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As with most illicit drug use, including methamphetamine use, the impact a user has on those around him or her are oftentimes far more dangerous than the addiction itself.
Such impacts can come in the form of domestic violence, child abuse and other violent crimes. And all these impacts are statistically shown to be correlative to methamphetamine addiction.
Not surprisingly, though with frightening regularity, this danger, this violence, is directed at children.
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According to a variety of juvenile court employees and law enforcement, neglect, abuse and cyclical, family addiction as a result of methamphetamine use creates problems for Sierra Vista and Cochise County.
Flooding the juvenile court system and dominating the reasoning behind most Child Protective Services and parent/child separation cases, drugs and alcohol play a role in about 95 percent of these cases facing the courts in the county, said Donna Kosmider, coordinator for Cochise County's Court Appointed Special Advocate program.
The volunteer program attempts to provide an unbiased evaluation of the living situation of each child involved in a CPS or juvenile court-related situation. They talk to the child's schoolteachers, counselors, family, neighbors and anyone else involved in the child's life, ultimately giving the judge a wealth of information that otherwise might be missed.
"It is very time consuming," Kosmider said. "But at the same time, it is very necessary."
With the influx of methamphetamine use in the county, correlating to an increase in incidents of domestic violence, child neglect and abuse, the CASA program has been inundated with Child Protective Service's-related cases. As the workload grows, the program's volunteers are left with less and less time for each child, the impacts of which can be devastating, Kosmider said.
In most cases, unless there is an imminent threat to the life of a child or other extenuating circumstances, parents are given anywhere from nine to 12 months to get clean from methamphetamine or other drugs in an effort to have their children remain with them. Given the difficulties of kicking a methamphetamine habit, the likelihood of this quick of a recovery is nearly nonexistent.
According to SouthEastern Arizona Behavioral Health Services drug counselors, only about 5 percent of those seeking help will kick a meth addiction, and even then, the process is very slow and frequently involves relapses to the drug.
"It becomes a tricky situation," said juvenile court Judge Charles Irwin. "You have a parent in the court room, clean and sober for two or three months, sincere in their efforts to get their children back and really determined to do better.
"But I know, because I see the same parents over and over and over again, that without real time off of (methamphetamine), years and years clean, that in a few months, the kids will be living in a war zone again," he said.
Kosmider said the best thing anyone could hope for when a parent who has had a significant addiction to methamphetamine is that there is family close by, not using drugs themselves, who would be interested in adopting the children.
Otherwise, the children are likely to enter into a child welfare system that is overburdened and oftentimes just as neglectful as the drug-addicted parents.
"There's not a lot of options for these kids, and they deserve more help than anyone else involved," she said.
Another growing problem among children with meth-addicted parents is the prevalence of childhood addiction at younger ages.
In many cases, the children's curiosity of seeing their parents use methamphetamine leads them down the path to addiction, Kosmider said.
In a growing number of others, the addiction is intentionally induced by parent addicts.
Overwhelmingly, people who use methamphetamine also sell or manufacture it. Given the fact that users are characterized by agitation and heightened feelings of stress, combined with the fact that many possess large amounts of the drug in their homes, near children, the propensity to use the drug as a way to keep children quiet and sedated is common.
What began as an absentee baby-sitter quickly becomes an addiction for the child as well, leading to increased levels of juvenile crime and a greater likelihood that life-long addiction will occur. According to a nationwide survey by the Drug Enforcement Agency, the highest rate of methamphetamine use occurs people ages 18 to 25. While the average age of a user is about 18-years old, the number has continued to drop in the past half-decade as more and more children are introduced to the drug.
The problem is so bad throughout Arizona that in 2001 then-Attorney General Janet Napolitano noted that more than half the home-based methamphetamine labs in the state occur in homes where children are present.
Chemicals from these labs are toxic and can be absorbed through the skin, creating even more instances of addiction without ingesting the drug.
Across the board, a strikingly negative impact from methamphetamine use on children is being revealed. Nationwide, the instances of children born addicted increases every year, so too does the number of children involved in abusive and neglectful situations with addicted parents or caregivers.
And arguably the most detrimental, kids themselves introduced and addicted to the drug before even reaching their teens, is another statistic on the rise, with no resolution in sight.
"I've seen kids as young as 10 years old coming in addicted to meth," Irwin said. "It's easy to say, 'Oh, it's the parents, blame the parents,' and that's true ... but this is a widespread failure by all of us. It's everyone's problem."
HERALD/REVIEW reporter Nate Searing can be reached at 458-9440 Ext. 180 or by e-mail at nate.searing@svherald.com.
TheSilverRose wrote on Jun 27, 2009 10:22 PM:
Thank You! "