Faces of Meth
By Kelly Jasper
HARRISONBURG — Their pictures are heart wrenching, stomach-turning and mind-boggling.
Inside an auditorium at the Simms Center, faces flash across a video screen that magnifies the sunken gray eyes and sullen faces of each addict. Each has been battered by methamphetamine, a drug they say they can’t live without.
Problem is, there’s not much to be said for a life that is lived on meth, said organizers of a MethSMART event on National Methamphetamine Awareness Day Thursday.
The Boys and Girls Clubs of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County say this community, its kids and their parents need to know that.
The organizers showed an audience of about 100 just how the drug, a highly addictive and dangerously manufactured toxin, consumes addicts.
The videos show users falling apart at the seams, eating their own skin in desperate attempts to kindle a second high.
Their skin — the washed out gray of canned peas — is covered in scabs.
Some audience members gasped at their decay — pictures of rotted teeth and open sores caused others to shield their eyes from the screen.
Shock tactics are in.
That’s OK with U.S. Attorney John Brownlee, who moderated Thursday’s presentation.
His office produced and mailed a 13-minute DVD to every high school in Virginia. It features clips of addicts: a man whose faced was deformed after shooting himself in the head while on meth; a mother who lost her children after abusing the dug. They’re all from Virginia.
“I’ve will tell you firsthand that meth destroys,” said Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Garst. “People become monsters.”
Her message: just don’t. Don’t ever take that first hit; don’t ever try to experiment, she says.
The community leaders who participated in Thursday’s MethSMART event agree that drastic prevention-focused measures are needed to stop the epidemic.
Heather Denman, executive director of the Boys and Girls Clubs, received an e-mail from the U.S. Department of Justice after filing for grants on behalf of the clubs.
“They were really alarmed at the meth stories,” Denman said.
So the Justice Department pledged $15,000 to the club, one of 20 in the nation chosen to host MethSMART programs.
The program is an extension of SMART Moves, an initiative to address the “immediate threats” in a young person’s life: alcohol, tobacco, other drugs and premature sexual activity. SMART is an acronym for Skills Mastery and Resistance Training.
It exemplifies the goals of both national and local campaigns to stop meth use, Brownlee said.
Several community leaders participated, leading a panel discussion and question-and-answer session at the end of the video clips.
Rockingham County Sheriff Don Farley also was a member of Thursday night’s panel. His son has been jailed for nearly nine months after he was mixed up in meth.
Farley said his son is clean now, and has put some weight back on. But it’s a challenge. Only about 7 percent of meth addicts actually recover, he says.
“He gets out next Saturday,” Farley said. “That’s when the real test begins.”
The audience cheered his honesty. Meth turns users into monsters, and that’s no easy truth to face, Farley said.
Tom Murphy, coordinator of the RUSH Drug Task Force, explained why the drug has such disastrous effects.
“It’s easy to make,” Murphy said. “It’s easy to get the necessary ingredients.”
In labs across the county and in superlabs in Mexico, the drug is cooked using a “witches’ brew” of common chemicals and trafficked through the Valley, Murphy said. At the moment, only about 2 percent of the meth seized locally was manufactured in Virginia, he says.
But production is also rising. In 2000, one lab was found in Virginia. In 2005, 52 were discovered.
The high profits meth brings convince some users that production is worth the risks, Murphy said. About $600 in chemicals yields $2,000 in meth, according to his presentation.
On the street, meth sells for $6,000 to $14,000 a pound.
In the Valley, the task force is regularly seizes pounds — not just ounces — of the drug, Murphy said.
The drug’s appeal to addicts is simple: meth’s extended highs last longer than cocaine. “It makes you feel like superman,” Murphy said.
One addict who spoke in the video presentation said she was once awake for 32 days. The drug also induces hallucinations and paranoia, changing a user’s brain chemistry, Murphy said.
Dealing with such a “nasty” drug is a challenge for the task force, he said.
Meth recently became the nation’s No. 2 drug of choice, surpassing cocaine. Marijuana still holds at No. 1, Murphy said.
The task force has started finding more crystal meth, too, he says. It’s a more addictive, more pure version of the drug that’s appeared in the Valley over the last year and a half, he says.
Murphy showed picture after picture of firearms seized in raids, pounds of drugs the task force recovered and addicts arrested after police discovered their operations.
“This is stuff that’s happened right here in your backyard, my backyard,” he said as he scrolled through the slides. “Once you use meth its hard to turn back.”
That’s why Brownlee says he wanted to keep the message straightforward tonight: “Just don’t. Use meth and it will kill you.”
For more information on MethSMART, contact the Boys & Girls Clubs at 434-6060.
Write a comment