ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 1, 1996 TAG: 9611010012
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A12 EDITION: METRO
THE KILLER this time wasn't standing on an inner-city street corner in some open-air crack market, selling illicit drugs.
The killer wasn't armed and agitated and obviously dangerous, desperate for money to buy drugs.
The killer this time was in the trunk of a car sitting harmlessly in the driveway of a Botetourt County farmhouse. The killer was antifreeze, a legal product with legitimate purpose, but no less deadly for that.
It killed 16-year-old Brian Mitchell, a Lord Botetourt High School student who drank a small amount, apparently trying to get a high. The antifreeze was the immediate cause of death.
The underlying cause, though, was the same yearning for chemical experience, the same drug dependency, so common in our culture, that makes it profitable for dealers to stake out street corners and drains users of their money, their will and, sometimes, their lives.
Brian's problem wasn't with crack, or heroin, or ice, or any of the "street drugs" associated in the public mind with illegal drug use and the violent trade that surrounds it. His problem was, in a way, more frightening.
Brian had become dependent on the brief high that comes with "huffing," or inhaling aerosol propellants or gasoline fumes. So his drug of choice could be found in almost any household, and bought at many stores. It combines easy accessibility with a high danger of brain, liver and kidney damage, and the proven possibility of death.
Children as young as 10 are engaging in this dangerous practice, drug counselors say. Smoking marijuana would be safer.
In her grief, Kathryn Weddington, Brian's mother, has embarked on a brave campaign to educate children and parents about the risks and early warning signs of "huffing."
The larger lesson for society is that its war on drugs cannot be won by building prisons. Every street dealer and every drug lord in the world could be imprisoned, and kids oblivious to caution and looking for a high would be no less at risk from the aerosol cans under the kitchen sink.
Families, whatever their circumstance, must struggle in honest engagement to keep their children from drugs and related dangers. But education, prevention and, where these fail, treatment also must be more liberally available and applied. The loss in lives is mounting.
LENGTH: Short : 47 linesby CNB