N O R T H C O A S T T IM E S E A G L E , MARPRIL 2006
Johnson told me that the “average time for recovery is
six months off drugs to succeed, but generally, it takes two or
three years for the brain to heal."
She let me know there are barriers to helping recovering
addicts. She listed them:
~No access to treatment centers because of funding
shortages.
'Cognitive deficits of meth abuse preclude short-term
therapy. There is no long-term therapy available, also because
of funding shortages.
'Transportation. A number of people under correction
supervision provide a special treatment for criminal offenders.
It costs $1.50 one way on the bus for an hour of group therapy.
That's a three-hour time slot, so getting a job and keeping it is a
big problem for them.
When I asked what the community could do to help, Eva
said that external force plays 95% of the role. She told me how
loved ones are the greatest motivators and this external force is
“strongly encouraged."
“And that could include kids being taken, legal sanctions,
employers, partners finally saying ‘Enough is enough,’" she said.
“Otherwise it's easy to say, ‘I'm comfortable.' Then, people can
give to local shelters because...when someone comes in, if they
need medical intervention, they are taken to a clinic or hospital.
Once that is taken care of, part of the processing is asking the
recovering addict, ‘Who are you? What do you want? Let’s make
goals...’ And then we try to meet individual needs. The money
that is donated is used for clothing, bus passes, etc."
Eva Johnson did inform me that they have an agreement
with hospitals and clinics and that federal grant money is given to
the Coastal Family Medical Clinic for the community. For those in
the community who want to do something and make a difference
she said, “Supporting community social services is the frontline
approach.” But then we have to make women want to get help.
The number of women on meth is growing by staggering figures.
Dean Schabner from ABC News recently said that
“according to a U S. Department of Health & Human Services
report released in May (2005), 45% of the patients admitted to
state-licensed centers for care in 2002 who said meth was their
primary drug were women.”
Schabner quoted Kim Justice-Myers: “I smoked some on
a foil and I thought, ‘Hey. That’s pretty cool.’ It takes all the pain
away. I wanted to go play. I didn't want to be respectable. I didn’t
want to feel anymore. I didn’t want to be a mother anymore. I
ended up saying I’m going away for a little bit, but that little bit
turned into six months and then a year and then two years, then
three years, then four years.”
According to the Newport News Times, “Methampheta
mine use and addiction in Oregon have reached epidemic prop
ortions,” and that legislation has been introduced “to combat the
escalating crisis.”
Sandra Swain of The Daily Astorian quoted Astoria
Police Officer Chris McNeary (October 6, 2005): “You would be
surprised at the people who use meth...The drug devastates
families, with children being taken away from meth-using
parents, and mothers testing positive for meth when they give
birth.”
The effects these results have on families is wrenching.
The family is still the backbone of any society and when families
are devastated, society is forced to pay the price. Children have
been taken away by authorities, which creates a whole set of
problems with a rippling effect. Children feel abandoned, and
they may experience attachment disorders which can lead to
horrendous problems, namely crime and later becoming
substance abusers themselves.
“They are scalded with hot water," Mindy M. Moretti has
written “They are forced to drink bad milk because no one
remembered to buy fresh. They are left in hot cars for hours on
end while parents score a fix. They are sexually abused. They
are beaten. They are abandoned. Sometimes they die."
These are the children of methamphetamine users and
all across the country child welfare and police struggle with ways
to deal with an alarming amount of meth orphans. These are
children of the epidemic, neglected and abused, taken from
moms and dads who nurture only their addiction. They represent
the human tragedy of meth-rotting diapers, growling stomachs,
burns, bruises and a lifetime of deep rooted scars.
Moretti writes in her NACO article (November 23, 2005),
“According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, in 2004 children
were present at 20% of all meth lab busts.” But law enforcement
officials note that the number of children affected is most likely
much higher because “...although there may not be children
present at the time of the bust, there is often evidence— clothes,
toys, baby bottles — that a child lives in the home where meth is
being cooked.”
Children of methamphetamine-using parents face insur
mountable problems in life because they are exposed to neglect
and abuse beyond compare.
