Reply #75: I hate to say it- but yes [View All]

[depakid]

If addicts can't get treatment, they need somewhere to be off of the pipe. While there are drugs in jails, they're expensive and difficult to use the way an addict would on the street.

I thought I knew everything there was to know about this scourge from a friend of mine who's done foster parenting for kids who've been (or in some cases should have been) "orphaned" by meth. I've seen kids who've been irreversibly brain damaged from parents who cooked in their house when they were infants- I've seen physical scar from abuse, I've watched as meth heads steal anything around the neighborhood that's not nailed down.

But at the annual meeting of the Oregon Food Bank, we had three speakers- a precinct captain, a drug rehabilitation director and a homeless activist present what turned out to be an unlikely chorus of things beyond anything I'd hear before- and they were pretty much all in agreement.

This is qualitatively diferent than anything we've seen in the past- and it will require strong measures (and a modicum of inconvenience to people using cold meds) to make even a dent in the increasing number of users.