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.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake