Pubdate: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 Source: Charleston Gazette (WV) Copyright: 2005 Charleston Gazette Contact: http://www.wvgazette.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/77 Author: Chandra Broadwater, staff writer Note: Letters from newspaper's circulation area receive publishing priority Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) JUST ONCE St. Albans Students Learn About Meth's Instant Addiction One student asked another to help steady her arm in the restroom so she could shoot up meth. Throughout the year, St. Albans High teachers had watched her become thinner and thinner. The girl donned a down jacket most of the time at school - no matter what the weather. After learning about what happened from the other student in the restroom, Vice Principal Robin Francis immediately went on a locker search. Inside the girl's book bag, Francis found the well of a metal spoon, a lighter, a syringe full of the amber-colored drug and tubing to cinch the arm. "I had never seen meth, never taken a syringe away from anyone," Francis told a sophomore science class at the close of a presentation on methamphetamine. "We called the police, and [Principal Tom] Williams walked her down the walk outside in handcuffs and into the police car," she said. That was last year, and she was one of the few students at the school ever found with meth. On Tuesday, Francis and the students were part of the first county high school group to hear retired Kanawha County Sheriff's Capt. David Ross' talk on the highly addictive drug. Ross was invited to the school as part of a series of guest speakers for the class. Since the first meth lab was found in 1997 in Wood County, thousands have popped up across the state. As of Tuesday, 103 have been found in Kanawha this year. Ross travels the county and speaks to anyone who asks. Audiences range from school groups to doctors and nurses. His PowerPoint presentation comes complete with gruesome mug shots of the infamous Florida meth addict deteriorating over the course of several arrests, to startling facts and figures that made students sit up a little straighter in their seats and cringe. Ross always points to a 1999 USA Today survey, which polled more than 15,000 students from across the country. About 1,300 from West Virginia took part. "The use among those students in West Virginia was 7 percent above the national average, " Ross said. "I don't think I want to know what it is today." While he had no current facts or figures to give, Ross said that the Sheriff's Department has arrested people as young as fifth-graders and as old as 76 for possession of meth. "And everything in between," he said. On Tuesday, students learned that meth was first made in 1892 by a doctor trying to figure out how to make a pain reliever. Adolf Hitler had Nazi troops use it during World War II. The drug is different from alcohol, cocaine and even heroin in that itA's addictive from the first try. The habit is about 20,000 times harder to break than quitting cigarettes. And while it used to be one of the cheapest street drugs around, meth can now cost up to $2,400 an ounce. Not only because it's so difficult to make - many meth labs end up in flames - but also because those who make it use it themselves. "Meth turns good people to bad, and bad to worse," Ross said. Flipping through his presentation, he lingered on several pictures of a trashed home and yard, littered with tattered garbage bags and empty pseudoephedrine boxes. The lab in the house was discovered after the couple's 4-year-old son dragged his 9-month-old brother to the neighbor's house. They hadnA't eaten in days and smelled of ammonia and cat urine - the toxic scent associated with meth. "We usually call people who live like this 'dirt bags,'" Ross said. "But this house was appraised by the county at $250,000. These people were affluent, the husband a lawyer and the wife a nurse. They both quit their jobs to do meth. They gave their kids and their lives away and went to jail." While Nina Page said she learned a lot about meth that she didnA't know before, the sophomore said that the drug isn't anything new to her. She had known the student arrested last year since the first grade. "Before she was arrested, I hadn't seen her for a while and asked her why she was so skinny," Page said. "She said that she just didn't eat, and even told me that she lost 10 pounds in two days. We were best friends, but not anymore." Walking out of the school Tuesday, Ross said that there's always one thing that gets his crowds every time - the instant addiction of meth. "People have a hard time believing that," he said. "They can't conceive that it's something your body only needs once. Just once." - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin