Troubled Teens Resources

Teen age drug abuse can be fought using huge sweeping media campaigns, such as the barrage of anti-meth commercials and programs sweeping across many states in the West, or, it can be fought by making six beds available to teen meth users crippled by their addiction. All efforts, small or large, are critical in fighting this particularly insidious drug.

So this Salvation Army’s outreach of six beds here and another dozen here may not seem like much, they are just as valuable as multi-million dollar ad campaigns for the troubled teens whose lives are impacted.

“The Salvation Army in Victoria, BC has opened a new residential treatment program for drug-addicted youth.

Beacon of Hope House is located in the manse of St. Saviour’s Anglican Church in Victoria West, and it has room six male addicts, each with his own bedroom. Two staff members are on duty at all times, so that supervision is continuous, and clients are not allowed outside without accompanying staff.

The Salvation Army hopes to have a similar facility for females within eighteen months.”
(source)

Unlike other drugs, meth can take it’s addictive grip rapidly. And the downward spiral of the addict is just as rapid. More to the point, recovery is a very hard for the meth addict to maintain. Programs like that above are necessary because they offer the addict a means to separate themselves from their addiction while gaining ways and strength to fight it once they are out of treatment.

It is rather disconcerting to consider that a particular type of crime lends itself to a particular type of drug addict’s ability to execute it. In the continuing teen crisis intervention efforts by law enforcement officials to curb the raging appetite for meth,they are discovering a possible link between meth users and identity theft.

“Like crack cocaine in the 1980’s, officials say, the rise of methamphetamine has been accompanied by a specific set of crimes and skills that are shared among users and dealers.”

Meth users experience a type of high that allow them to commit identity thefts with much more ease than a junkie or crack head might experience.

“Crack users and heroin users are so disorganized and get in these frantic binges, they’re not going to sit still and do anything in an organized way for very long,” Dr. Rawson said. “Meth users, on the other hand, that’s all they have, is time. The drug stimulates the part of the brain that perseverates on things. So you get people perseverating on things, and if you sit down at a computer terminal you can go for hours and hours.”

Whereas crack and heroin are typically sold in densely populated urban areas, meth labs tend to be found in rural areas. Mail is easily stolen from unlocked mail boxes and fake IDs are routinely needed to rent apartments and studios and isolated houses to set up meth labs.

“In a survey of 500 county sheriffs, 27 percent said methamphetamine had contributed to a rise in identity theft in their areas. Even more — 62 percent and 68 percent, respectively — noted that it contributed to increases in domestic abuse or robberies and burglaries.”

(Source)

Unfortunately, the destruction that is so much a signature of drug abuse extends to the community at large.