Pubdate: Sat, 01 Sep 2001 Source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times (TX) Copyright: 2001 Corpus Christi Caller-Times Contact: http://www.caller.com/commcentral/email_ed.htm Website: http://www.caller.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/872 LETTING YOUR OWN KIDS DO DRUGS WOULD BE NEW LOW Some children removed from homes in Robstown drug raid tested positive. The damage done to American society by the traffic in illicit drugs is too obvious even to require documentation: In terms of lives wasted, families destroyed, and violence inflicted, it has assumed the proportions of some kind of plague. But the drug contagion still has the power to shock. A case in point is a development that followed a drug raid a week ago in Robstown in which 13 residents were arrested and 22 children, aged 1 month to 17 years, were removed from their households. What came next, though, was appalling: Child Protective Services officials subjected some of the children to testing for drug use (the number of children tested was not released), and about half of those registered positive for use of cocaine, marijuana, and/or heroin. This is not the final word: A CPS spokesman, Marina Yzaguirre, said the level of drug use had yet to be determined. Also in question was the issue of whether any of the children were addicted. But even if it gets no worse than what we already know, it's bad enough. Adults who expose their kids to the drug world do them an enormous disservice; but those who would willingly acquiesce in their kids' use of drugs - that would be an inexcusable abuse of parental rights, and just cause for the termination of those rights. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake