DRUG USE HAS AFFECTED KIDS AS YOUNG AS EIGHT, CONFERENCE TOLD
Date: Sunday, November 27 @ 17:31:30 PST
Topic: Public Meetings
By Kristen Harding, The Lethbridge Herald.
Ex-Calgary Cop Relates Harrowing Experiences
TABER -- An eight-year-old girl neglected, abused and hooked on cocaine is the youngest addict retired detective Steve Walton has met. The former Calgary drug cop explained the child's pedophile stepfather gave her cocaine during repeated assaults and her crack-head mother did nothing to intervene.
That was five years ago.
"She's still alive, dealing with what happened to her and she's no longer an addict," he said. "But that girl will never be right."
Walton addressed more than 100 people Friday during the second day of the Hooked on Hope conference, organized by the Taber Community Against Drugs coalition.
The burly ex-cop -- who looks more like a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang than a drug education expert -- spent a decade in the drug squad and busted hundreds of marijuana grow operations, was involved in 780 undercover drug transactions and sent around 800 dealers to jail.
"We're starting to produce more drugs in Canada than we ever have before," said Walton, adding grow ops and crystal meth labs are moving out of the cities into rural areas where criminals mistakenly believe they will avoid detection.
Walton says the "big three" drugs remain marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine -- in that order, but club drugs such as ecstasy have made a comeback.
Sexual predators rely on date-rape drugs including GHB, to subdue their victims and street users have learned how to smoke narcotics such as percocet.
Walton says users are getting younger and dealers are taking full advantage, recalling an earlier seizure of thousands of ecstasy tablets in Calgary stamped with Pokemon characters.
"The magic age is 13. Children are most susceptible between the ages of 13 and 17."
But there is hope. Education is the key, he says, to prevention. "We have to get them when their young."
Programs such as DARE are invaluable but not every community offers the drug awareness sessions. Walton feels drug education should begin in kindergarten and carry on through the grades to ensure once a child reaches the magic age, they've already had years of preventative training.
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