Dear Editor, I am a concerned citizen who has seen over the last
five years the drug problem, especially Methamphetamine, in our
community become an epidemic. As a result, crime is up. I don’t
know if we have a drug force program, but if we do, it isn’t
working.
Dear Editor,
I am a concerned citizen who has seen over the last five years the drug problem, especially Methamphetamine, in our community become an epidemic. As a result, crime is up. I don’t know if we have a drug force program, but if we do, it isn’t working.
Years ago, I asked our local high about the drug problem. They insisted that there was no problem. As long as we deny this problem, our young people and their families are being destroyed by this drug.
Methamphetamine has a 98 percent addiction rate. Ninety-eight percent of people who try meth once get addicted to it within one year. Seventy-five percent of them within one week.
It is destroying families and destroying lives. The addicts themselves need help, the families need help. Our communities need to realize that there is a really big problem here and do something about it.
This state is an ideal place for drug dealers to make meth. We need to figure out how to find these people and places and put them in jail. In Oregon, they recognized this problem long ago and started informing citizens of the problem in the newspaper, in schools, in writing to their legislators etc. I have rarely seen articles about meth either in San Jose Mercury News or our own local newspaper.
Families that do not have a meth addict in their lives, think they are immune to this and that it doesn’t affect them. They are wrong! This problem affects everyone. As a result of meth addiction, burglaries are up, abuse is up, innocent children suffer.
I know that this is an epidemic throughout the U.S. too. We need to start with our own communities, our own cities, our own state. We need to say enough is enough. We need to start community support groups to make parents aware of this danger.
We think that we know our children, but we really don’t. We can not watch them 100 percent of the time. We need to have the schools aware of this problem and have them have assemblies to talk about what this drug does to them. Show them graphic pictures of the damage it does to their brains.
Our children are our future. What future will we and they have?
I know that there are a lot of bills being introduced for making the main ingredient of this drug, so that those products are behind the counters. But that just isn’t enough.
Jean Leaman, Morgan Hill
Editor’s note: The Times cannot confirm the addiction rates cited in this letter with U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services or the National Institute of Drug Addiction. The Times also regularly reports on Methamphetamine-related incidents in our community.
