Brownwood Meth Treatment Center ? It will take a village !
Anyone who is breathing and living in Brownwood and Brown County must realize the impact that Meth is making on this community. See our posts which contain information dating back to 1989 describing Brownwood Meth issues at that time. Will this community step up to the plate and develop a Meth Treatment Center ? How about taking one of the properties ( sitting abandoned for years ! ) that is owned by the taxing authority (city, school, county) and renovating the building into a first class Meth Treatment Center ?
Letters: Those nasty cold pills - Dallas Morning News Sunday, August 7, 2005
Meth is treatable
Re: "Cold meds go behind counter – New Texas law restricts sales of drugs that have key ingredient for meth," Tuesday news story.
Bad information makes for bad laws, and Rep. Leo Berman's information is terrible. "The problem is meth is not treatable," Mr. Berman said. "You can get off cocaine, you can get off heroin. You cannot get off meth."
This is absolutely untrue. Carol Falkowski, research communications director for the Hazelden Foundation, says, "There's a false but widespread belief that methamphetamine treatment is ineffective. ... There are effective treatments."
Putting cold medicines behind the counter will cut down on the dangerous production of methamphetamine in homes and motel rooms. The demand will be satisfied by dangerous methamphetamine imported from Mexico and elsewhere. Only regulation and treatment will solve the problem.
Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Forum of Texas, Dallas
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Skip the fear tactics
What hope of rational drug policies do we have if fear-mongering politicians spew utter nonsense to the public and the media don't even bother to challenge them?
Contrary to the assertions of state Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, methamphetamine dependence is not particularly more or less treatable than alcohol, cocaine or heroin dependence. And most meth users give up the drug voluntarily. Government statistics for 2003 indicate that of the 12 million who have tried meth, some 95 percent had not used it in the past month. Even use in the "past month" is nowhere near a description of dependency.
Like all addiction, it will have strong links to mental illness, but Mr. Berman is not talking about correcting Texas' abysmal failure to provide adequate funding for mental health. He should label his legislation, "A Bill to Increase the Profits of Mexican Drug Cartels and Bilk the Taxpayers."
Jerry Epstein, Houston
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Better than prisons
Keeping the ingredients of meth behind the counter is certainly a lot better solution than the previous non-solution of building more and bigger prisons.
Oklahoma learned the hard way that the so-called "tough on drugs" policies don't work and are very expensive. Largely because of their "tough on drugs" policies, Oklahoma became the fourth-highest state for incarcerations.
Largely because of our war on drugs policies, the U.S. has been transformed into the most-incarcerated nation in history. Even though we in the U.S. have fewer than 5 percent of the world's population, we have more than 25 percent of the world's prisoners. What message does this send to the rest of the world?
Kirk Muse, Mesa, Ariz.
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/letters/stories/080705dnediltrmeth.22801b51.html
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Brownwood History
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Brownwood, Bush, and Meth
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