state survey found that about a quarter of girls
and a fifth of boys in Minnesota's alternative learning schools
had used meth at least once in the last year. Ten percent had
used it 10 times or more.
How teens get methamphetamine varies. Sometimes, they say
friends or relatives — even a parent — get them into it. Some
have sold meth to pay for their own habit. And a few say they
eventually learned how to make the drug themselves.
Kristin, a 17-year-old student at Harmony, tried meth a little
more than a year ago while smoking pot in a friend's basement,
as the friend's parents slept upstairs.
"Have you ever tried 'crystal'?" he asked, bringing out crystal
methamphetamine and a small glass pipe that some refer to as a
"bubble."
She hadn't tried it, but told her friends otherwise: "I said,
'Yeah' and just went along with it."
She says the reasons teens are attracted to meth are many, from
a wish to lose weight, especially for girls, to the euphoric
feeling users get when they first take the drug — a feeling that
ends up causing them more trouble than its worth, she adds.
Many other teens say they also like the long-lasting effects,
including an "in control" feeling and the ability to focus and
stay up for hours.
"I just felt invincible," says Summers, a 15-year-old student at
Harmony, who got her first hit of meth at age 13 from a friend's
drug-dealing older brother. "You feel like you're better or
stronger than everybody."
Like Kristin, she smoked the drug, which also can be injected,
snorted or taken orally. But she quickly became so hooked that
"if it fell on the chair, I'd lick it off the chair."
It didn't take long for the effects — emotional and physical —
to turn ugly.
"I'd look in the mirror and my face would look yellow. I'd say,
'I gotta stop for a while or my mom will find out,'" Summers
says, recalling how her mom cried when she finally figured out
what was going on. Her mother had asked if she was doing meth
but, until she was in rehab, Summers never admitted it.
Indeed, the physical effects of methamphetamine use are often
jarring — from sunken eyes and bone-thin frames to teeth that
turn gray and deteriorate.
One juvenile court counselor still carries teeth that a young
meth user gave to her to show other teens who might be
considering taking the drug. "Her teeth literally fell out on my
desk when she was talking to me one day," says Beverly Roche,
who was working with the juvenile drug court in Minnesota's
Dodge County, southeast of the Twin Cities, at the time. She's
now helping establish a juvenile drug court with programs aimed
at rehabilitating young people who use meth and other drugs in
Chisago County, north of St. Paul.
Changes in behavior also are very common, with many meth users
becoming edgy, aggressive and paranoid.
Anthony, the 17-year-old from Sobriety High, spent so much time
high on meth and sitting by his bedroom window — afraid the
police or someone else was out to get him — that friends started
calling him "Garfield," a reference to the stuffed toy version
of the cartoon cat that people stick on windows with suction
cups.
Bettylu, an 18-year-old student at Harmony, was scared into
quitting the drug after watching her older, meth-using sister
become violent. She says the sister also had trouble caring for
her young child.
"If you keep using it, there will be no responsibility left,"
Bettylu says.
Karen LaBore, a mother from nearby Forest Lake, knows what she
means.
LaBore was one of dozens of people who gathered in recent weeks
for a community meeting about meth in Chisago County, where
officials are considering opening their own "sober" high school
in response to the growing drug problem there. The meeting — one
of many that grass-roots community groups are organizing across
the country — brought residents together with law enforcement
officials, social workers, school counselors and drug experts
from the Hazelden Foundation, which is based there.
Her voice shaking, LaBore had a warning for other parents. She
told the group about her 27-year-old daughter, who she says has
been using meth for years. LaBore is now raising her daughter's
three young children and worries about the effect meth might
have on them and her own 12-year-old son.
"We need to learn how to protect our kids," she said. "We have
to get to these kids before they start this."
To that end, she has started a local chapter of the group
Mothers Against Methamphetamine, or MAMa, which meets each week
at her church.
Meanwhile, many Minnesotans are pinning their hopes on a
proposed law that would make it difficult for anyone to buy
large quantities of cold medicine that contains pseudoephedrine,
a main ingredient in meth. A few states, including Oklahoma and
Illinois, have already passed such laws.
Spencer, a 15-year-old from St. Paul who is currently in rehab
for meth and cocaine use, thinks the proposal would be a good
start. But as one who's relapsed and returned to drug use
several times in his short life, he knows how tough it can be to
battle meth.
"It's going to be hard to get rid of it," he says, shaking his
head. "Really hard."
back to the top ~
back to Breaking News
~ back to
What's New
|
