Meth hype?

Kane wrote
We chatted about it at the last meth education committee meeting.

Did you know they listed your name publicly on the web, Don?

0:-] wrote:

Your Meth hype has been exposed again and again.

Please post it to the drug groups where you can learn a thing or two.

In the meantime, here's an article about meth and cps.


And that’s why the biggest addiction problem in child welfare is neither meth nor crack nor any other drug. The biggest addiction problem in child welfare is great big, prestigious, mainstream private child welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to their per diem payments for holding children in foster care.
And they’re putting their addiction ahead of the children.


Kinda like you - huh Kane/Don/d'geezer?? lol.


======================================
EPIDEMIC OF HYPE
How hysteria over methamphetamine has become the latest excuse to
“take the child and run.”

“A cohort of babies is now being born whose future is closed to them from day one. Theirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority. At best, a menial life of severe deprivation. And all of this is being biologically determined from birth."

If that sounds like something you just read about methamphetamine, that’s understandable. It certainly sounds like the apocalyptic quotes that have appeared in 2005 and 2006 everywhere from The New York Times to Newsweek to CBS and NBC News.
In fact, the quote dates back to 1989. Columnist Charles Krauthammer was writing not about methamphetamine, but about crack cocaine.
None of it was true.
More than two decades later, it is clear that the horrifying predictions about so-called “crack babies” were the result of hype and hysteria, not science and scholarship. Indeed, as the website stats.org concluded: Being labeled a "crack baby" appears to have done more harm to these children than the cocaine itself did.” Another stats.org article on media meth myths is available here.
But it wasn’t just the babies who were stereotyped and stigmatized. We were repeatedly told that crack was harder on children because of its special appeal to women. We were told that crack was so addictive that it stole these mothers’ material instinct. And we were told crack addiction was virtually untreatable.
None of it was true.
The false claims were used as an all-purpose justification for soaring numbers of foster care placements, by child welfare systems whose response to every problem can be boiled down to “take the child and run.” The label “crack addict” was thrown around with the same abandon as the label “crack baby,” and the assumption was that, since there was no hope for the mothers, the only alternative was foster-care for the children. Any time anyone questioned the high rate at which children were removed from their homes, the child welfare establishment blithely labeled every case a “crack case” and insisted there was no choice.
None of it was true.
Indeed, by October 2004, Columbia Journalism Review had published an article ending with a plea to journalists not to make the same mistakes with “meth” as they made with crack. But, it seems, few reporters listened. One need only substitute “crack” for “meth” and the recent crop of stories sound identical to their counterparts from the 1980s.
If anything, the term used for children this time is even more insidious: To call a child a “meth orphan” writes off both the child and his or her parents.

The problem is real, the solutions have been phony

There is something else that addiction to crack and meth have in common: Both are very serious, very real problems. Addiction to either substance requires intervention to ensure that children are safe. The issue is how to intervene. Sometimes there truly is no choice but to remove the children and place them in foster care. In other cases, children can be placed with extended family members. But in many other cases, there is another option that should be tried first: drug treatment, including inpatient programs where parents can remain with their children.

Meth addiction is treatable

A review of the literature by Prof. Richard Rawson, Associate Director of Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, concludes that addiction to methamphetamine is just as treatable as addiction to cocaine. Furthermore, it takes no longer to treat meth addiction than to treat any other drug addiction.
And Dr. Rawson is not alone in his assessment.
His assessment that meth is just as treatable and takes no longer to treat is confirmed by a Washington State study. The title says it all: Treatment for Methamphetamine Dependency is as Effective as Treatment for Any Other Drug. (If clicking on this link leads to a password request, click “cancel” and you’ll still be able to see the document).
According to a letter signed by 93 medical doctors, scientists, researchers in psychology and treatment specialists:
“[C]laims that methamphetamine users are virtually untreatable with small recovery rates lack foundation in medical research. Analysis of dropout, retention in treatment and re-incarceration rates and other measures of outcome, in several recent studies indicate that methamphetamine users respond in an equivalent manner as individuals admitted for other drug abuse problems. Research also suggests the need to improve and expand treatment offered to methamphetamine users.”
Further evidence comes from a county often identified in media accounts as hard-hit by meth, Sacramento County, California. According to the federal government’s National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare, the county developed a comprehensive approach to such cases, emphasizing treatment. Between 1998 and 2004, the number of children taken from their parents actually has declined by more than one-third. The emphasis on treatment has reduced the length of time in foster care for children who must be removed from their homes. And the county actually is getting better treatment results for parents addicted to meth than for those using cocaine or heroin.
The notion that there is no point in trying drug treatment in meth cases because it won’t work or it takes too long is one more meth myth.

Why bother with treatment?

But why bother? Why bother helping a parent who is addicted to meth? Here again, there are lessons from crack.
University of Florida researchers studied two groups of infants born with cocaine in their systems. One group was placed in foster care, the other with birth mothers able to care for them. After six months, the babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant development: rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Consistently, the children placed with their birth mothers did better. For the foster children, being taken from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine.
Still another study looked at foster care “alumni.” Among the conclusions:
· Alumni of foster care suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at a rate more than double the rate for Gulf War Veterans.
· At least one-third said they were abused by a foster parent or another adult in a foster home. (The study didn’t even ask about one of the most common sources of abuse in foster care, foster children abusing each other, so the real figure almost certainly is higher).
· Only 20 percent of the alumni could be said to be doing well. (For more on this study, see NCCPR’s analysis, 80 Percent Failure, available at www.nccpr.org.)
It is extremely difficult to take a swing at “bad mothers” without the blow landing on their children. If we really believe all the rhetoric about putting the needs of children first, then we need to put those needs ahead of everything – including how we may feel about their parents. That doesn’t mean we can simply leave children with addicts. It does mean that drug treatment for the parent is almost always a better first choice than foster care for the child -- because it is urgent to save children from people in the grip of another addiction: an addiction to foster care so powerful that they would throw children far too easily into a system that churns out walking wounded four times out of five.

Statistics abuse

Estimates of the number of cases in which drugs in general or any drug in particular are “involved” in child welfare cases are just guesses – a caseworker checks a box on a form because she thinks maybe there are drugs involved in some way; a supervisor guesses how often that box has been checked on the form, the p.r. person for the child welfare agency guesses how often supervisors have told him they’re seeing the box checked on the form. And everyone has an incentive to guess high – since it’s considered an automatic justification for tearing a child from everyone loving and familiar.
It’s no wonder that estimates for the proportion of cases involving any drug, range from 20 percent to 90 percent.
The term “involved” contributes to the hype.
Consider a case profiled in a thoughtful, careful way by the Portland Oregonian. The mother used meth, but was in outpatient treatment and doing well. The father was not accused of drug use at all. The child was in foster care because there was no inpatient drug treatment facility in the local community for the mother, and because of child welfare systems’ pervasive bias against fathers.
Yet, for statistical purposes, this is a “meth case.” And when child welfare agencies claim that a huge percentage of their cases “involve” meth use, that includes cases like this one.
The problem is compounded when organizations lobbying for more funding get into the mix. Many news accounts still accept at face value a stacked-deck survey from the National Association of Counties. Among the claims repeated over and over again: 71 percent of the counties surveyed in California reported an increase in foster care because of meth. But only reporters who looked at the fine print would discover that only seven of California’s 58 counties were surveyed.

But what about the labs?

Unlike crack cocaine, methamphetamine can be manufactured in home labs – and almost every news account emphasizes the labs and children taken from those labs. But such cases represent only a tiny fraction of “meth cases.”
Between 2000 and 2003, child protective services agencies removed children from their parents 1,188,000 times. During that same time period, 10,580 children were found to be “affected” by methamphetamine manufacture, with 4,662 living in labs and 2,881 of them placed in foster care. (Many of the others probably were placed informally with relatives).
In other words, of all the entries into foster care from 2000 to 2003, at least 99.1 percent of them had nothing to do with meth labs.
Even in Oregon, the substance abuse program manager for the state child welfare agency says that “…the number of times that [child protective] workers confronted actual manufacturing was rare in their practice compared to the number of families affected by methamphetamine abuse and dependence.”

Some states respond better than others

Oregon is one state that has been hard hit by meth. But, unfortunately, like other states, such as Iowa and Colorado, Oregon also is a state addicted to excuses.
· Oregon took away children, proportionately, at one of the highest rates in the country as far back as 1985. Why were so many children being taken then, long before any “meth epidemic”?
· Oregon, Iowa, and Colorado all take away children at a rate significantly higher than California – long another state known for having a serious meth problem.
· Alabama has a serious meth problem – and it’s had an impact on the foster care population, with increases in removals in recent years. But before meth hit, Alabama was hit by a class-action lawsuit requiring the state to thoroughly reform its system to emphasize family preservation. As a result, Alabama gained years of experience in safely keeping children out of foster care, making it better able to handle the influx of meth cases. So today, despite meth, Alabama still takes away children at one of the lowest rates in the nation. At the same time, re-abuse of children left in their own homes has been cut by 60 percent – to less than half the national average – and, an independent court monitor has found that, as a result of the reforms, child safety has improved.
· Illinois also has a meth problem. Yet Illinois removes children at a rate even lower than Alabama, and, again, independent court-appointed monitors say as foster care has been reduced, child safety has improved.
And as noted above, by emphasizing treatment, Sacramento County, California has been able to cope with a serious meth problem while reducing entries into foster care.
A good child welfare system does such a good job of keeping other children safely in their own homes, that when a new drug becomes the scourge of the state, the system can handle it.

A political agenda

Hysteria over drugs has always been fueled by those with a vested interest in taking away children, and the current wave of meth stories is no exception.
In part, there is a political motivation behind the false claims about meth. The federal government wants to allow states to use billions of dollars now reserved for foster care for various prevention programs, including drug treatment. But the child welfare establishment wants to hoard the money for foster care.
Not only can this money be used only for foster care, the funding is fueled by child removal. For every eligible child they put into foster care, states get from 50 to 83 cents back on the dollar for foster care costs.
The child welfare establishment wants us to believe that methamphetamine is virtually untreatable because they want us to believe the only option for the children is foster care. They want us to believe the only option is foster care in order to justify their demand that those billions of dollars be reserved for foster care, and nothing else.
Indeed, the campaign against making foster care funding flexible has been led by the Child Welfare League of America, the trade association for public and private agencies. Most private agencies are paid for each day they hold a child in foster care. Anything that threatens to close the “open spigot” of federal foster care aid threatens the ability of states to keep doling out per diem payments to private agencies for endless foster care. That threatens the private agencies’ existence.
And that’s why the biggest addiction problem in child welfare is neither meth nor crack nor any other drug. The biggest addiction problem in child welfare is great big, prestigious, mainstream private child welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to their per diem payments for holding children in foster care.
And they’re putting their addiction ahead of the children.
Updated, June 10, 2006


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On Jun 16, 2:26 am, Moderator wrote:
0:-] wrote:

Your Meth hype has been exposed again and again.

Please post it to the drug groups where you can learn a thing or two.

In the meantime, here's an article about meth and cps.



And that's why the biggest addiction problem in child welfare is neither meth nor crack nor any other drug. The biggest addiction problem in child welfare is great big, prestigious, mainstream private child welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to their per diem payments for holding children in foster care.
And they're putting their addiction ahead of the children.

Kinda like you - huh Kane/Don/d'geezer?? lol.

======================================
EPIDEMIC OF HYPE
How hysteria over methamphetamine has become the latest excuse to
"take the child and run."

"A cohort of babies is now being born whose future is closed to them from day one. Theirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority. At best, a menial life of severe deprivation. And all of this is being biologically determined from birth."

If that sounds like something you just read about methamphetamine, that's understandable. It certainly sounds like the apocalyptic quotes that have appeared in 2005 and 2006 everywhere from The New York Times to Newsweek to CBS and NBC News.
In fact, the quote dates back to 1989. Columnist Charles Krauthammer was writing not about methamphetamine, but about crack cocaine.
None of it was true.
More than two decades later, it is clear that the horrifying predictions about so-called "crack babies" were the result of hype and hysteria, not science and scholarship. Indeed, as the website stats.org concluded: Being labeled a "crack baby" appears to have done more harm to these children than the cocaine itself did." Another stats.org article on media meth myths is available here.
But it wasn't just the babies who were stereotyped and stigmatized. We were repeatedly told that crack was harder on children because of its special appeal to women. We were told that crack was so addictive that it stole these mothers' material instinct. And we were told crack addiction was virtually untreatable.
None of it was true.
The false claims were used as an all-purpose justification for soaring numbers of foster care placements, by child welfare systems whose response to every problem can be boiled down to "take the child and run." The label "crack addict" was thrown around with the same abandon as the label "crack baby," and the assumption was that, since there was no hope for the mothers, the only alternative was foster-care for the children. Any time anyone questioned the high rate at which children were removed from their homes, the child welfare establishment blithely labeled every case a "crack case" and insisted there was no choice.
None of it was true.
Indeed, by October 2004, Columbia Journalism Review had published an article ending with a plea to journalists not to make the same mistakes with "meth" as they made with crack. But, it seems, few reporters listened. One need only substitute "crack" for "meth" and the recent crop of stories sound identical to their counterparts from the 1980s.
If anything, the term used for children this time is even more insidious: To call a child a "meth orphan" writes off both the child and his or her parents.

The problem is real, the solutions have been phony

There is something else that addiction to crack and meth have in common: Both are very serious, very real problems. Addiction to either substance requires intervention to ensure that children are safe. The issue is how to intervene. Sometimes there truly is no choice but to remove the children and place them in foster care. In other cases, children can be placed with extended family members. But in many other cases, there is another option that should be tried first: drug treatment, including inpatient programs where parents can remain with their children.

Meth addiction is treatable

A review of the literature by Prof. Richard Rawson, Associate Director of Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, concludes that addiction to methamphetamine is just as treatable as addiction to cocaine. Furthermore, it takes no longer to treat meth addiction than to treat any other drug addiction.
And Dr. Rawson is not alone in his assessment.
His assessment that meth is just as treatable and takes no longer to treat is confirmed by a Washington State study. The title says it all: Treatment for Methamphetamine Dependency is as Effective as Treatment for Any Other Drug. (If clicking on this link leads to a password request, click "cancel" and you'll still be able to see the document).
According to a letter signed by 93 medical doctors, scientists, researchers in psychology and treatment specialists:
"[C]laims that methamphetamine users are virtually untreatable with small recovery rates lack foundation in medical research. Analysis of dropout, retention in treatment and re-incarceration rates and other measures of outcome, in several recent studies indicate that methamphetamine users respond in an equivalent manner as individuals admitted for other drug abuse problems. Research also suggests the need to improve and expand treatment offered to methamphetamine users."
Further evidence comes from a county often identified in media accounts as hard-hit by meth, Sacramento County, California. According to the federal government's National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare, the county developed a comprehensive approach to such cases, emphasizing treatment. Between 1998 and 2004, the number of children taken from their parents actually has declined by more than one-third. The emphasis on treatment has reduced the length of time in foster care for children who must be removed from their homes. And the county actually is getting better treatment results for parents addicted to meth than for those using cocaine or heroin.
The notion that there is no point in trying drug treatment in meth cases because it won't work or it takes too long is one more meth myth.

Why bother with treatment?

But why bother? Why bother helping a parent who is addicted to meth? Here again, there are lessons from crack.
University of Florida researchers studied two groups of infants born with cocaine in their systems. One group was placed in foster care, the other with birth mothers able to care for them. After six months, the babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant development: rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Consistently, the children placed with their birth mothers did better. For the foster children, being taken from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine.
Still another study looked at foster care "alumni." Among the conclusions:
· Alumni of foster care suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at a rate more than double the rate for Gulf War Veterans.
· At least one-third said they were abused by a foster parent or another adult in a foster home. (The study didn't even ask about one of the most common sources of abuse in foster care, foster children abusing each other, so the real figure almost certainly is higher).
· Only 20 percent of the alumni could be said to be doing well. (For more on this study, see NCCPR's analysis, 80 Percent Failure, available atwww.nccpr.org.)
It is extremely difficult to take a swing at "bad mothers" without the blow landing on their children. If we really believe all the rhetoric about putting the needs of children first, then we need to put those needs ahead of everything - including how we may feel about their parents. That doesn't mean we can simply leave children with addicts. It does mean that drug treatment for the parent is almost always a better first choice than foster care for the child -- because it is urgent to save children from people in the grip of another addiction: an addiction to foster care so powerful that they would throw children far too easily into a system that churns out walking wounded four times out of five.

Statistics abuse

Estimates of the number of cases in which drugs in general or any drug in particular are "involved" in child welfare cases are just guesses - a caseworker checks a box on a form because she thinks maybe there are drugs involved in some way; a supervisor guesses how often that box has been checked on the form, the p.r. person for the child welfare agency guesses how often supervisors have told him they're seeing the box checked on the form.. And everyone has an incentive to guess high - since it's considered an automatic justification for tearing a child from everyone loving and familiar.
It's no wonder that estimates for the proportion of cases involving any drug, range from 20 percent to 90 percent.
The term "involved" contributes to the hype.
Consider a case profiled in a thoughtful, careful way by the Portland Oregonian. The mother used meth, but was in outpatient treatment and doing well. The father was not accused of drug use at all. The child was in foster care because there was no inpatient drug treatment facility in the local community for the mother, and because of child welfare systems' pervasive bias against fathers.
Yet, for statistical purposes, this is a "meth case." And when child welfare agencies claim that a huge percentage of their cases "involve" meth use, that includes cases like this one.
The problem is compounded when organizations lobbying for more funding get into the mix. Many news accounts still accept at face value a stacked-deck survey from the National Association of Counties. Among the claims repeated over and over again: 71 percent of the counties surveyed in California reported an increase in foster care because of meth. But only reporters who looked at the fine print would discover that only seven of California's 58 counties were surveyed.

But what about the labs?

Unlike crack cocaine, methamphetamine can be manufactured in home labs - and almost every news account emphasizes the labs and children taken from those labs. But such cases represent only a tiny fraction of "meth cases."
Between 2000 and 2003, child protective services agencies removed children from their parents 1,188,000 times. During that same time period, 10,580 children were found to be "affected" by methamphetamine manufacture, with 4,662 living in labs and 2,881 of them placed in foster care. (Many of the others probably were placed informally with relatives).
In other words, of all the entries into foster care from 2000 to 2003, at least 99.1 percent of them had nothing to do with meth labs.
Even in Oregon, the substance abuse program manager for the state child welfare agency says that "...the number of times that [child protective] workers confronted actual manufacturing was rare in their practice compared to the number of families affected by methamphetamine abuse and dependence."

Some states respond better than others

Oregon is one state that has been hard hit by meth. But, unfortunately, like other states, such as Iowa and Colorado, Oregon also is a state addicted to excuses.
· Oregon took away children, proportionately, at one of the highest rates in the country as far back as 1985. Why were so many children being taken then, long before any "meth epidemic"?
· Oregon, Iowa, and Colorado all take away children at a rate significantly higher than California - long another state known for having a serious meth problem.
· Alabama has a serious meth problem - and it's had an impact on the foster care population, with increases in removals in recent years. But before meth hit, Alabama was hit by a class-action lawsuit requiring the state to thoroughly reform its system to emphasize family preservation. As a result, Alabama gained years of experience in safely keeping children out of foster care, making it better able to handle the influx of meth cases. So today, despite meth, Alabama still takes away children at one of the lowest rates in the nation. At the same time, re-abuse of children left in their own homes has been cut by 60 percent - to less than half the national average - and, an independent court monitor has found that, as a result of the reforms, child safety has improved.
· Illinois also has a meth problem. Yet Illinois removes children at a rate even lower than Alabama, and, again, independent court-appointed monitors say as foster care has been reduced, child safety has improved.
And as noted above, by emphasizing treatment, Sacramento County, California has been able to cope with a serious meth problem while reducing entries into foster care.
A good child welfare system does such a good job of keeping other children safely in their own homes, that when a new drug becomes the scourge of the state, the system can handle it.

A political agenda

Hysteria over drugs has always been fueled by those with a vested interest in taking away children, and the current wave of meth stories is no exception.
In part, there is a political motivation behind the false claims about meth. The federal government wants to allow states to use billions of dollars now reserved for foster care for various prevention programs, including drug treatment. But the child welfare establishment wants to hoard the money for foster care.
Not only can this money be used only for foster care, the funding is fueled by child removal. For every eligible child they put into foster care, states get from 50 to 83 cents back on the dollar for foster care costs.
The child welfare establishment wants us to believe that methamphetamine is virtually untreatable because they want us to believe the only option for the children is foster care. They want us to believe the only option is foster care in order to justify their demand that those billions of dollars be reserved for foster care, and nothing else.
Indeed, the campaign against making foster care funding flexible has been led by the Child Welfare League of America, the trade association for public and private agencies. Most private agencies are paid for each day they hold a child in foster care. Anything that threatens to close the "open spigot" of federal foster care aid threatens the ability of states to keep doling out per diem payments to private agencies for endless foster care.. That threatens the private agencies' existence.
And that's why the biggest addiction problem in child welfare is neither meth nor crack nor any other drug. The biggest addiction problem in child welfare is great big, prestigious, mainstream private child welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to their per diem payments for holding children in foster care.
And they're putting their addiction ahead of the children.
Updated, June 10, 2006

--
Posted via a free Usenet account fromhttp://www.teranews.com

On Jun 16, 1:04 am, "0:-]" wrote:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...t49bsa&show_ar...

What's the connection to CPS you ask?

The ages of the young American Adults.

It used to be called child bearing age.

So, Greg, want to blab some more about the meth hype, and the national
organization of Sheriffs that were just 'lobbying for more money,'
with NO REAL CAUSE FOR ALARM?

Step right up, folks. I haven't had a good debate in ages.

Just these little ****ants that can't post without lying.

Booooring.
0:]

....

Crystal meth use in US twice higher than estimated
Jun 15 04:55 PM US/Eastern
Crystal methamphetamine use among young American adults is twice
higher than previously estimated, according to National Institutes of
Health (NIH) research published Friday.

Also known as "ice," "crystal," "glass," and "tina," crystal meth is a
highly addictive, inexpensive, colorless stimulant that affects the
central nervous system.

Typically smoked, it is used by 2.8 percent of young adults aged
18-26, according to the revised results of a 2001-2002 study conducted
by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the NIH.

The initial research had found crystal use at 1.4 percent among adults
aged 19-28.

"This new information gives us a clearer picture of use among young
adults, but also raises new concerns," said NIH Director Elias
Zerhouni.

"Even occasional use of crystal methamphetamine is associated with
multiple health and social risks, including a negative impact on
families as well as straining emergency departments and law
enforcement resources," he added.

The new NIH study found crystal users are "disproportionately white
and male" and live mainly in the western part of the United States.
Native Americans, it also found, were 4.2 times as likely as whites to
use crystal.

"Users also tend to have lower social economic status, use other
substances, such as alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine, and the male
users are more likely to have had incarcerated fathers," the NIH said.

Copyright AFP 2005, AFP stories and photos shall not be published,
broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed
directly or indirectly in any medium


All these people that say that there isn't a big time problem with
meth in regards to children's rights are way off center. In a city
near where I live, there are constant meth crackdowns. Meth labs
found in homes where children live. It's constant. So constant in
fact, that it barely makes the news anymore, which is sad. There are
meth houses near where I go to school. The meth-heads are walking the
streets looking for cans and bottles to return and selling their
bodies to support their habits. Pale-faced hungry kids tagging behind
them looking at the people on the street with haunted eyes. They know
what's up. And people wonder why the problems with all the meth use
in the US would be posted on a group that focuses on children and
families. *rolls eyes* I would love for these people to volunteer
where I work. I'm sure your mind set would change within a few days.
If it didn't, I would consider you the walking dead, to be perfectly
honest with you. Try working someplace where you see the damaging
effects of meth use/addiction on a family with kids. Go for it. I
dare you!

lostintranslation wrote:
On Jun 16, 1:04 am, "0:-]" wrote:

Your Meth hype has been exposed again and again.

Please post it to the drug groups where you can learn a thing or two.

In the meantime, here's an article about meth and cps.


And that’s why the biggest addiction problem in child welfare is neither meth nor crack nor any other drug. The biggest addiction problem in child welfare is great big, prestigious, mainstream private child welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to their per diem payments for holding children in foster care.
And they’re putting their addiction ahead of the children.

Kinda like you - huh Kane/Don/d'geezer?? lol.


======================================
EPIDEMIC OF HYPE
How hysteria over methamphetamine has become the latest excuse to
“take the child and run.”

“A cohort of babies is now being born whose future is closed to them from day one. Theirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority. At best, a menial life of severe deprivation. And all of this is being biologically determined from birth."
If that sounds like something you just read about methamphetamine, that’s understandable. It certainly sounds like the apocalyptic quotes that have appeared in 2005 and 2006 everywhere from The New York Times to Newsweek to CBS and NBC News.
In fact, the quote dates back to 1989. Columnist Charles Krauthammer was writing not about methamphetamine, but about crack cocaine.
None of it was true.
More than two decades later, it is clear that the horrifying predictions about so-called “crack babies” were the result of hype and hysteria, not science and scholarship. Indeed, as the website stats.org concluded: Being labeled a "crack baby" appears to have done more harm to these children than the cocaine itself did.” Another stats.org article on media meth myths is available here.
But it wasn’t just the babies who were stereotyped and stigmatized. We were repeatedly told that crack was harder on children because of its special appeal to women. We were told that crack was so addictive that it stole these mothers’ material instinct. And we were told crack addiction was virtually untreatable.
None of it was true.
The false claims were used as an all-purpose justification for soaring numbers of foster care placements, by child welfare systems whose response to every problem can be boiled down to “take the child and run.” The label “crack addict” was thrown around with the same abandon as the label “crack baby,” and the assumption was that, since there was no hope for the mothers, the only alternative was foster-care for the children. Any time anyone questioned the high rate at which children were removed from their homes, the child welfare establishment blithely labeled every case a “crack case” and insisted there was no choice.
None of it was true.
Indeed, by October 2004, Columbia Journalism Review had published an article ending with a plea to journalists not to make the same mistakes with “meth” as they made with crack. But, it seems, few reporters listened. One need only substitute “crack” for “meth” and the recent crop of stories sound identical to their counterparts from the 1980s.
If anything, the term used for children this time is even more insidious: To call a child a “meth orphan” writes off both the child and his or her parents.

The problem is real, the solutions have been phony

There is something else that addiction to crack and meth have in common: Both are very serious, very real problems. Addiction to either substance requires intervention to ensure that children are safe. The issue is how to intervene. Sometimes there truly is no choice but to remove the children and place them in foster care. In other cases, children can be placed with extended family members. But in many other cases, there is another option that should be tried first: drug treatment, including inpatient programs where parents can remain with their children.

Meth addiction is treatable

A review of the literature by Prof. Richard Rawson, Associate Director of Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, concludes that addiction to methamphetamine is just as treatable as addiction to cocaine. Furthermore, it takes no longer to treat meth addiction than to treat any other drug addiction.
And Dr. Rawson is not alone in his assessment.
His assessment that meth is just as treatable and takes no longer to treat is confirmed by a Washington State study. The title says it all: Treatment for Methamphetamine Dependency is as Effective as Treatment for Any Other Drug. (If clicking on this link leads to a password request, click “cancel” and you’ll still be able to see the document).
According to a letter signed by 93 medical doctors, scientists, researchers in psychology and treatment specialists:
“[C]laims that methamphetamine users are virtually untreatable with small recovery rates lack foundation in medical research. Analysis of dropout, retention in treatment and re-incarceration rates and other measures of outcome, in several recent studies indicate that methamphetamine users respond in an equivalent manner as individuals admitted for other drug abuse problems. Research also suggests the need to improve and expand treatment offered to methamphetamine users.”
Further evidence comes from a county often identified in media accounts as hard-hit by meth, Sacramento County, California. According to the federal government’s National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare, the county developed a comprehensive approach to such cases, emphasizing treatment. Between 1998 and 2004, the number of children taken from their parents actually has declined by more than one-third. The emphasis on treatment has reduced the length of time in foster care for children who must be removed from their homes. And the county actually is getting better treatment results for parents addicted to meth than for those using cocaine or heroin.
The notion that there is no point in trying drug treatment in meth cases because it won’t work or it takes too long is one more meth myth.
Why bother with treatment?

But why bother? Why bother helping a parent who is addicted to meth? Here again, there are lessons from crack.
University of Florida researchers studied two groups of infants born with cocaine in their systems. One group was placed in foster care, the other with birth mothers able to care for them. After six months, the babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant development: rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Consistently, the children placed with their birth mothers did better. For the foster children, being taken from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine.
Still another study looked at foster care “alumni.” Among the conclusions:
· Alumni of foster care suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at a rate more than double the rate for Gulf War Veterans.
· At least one-third said they were abused by a foster parent or another adult in a foster home. (The study didn’t even ask about one of the most common sources of abuse in foster care, foster children abusing each other, so the real figure almost certainly is higher).
· Only 20 percent of the alumni could be said to be doing well. (For more on this study, see NCCPR’s analysis, 80 Percent Failure, available at www.nccpr.org.)
It is extremely difficult to take a swing at “bad mothers” without the blow landing on their children. If we really believe all the rhetoric about putting the needs of children first, then we need to put those needs ahead of everything – including how we may feel about their parents. That doesn’t mean we can simply leave children with addicts. It does mean that drug treatment for the parent is almost always a better first choice than foster care for the child -- because it is urgent to save children from people in the grip of another addiction: an addiction to foster care so powerful that they would throw children far too easily into a system that churns out walking wounded four times out of five.

Statistics abuse

Estimates of the number of cases in which drugs in general or any drug in particular are “involved” in child welfare cases are just guesses – a caseworker checks a box on a form because she thinks maybe there are drugs involved in some way; a supervisor guesses how often that box has been checked on the form, the p.r. person for the child welfare agency guesses how often supervisors have told him they’re seeing the box checked on the form. And everyone has an incentive to guess high – since it’s considered an automatic justification for tearing a child from everyone loving and familiar.
It’s no wonder that estimates for the proportion of cases involving any drug, range from 20 percent to 90 percent.
The term “involved” contributes to the hype.
Consider a case profiled in a thoughtful, careful way by the Portland Oregonian. The mother used meth, but was in outpatient treatment and doing well. The father was not accused of drug use at all. The child was in foster care because there was no inpatient drug treatment facility in the local community for the mother, and because of child welfare systems’ pervasive bias against fathers.
Yet, for statistical purposes, this is a “meth case.” And when child welfare agencies claim that a huge percentage of their cases “involve” meth use, that includes cases like this one.
The problem is compounded when organizations lobbying for more funding get into the mix. Many news accounts still accept at face value a stacked-deck survey from the National Association of Counties. Among the claims repeated over and over again: 71 percent of the counties surveyed in California reported an increase in foster care because of meth. But only reporters who looked at the fine print would discover that only seven of California’s 58 counties were surveyed.

But what about the labs?

Unlike crack cocaine, methamphetamine can be manufactured in home labs – and almost every news account emphasizes the labs and children taken from those labs. But such cases represent only a tiny fraction of “meth cases.”
Between 2000 and 2003, child protective services agencies removed children from their parents 1,188,000 times. During that same time period, 10,580 children were found to be “affected” by methamphetamine manufacture, with 4,662 living in labs and 2,881 of them placed in foster care. (Many of the others probably were placed informally with relatives).
In other words, of all the entries into foster care from 2000 to 2003, at least 99.1 percent of them had nothing to do with meth labs.
Even in Oregon, the substance abuse program manager for the state child welfare agency says that “…the number of times that [child protective] workers confronted actual manufacturing was rare in their practice compared to the number of families affected by methamphetamine abuse and dependence.”
Some states respond better than others

Oregon is one state that has been hard hit by meth. But, unfortunately, like other states, such as Iowa and Colorado, Oregon also is a state addicted to excuses.
· Oregon took away children, proportionately, at one of the highest rates in the country as far back as 1985. Why were so many children being taken then, long before any “meth epidemic”?
· Oregon, Iowa, and Colorado all take away children at a rate significantly higher than California – long another state known for having a serious meth problem.
· Alabama has a serious meth problem – and it’s had an impact on the foster care population, with increases in removals in recent years. But before meth hit, Alabama was hit by a class-action lawsuit requiring the state to thoroughly reform its system to emphasize family preservation. As a result, Alabama gained years of experience in safely keeping children out of foster care, making it better able to handle the influx of meth cases. So today, despite meth, Alabama still takes away children at one of the lowest rates in the nation. At the same time, re-abuse of children left in their own homes has been cut by 60 percent – to less than half the national average – and, an independent court monitor has found that, as a result of the reforms, child safety has improved.
· Illinois also has a meth problem. Yet Illinois removes children at a rate even lower than Alabama, and, again, independent court-appointed monitors say as foster care has been reduced, child safety has improved.
And as noted above, by emphasizing treatment, Sacramento County, California has been able to cope with a serious meth problem while reducing entries into foster care.
A good child welfare system does such a good job of keeping other children safely in their own homes, that when a new drug becomes the scourge of the state, the system can handle it.

A political agenda

Hysteria over drugs has always been fueled by those with a vested interest in taking away children, and the current wave of meth stories is no exception.
In part, there is a political motivation behind the false claims about meth. The federal government wants to allow states to use billions of dollars now reserved for foster care for various prevention programs, including drug treatment. But the child welfare establishment wants to hoard the money for foster care.
Not only can this money be used only for foster care, the funding is fueled by child removal. For every eligible child they put into foster care, states get from 50 to 83 cents back on the dollar for foster care costs.
The child welfare establishment wants us to believe that methamphetamine is virtually untreatable because they want us to believe the only option for the children is foster care. They want us to believe the only option is foster care in order to justify their demand that those billions of dollars be reserved for foster care, and nothing else.
Indeed, the campaign against making foster care funding flexible has been led by the Child Welfare League of America, the trade association for public and private agencies. Most private agencies are paid for each day they hold a child in foster care. Anything that threatens to close the “open spigot” of federal foster care aid threatens the ability of states to keep doling out per diem payments to private agencies for endless foster care. That threatens the private agencies’ existence.
And that’s why the biggest addiction problem in child welfare is neither meth nor crack nor any other drug. The biggest addiction problem in child welfare is great big, prestigious, mainstream private child welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to their per diem payments for holding children in foster care.
And they’re putting their addiction ahead of the children. Updated, June 10, 2006


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

lostintranslation wrote:
On Jun 16, 1:04 am, "0:-]" wrote:

LIT,

Do you perverts have interchangeable 'brains' -- you all have belief
systems like a confused 'tween' - you all believe the same things -- you
all post the same things - you all defend the same scum.

Hmmm, what's up with that, Don?

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On Jun 17, 6:45 am, Moderator wrote:
lostintranslation wrote:
On Jun 16, 1:04 am, "0:-]" wrote:

LIT,

Do you perverts have interchangeable 'brains' -- you all have belief
systems like a confused 'tween' - you all believe the same things -- you
all post the same things - you all defend the same scum.

Hmmm, what's up with that, Don?

--
Posted via a free Usenet account fromhttp://www.teranews.com


Me, a pervert? Hardly, my dear, hardly.
I'm sorry but the only things I truely believe in are things I can see
with my own two eyes. I don't believe anything in the press because
it's all sensationalized. I don't believe in anything I can't see or
things that can't be proven. It's called being a realist. Ever heard
of it? You really should try it. I know it's much easier to walk
around society with rose-colored glasses. I did it at a time
myself.

I'm not defending anyone or anything. I'm sorry if I see it as
dangerous to have children living in meth houses/labs. Have you seen
what happens when a meth lab explodes? Have you seen the
ramifications of people going into meth houses/dealers homes where
deals go bad and the house gets shot up? You know who ends up dead or
injured the most? The kids. Tell me, 'moderator', would you want
YOUR child in a meth house? Would you be willing to sit by idly if
you knew of children living in a meth lab? The people that do sit by
and don't do anything to protect those children are the perverts of
the world, not those that actually care. Would I call cps just
because I saw a dirty kid? No. I see dirty kids all the time when
I'm outside playing with my kids. Kids get dirty. Would I call cps
if I saw a child that is malnourished and walking the streets with
their drug addicted parent(s), neglected and haunted looking? You
bet. Even though I want to see CPS reformed, they do serve a purpose
in situations where kids are truely being abused and neglected. I do
feel for addicts, I really do. I have seen addiction take over people
I know. I have seen the struggles they go through. But, I also saw
what their innocent children were going through. Neglect. Abuse.
Kids having to grow up too fast to care for their younger siblings or
other addicts abused and/or neglected kids. It's sad. Very sad. I
bet you wouldn't have the balls to volunteer where I work. I can
almost guarantee it. Reality would hit you in the face too hard for
you to deal with. You haven't witnessed true heart break until you
work or volunteer in a place like I do. Trust me.

On Jun 17, 7:48 am, wrote:
On Jun 17, 6:45 am, Moderator wrote:

lostintranslation wrote:
On Jun 16, 1:04 am, "0:-]" wrote:

LIT,

Do you perverts have interchangeable 'brains' -- you all have belief
systems like a confused 'tween' - you all believe the same things -- you
all post the same things - you all defend the same scum.

Hmmm, what's up with that, Don?

--
Posted via a free Usenet account fromhttp://www.teranews.com

Me, a pervert? Hardly, my dear, hardly.
I'm sorry but the only things I truely believe in are things I can see
with my own two eyes. I don't believe anything in the press because
it's all sensationalized. I don't believe in anything I can't see or
things that can't be proven. It's called being a realist. Ever heard
of it? You really should try it. I know it's much easier to walk
around society with rose-colored glasses. I did it at a time
myself.

I'm not defending anyone or anything. I'm sorry if I see it as
dangerous to have children living in meth houses/labs. Have you seen
what happens when a meth lab explodes? Have you seen the
ramifications of people going into meth houses/dealers homes where
deals go bad and the house gets shot up? You know who ends up dead or
injured the most? The kids. Tell me, 'moderator', would you want
YOUR child in a meth house? Would you be willing to sit by idly if
you knew of children living in a meth lab? The people that do sit by
and don't do anything to protect those children are the perverts of
the world, not those that actually care. Would I call cps just
because I saw a dirty kid? No. I see dirty kids all the time when
I'm outside playing with my kids. Kids get dirty. Would I call cps
if I saw a child that is malnourished and walking the streets with
their drug addicted parent(s), neglected and haunted looking? You
bet. Even though I want to see CPS reformed, they do serve a purpose
in situations where kids are truely being abused and neglected. I do
feel for addicts, I really do. I have seen addiction take over people
I know. I have seen the struggles they go through. But, I also saw
what their innocent children were going through. Neglect. Abuse.
Kids having to grow up too fast to care for their younger siblings or
other addicts abused and/or neglected kids. It's sad. Very sad. I
bet you wouldn't have the balls to volunteer where I work. I can
almost guarantee it. Reality would hit you in the face too hard for
you to deal with. You haven't witnessed true heart break until you
work or volunteer in a place like I do. Trust me.


And so no one accuses me of trying to cover something up, that was me
that just posted. I didn't sign out from my cross stitch group. Just
an oversight of mine; no biggy.

Thanks

wrote:
On Jun 17, 6:45 am, Moderator wrote:
lostintranslation wrote:
On Jun 16, 1:04 am, "0:-]" wrote:
LIT,

Do you perverts have interchangeable 'brains' -- you all have belief
systems like a confused 'tween' - you all believe the same things -- you
all post the same things - you all defend the same scum.

Hmmm, what's up with that, Don?

--
Posted via a free Usenet account fromhttp://www.teranews.com


Me, a pervert? Hardly, my dear, hardly.
I'm sorry but the only things I truely believe in are things I can see
with my own two eyes. I don't believe anything in the press because
it's all sensationalized. I don't believe in anything I can't see or
things that can't be proven. It's called being a realist. Ever heard
of it?

Yup - all your perv pals claim to be 'realists' also. lol.


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com