The number of American children who are abused or
neglected doubled from 1.4 million in 1986 to about 3 million
in 1997. Joseph Rose, writing for The Oregonian (August 28,
2005), reported that the first statewide analysis was conducted
in Oregon by the State Department of Human Services in 2004,
when 5,438 children entered foster homes, up from 4,906 in
2003. Rose also stated that welfare workers in several counties
that have been hit hard by methamphetamine, scrutinized their
local cases and confirmed what their gut feeling told them: Meth
is straining the child-care system.
Executive Assistant U S. Attorney Laura Birkmeyer says
that “nationwide as many as 70% to 80% of the children rescued
from meth environments test positive."
Since the early 1990s, meth use, which at one time was
almost exclusively limited to the western and southwestern U.S.,
has been moving eastward into both major cities and rural areas
The production of methamphetamine and its use has become a
national epidemic. Higher demand for meth has brought an
increase in the amount of clandestine labs and with the amount
of police raids of these laboratories. Data is being tracked by the
El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) according to the DEA through
its National Clandestine Lab Seizure System, and the number
of raids of meth labs in the U S. increased from 3,811 in 1998 to
10,078 in 2003, with 4,716 raids made in the first eight months of
2004. The number of children found in these locations has risen
from 1,224 in 2000 to 3,474 in 2003, with 1,177 in the first eight
months of 2004. This indicates more labs were raided and more
children were found, and there was more diligent reporting by
law enforcement.
Children living in meth-producing environments are in
danger from more than chronic exposure to toxic chemicals and
their effects on the human body, such as inhalation of fumes,
clothing and skin contact of improperly stored chemicals, chemi
cal waste dumped in play areas, and possible explosions and
fires. They are exposed to other physical dangers as well as risk
of developmental problems. They are exposed to drug users,
cooks and dealers, hypodermic needles within reach of children,
accessible glass smoking pipes, razor blades, drug parapher
nalia, and weapons for “protecting” the clandestine lab and its
contents from intruders.
Children are forced to live in foul conditions, exposed to
dirt, garbage, rodents and insects, and poor hygiene. With meth
use, children are quite often neglected during their parent or
caregiver’s long periods of sleep while “crashing” from a drug
binge, so they might not get proper nutrition and suffer from
malnutrition. They do not receive dental or medical care, and
suffer greatly from asthma and respiratory problems.
The use of methamphetamine causes the parent or
caregiver to display paranoid behavior and often get irritable
and have a “short fuse.” Children in such homes are exposed
to violence and foul individuals and are often exposed to porno
graphic material. Because meth creates a high that escalates
sex drives, many children are sexually abused and/or beaten.
Without supervision or nurturing, living in such an unstable
environment can cause unimaginable stress and trauma, not
to mention behavioral, emotional, and cognitive problems that
will affect them for the rest of their lives. Children from drug
homes often exhibit low self-esteem, a sense of shame, and
poor social skills. Many are unable to function well in school,
in social environments with other children, and unable to trust
others which prevents them from healthy relationships
Children taken from drug environments often suffer
from post-traumatic stress disorder from six months to a year
or longer. They might be returned to their drug-addicted parents
too soon or shifted from one foster home to another For some,
the consequences of surviving such abuse include depression,
hopelessness, suicide attempts, and self-mutilation. They might
P A G E 13
behave compulsively, suffer panic attacks, and tend towards
dangerous play and sexual promiscuity, not to mention being
at risk of developing their own substance abuse problems. It
is common knowledge that with both a history of childhood
maltreatment and parental substance abuse, they most likely
will.
In Joseph Rose's article in The Oregonian, he described
a 9 year old girt named Sadie who felt this hopelessness. She
was sitting in Carol Chervnak’s examination room at the ABC
House in Albany. She recalled standing in the driveway watch
ing her father, “high and wild-eyed, hammer on her mother’s
head with the butt of a pistol.” Sadie said that one night while her
parents slept she picked up the gun that had been left out, and
“pressed the barrel between her eyes and struggled to hook her
finger around the trigger. ‘I wanted it over,’" she told Chervenak.
