Alee's First Blog

http://www.thestate.com/2007/09/24/182081/savage-meth-day-2-children-rescued.html

The news article I found for my first post reflects the issue my group is basing our blog on, drug abuse with children, along with also focusing on family issues for this particular one. This article, written by Adam Beam and John Monk in the “State” newspaper, is “SAVAGE METH Day 2: Children rescued from toxic labs get lost in S.C. system.” Within this article, a family had been running a meth lab in Aiken with a three year old boy involved. The beginning of the article starts out with Beam and Monk stating, “The 3-year-old boy slept on a mattress with his mother in a room full of Finding Nemo posters, yellow Huggies boxes and cans of denatured alcohol.” It is also discussed how they would label his Kool-Aid cups to try and prevent putting methamphetamine chemicals into them by mistake. Sadly, this is only one of the cases discussed. According to the article, there was also the fifteen year old boy that was discovered when the “deputies seized one of the Midlands’ largest meth labs ever in Lexington County, at 225 Transom Court in Gaston.” Another story Beam and Monk wrote about in the article was, “In Spartanburg County, three children tested positive for methamphetamine after sheriff’s deputies raided a house in Greer. The father, Rodney Harold Henry, was making meth about 10 feet from a child’s bedroom.” Obviously these are all horrible drug addictions that have a huge effect on the children of the family, along with the adults obviously as well.
Within the article, they also stated different ways methamphetamine can affect children medically, including: “Breathing disorders such as Asthma, Kidney and Liver problems, the way a pregnant woman using methamphetamine can affect and the un born, and many others.” Within the article, it was also said that “after 10, 15 years of removal, some of those kids will develop some type of cancer because of exposure or long-term exposure to the solvents used in those labs.” Along with sharing the health effects of children, the article also shared about the “Kid Kits” for helping the children affected by methamphetamine made by the “Federal Drug Enforcement Administration office by a Greenville County church” they include things such as, “Diapers, Clothes of varying sizes, Underwear, Stuffed animals, Crayons, Coloring books, and Baby bottles for formula.” They also suggest the children being helped by social services officials. The statistic stated by Beam and Monk is, “78 children were taken from homes where meth was being made during fiscal year 2005-2006.” According to Beam and Monk in the article, “In Lexington County, “Somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 percent of labs have children involved in some capacity,” according to Sheriff’s Department detective Sam Gunter, who has investigated hundreds of labs.” This is yet another very sad statistic to hear especially since it is so close to home. Even though the number of methamphetamine incidents has decreased in the past two years (according to the article written in 2007), it was stated that after the incidents with the Mexican border this could very well change. We can only pray the case will be, although knowing how sad it is because of the slim possibility, that the amount of children (along with others of course) affected by methamphetamine will be lowered if not eliminated.