Troubled Teens Resources

Here is a follow up to yesterdays post about Mexican Drug cartels funneling their inventory of meth into American Indian reservations and the escalating devastation and desperation it has wrought. I ran into an additional piece that goes further into describing the nature of the beast that the global drug market has become.

It is a story that teens at risk hear little enough about. Teen age drug abuse has been given a patina of excitement and allure thanks to Hollywood and media. Rap stars engage in drive-by shootings and troubled teenagers admire them. If only life were as slick as a video. But somehow I don’t think the meth ravaged teens in reservations now awash in a tsunami of Mexican meth would be impressed with rap’s glitter thugs. They have met the real enemy.

“… Zhenli Ye Gon, who was arrested in Maryland last week following the discovery of $205 million of alleged drug money in his house in Mexico City, underscores how the same process of global sourcing that ripped apart the integrated industries of the 20th century, replacing them with networks of production scattered around the globe, is reconfiguring the drug trade, too.

Ye Gon, who was born in Shanghai…is accused of illegally importing into Mexico tons of pseudoephedrine and other chemicals from China and other countries to supply methamphetamine labs run by Mexican drug cartels in Mexico and American border states.
[…]
The new Mexican-made drug has virtually replaced American homegrown meth…Seizures of imported meth along the southwest border increased from 2,706 pounds in 2003 to 4,346 pounds in 2005.”

(Source)

Teen crisis intervention in the area of meth addiction has become a war.

“The Mexican Mafia came onto reservations with a Fortune 500 business plan to begin establishing places of distribution or transport into our communities,” Moore said.”

Perhaps troubled teenagers would think twice before purchasing drugs if they had a clue as to who was behind selling them. Teens at risk today take perverse pride in being-anti;anti- big oil, anti- corruption, anti-poverty. Maybe it is time to not only educate kids about the dangers of drugs but to also expose them to the “corrupt big business” that markets them, perpetuating the poverty of addiction. Perhaps teens could get as upset about the corrupt business of drug distribution as they seem to get over big oil.

“Wind River, Wyo., was one of the first reservations to be targeted. Mexican drug cartels brought methamphetamine onto the rural and minimally patrolled reservation in 2000, and many dealers fathered children with Native American women while getting them hooked on the illegal drug. With rampant poverty, many of these women were forced to peddle the drug to support their habit”.

(Source)

If “big oil” trespassed onto Indian land and devastated the population, the kids would be very angry. Perhaps if they could understand that “big drugs” is doing that to an entire country of teenagers they would not want to hand over money to the kid selling on the street corner. The above linked article is one you can print out and leave it where your teen can read it. It might change a few minds.