RSS
Home
I've seen a lot of tweakers without much to say...
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
A Colorado Meth Project Ad
Driving down Santa Fe the other day, a giant, grimy toilet jumped into my line of sight.
Part of a new campaign against methamphetamines, a billboard on southbound Santa Fe features a picture of a disgustingly dirty bathroom stall and reads “No one thinks they’ll lose their virginity here. Meth will change that.”
Then yesterday, I spotted another billboard, this one bearing the image of an unconscious teen girl being treated at the hospital. That one reads “No one ever thinks they’ll wake up here. Meth will change that.”
The edgy, disturbing ads are funded by the Colorado Meth Project, and will display on television, radio, print and the Internet to show the physical and mental disintegration of people – namely kids – who use meth.
A Denver Post editorial on the campaign today reads that Colorado ranked eighth in the country for meth use in the last year, and that the economic burden of meth use in the U.S. in 2005 was $23.4 billion.
I love this new campaign.
Love. It.
As a crime reporter, I grew sick and tired of covering meth lab bust after meth lab bust, during the early 2000s. Every time I turned around, I was standing on a street in the blazing heat, rain and snow, watching as white protective-suited police officers went in and out of homes, trailers and cars, dismantling meth labs.
The fetid stench of those chemicals and that drug are forever burned into my nose.
On one particular occasion, I distinctly remember those officers walking to and fro past a yard littered with children’s toys and a swing set, carrying deadly chemicals and a number of semi- and fully automatic guns from inside the house.
It seemed that every crime in the area I worked was tied in some way or another to methamphetamines. And I wasn’t wrong.
Attorney General John Suthers said in the Post editorial that he estimates two-thirds of identity theft crimes in Colorado are committed by meth addicts looking to feed their habits.
My memory is packed full of images of meth users’ mug shots; their faces pock-marked with meth-induced sores, their eyes wide and unseeing.
My reporter friends and I could pick meth users out of line-ups without any hesitation.
“There’s the ‘Meth Mouth,’” we’d say, pointing to sunken cheeks, covering sparse rows of yellow, gray or blackened teeth.
I love these ads because they’re slightly terrifying; perfect because Meth, if you know anything about it, is, in fact, terrifying.
It’s made with terrible chemicals (some of which can be found under the bathroom counter) and it literally eats holes in a user’s brain, an officer told me once.
A single use of the drug can lead to an instant addiction which is harder to break than even black tar heroin, he added.
Hardcore users rarely ever get truly “clean.”
That same officer showed me a picture of a user who, in an attempt to steal anhydrous ammonia (a key meth ingredient) from a farmer, had dropped the container, causing the lid to pop off and the deadly chemical to blow up in his face.
The man’s lifeless body lay on the back porch of the farmer’s home, bits of his lungs on the steps nearby, having exploded out of his mouth and nose.
That’s how bad meth is.
People will risk everything and give up everything for that next hit.
They leave “death bags” of chemicals discarded in public places and cook the drug in apartment buildings and homes, with no regard for their neighbors or even the family members living with them.
Though meth labs have become less prevalent because the “quality” of the drug coming from Mexico is better and is less expensive, the drug is still omnipresent in Colorado, law enforcement officials say.
Though we all think we know what a “tweaker” looks like, it’s not as obvious as you’d think.
Not every meth user is jittery all the time, or has rotten teeth or steals from his friends’ pocketbooks.
Pay attention.
I didn’t, and when a friend of mine came clean and admitted he’d been addicted to the stuff for more than two years I was gobsmacked.
Thankfully, the drug didn’t take him from us. He sought help before he went to prison or lost his job or worse, his life.
I don’t know if he’s truly clean today – we don’t talk much – but from what I hear he’s got his life going on a great path.
I’ll say it again.
Pay attention.
That’s why I love these ads, because they’re undoubtedly getting lots of it.
Related Articles:
Comments