She joined a growing list of Oregon’s “meth orphans" and was
taken to a foster home in Linn County.
Rose reported Eugene’s vice & narcotics Sergeant Lee
Thoming saying, “Our society should be ashamed for allowing
this kind of abuse and neglect of our children. We re going to pay
down the road, when these kids get older.”
There has not been any long-term follow up in most
states, or information on the children’s mental health and
physical needs, but there are personal testimonies of some
rescue stories that do not end in such despair. Such is the
case with a personal interview I had with “Darlene,” whose story
started out like so many others:
“I had my niece and nephew off and on throughout their
lives since birth due to meth use by their mother, my sister After
we had them for a few months while they were toddlers ages 3
and 4, their mother, who was still using, had been receiving
money from the state and lying that the children were in her care.
She used the money for drugs and was afraid she’d get caught,
so she came to get the children from me. We tried to talk her
into leaving them because they were in a stable home with
people who loved and cared for them. She took them anyway,
in spite of their crying and pleading to stay with us. Their lives
were turned upside down. She didn't have a permanent resi
dence or a steady job other than prostitution, so the kids had
other addicts surrounding them, which put them at risk. She left
them in the care of another addict, a relative, in a house with no
electricity or running water. They were using cans in a bathtub
to pee in. Because the relative was passed out in the back
bedroom, they were scared when they woke up to a dark house
thinking they were alone.”
Providing safe and nurturing homes for children is the
reason that agencies such as law enforcement, fire departments,
emergency medical services as well as the general medical
community, public health departments, social services, the
judicial system, legislators, substance abuse and mental health
providers and our entire communities must work together. The
goal is to first and foremost assure that these children are safe,
and then work to break the cycle to improve the future for our
children, our families, and our communities.
According to Carl Peed of the U S. Department of
Justice, our society needs to follow a 4-part plan of action:
1 Social services must take children into emergency
custody; coordinate medical exams; assess the need for long
term custody; arrange foster home care; intervene in the juvenile
courts on behalf of children; and maintain a long-term follow up.
2. The medical community must conduct immediate
toxicology testing and physical examinations of children found
at meth labs to document their mental and physical condition;
document their exposure to drugs and chemicals; look for signs
of injuries, abuse, malnutrition, and maintain long-term follow up.
3. The law enforcement officials at seizures of meth
labs must be sure that children found there are taken to safety;
document the present dangers as future evidence of child
endangerment; make the child endangerment charges against
appropriate adults.
4. Prosecution must file and support charges of child
endangerment; keep short-term and long-term interests in mind
for the children.
The National Drug Endangered Children (DEC) Alliance
has been providing multi-discipline training programs around
the U S. for professionals in health care, social services, and
law enforcement, and will continue to hold seminars and panel
discussions covering such topics as the psychological impact
of drug exposure on children, medical protocols, reports from
scientific and medical studies, law and legislative changes,
developing public awareness, developing effective strategies,
collecting and analyzing data as well as available resources and
training.
The rest of Darlene's story gives hope and inspiration to
explore other solutions:
”ln the middle of the night, the children knocked on the
neighbor’s door, who called the police, and the children were
taken into custody and returned to me. They rejected all authority
and were totally out of control. It took years of a lot of love and
earning their trust back to make an orderly home. Their mom
went back to jail and eventually was rehabilitated in a home with
one-on-one care. The kids are now young, working adults and
still live with me. They continue to work on their relationship with
their mother, my sister, as we visit often And it’s healthy
Darlene’s story is an inspiration for other families to do
the same and since the child welfare system is strained, placing
them with relatives in stable homes should be an avenue to be
explored more often.
With everyone in the system working together, many
children's lives can be touched, and hopefully we can reduce the
horror they have to endure
Everyone pays in the methamphetamine epidemic. The
far-reaching effects can and are destroying America. So, what do
you say, loved ones, do you think you’re ready to “motivate" and
s a y “Enough is enough?"
Karen Flores lives in Seaside This essay is a fusion of
two papers she wrote for a writing class at Clatsop Community
College taught by Dr. Julie Brown
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