Meth prevention efforts target Wahkiakum High School

Attorney General Rob McKenna brought the anti-methamphetamine message to Wahkiakum High School in a special assembly February 20.

He introduced Travis Talbot, the co-founder of Lead-On America, a grassroots organization for methamphetamine addiction education and a youth minister at a King County church.

“Meth,” Talbot said, is one type of drug that will destroy your life.” He told the crowd that by the time they are out of high school, they or someone they know will be faced with the decision to take or avoid meth.

“Everyone is a target,” Talbot said. “Meth does not discriminate.”

It will affect the honor student looking for that way to stay up late and studym, he said.. It will affect the girl next door who just wants to lose those pesky 10 pounds; the athlete looking for an edge. It will even affect the “soccer moms” who need just a couple more hours in the day.

No one says when they wake up in the morning, “hey, I’m gonna do meth today.” Talbot said.

Meth is like a controlling relationship, Talbot continued. It controls everything in the person who tries it. Ninety percent of people who try it will be hooked. They always think, “that first hit was amazing!”

Because the body will build a tolerance to drugs, the user will often need more drug to feel the high. Because the craving for the drug is so controlling, the body needs the drug, and the addicition worsens so the user can't quit.

Talbot said that once the addict decides they don’t want to do meth and they go through treatment, it is often too late. Only seven percent will succeed. The other 93 percent will use again.

A meth user won't usually survive more than five years on the drug. It isn’t always the drug it self that kills, but will attack an issue the user is not aware of. It will exaggerate any health problems.

Most people don’t know how it will affect them. They will often say, “It’s just a party drug. It’s no big deal.”

Talbot then introduced “Jamie,” a recovering meth addict to tell her story. She said she was a varsity athlete in high school and at 15 years of age when she first tired meth at a party. She didn’t think that it would become the addiction it did. But the first day of school rolled around and she thought to herself, “It’s no big deal. It’s only the first day.” But the first day turned into the first week, which turned to months.

One day, she said, she received a call from a friend.

“Hey Jamie, come to my graduation!” the friend said.

Jamie said she thought for a minute then realized it should have been her graduation, too. She missed three years because of her addiction to meth; she missed everything fun about high school.

During her addiction, Jamie saw a friend get shot in the head over a pack of cigarettes; she participated in stealing mail for identity theft purposes, and she was eventually accused of being an accessory to attempted murder.

However, with the help of her parents, who never turned her back on her, she said, a great lawyer helped in getting a minimal punishment.

Jamie’s addiction put her in a county correctional facility for three months, one month on house arrest and five years probation.

“I can’t vote,” she said. This is one of the biggest disappointments for her as she would like to have a say in what happens in her area.

“I can’t own a fire arm. I can’t even buy a fire cracker,” she added.

Jamie, 23, will be clean for four years this June. She is now a sophomore in college working on a degree in nursing and the mother of a 17 month old daughter. Before she becomes certified as a nurse, however, she has to ask to be relieved of her felony charges. She can’t do that until 2010.

She said that every day is a struggle. She has memory problems, so studying is a challenge. “Meth affects you forever!” she said. “Make the decision today not to use.”

In 2005, McKenna assembled the Operation: Allied Against Meth” task force, a group of individuals from elected officials to business owners that work together to address the meth epidemic.

McKenna said he will be working to fund meth efforts at state and local levels.

“We will be going back to legislature for renewal of the funding we secured in 2006 for the three rural narcotic task forces that were set up. That funding will expire in 2010 and we will be asking to renew it for at least another three years,” he said.

There are new initiatives in the works to increase treatment and prevention. Forty million dollars of additional funding have been set aside for substance abuse treatment. McKenna said that the number of treatment beds have been expanded in community and the Department of Corrections systems.

“A lot of the credit goes to people like former Senator Mark Doumit, who led the fight for the funding that I requested for the three new narcotics task forces,” McKenna said.

Local efforts to maintain federal funding for law enforcement known as the Byrne Act are in place. It provides justice assistance grants to the local level.

“The other attorneys general in the country, and I along with all the police chiefs and the sheriffs have been keeping the pressure up on congress to not cut that funding, but we have to fight that battle every year,” he said.

In the past two and a half years, McKenna has visited 46 schools to spread the message about the dangers of drugs.

“By the end of the school year,” he said, “we will have been in at least one high school in every county in the state of Washington. We take our outreach and our education program very seriously.”