Protecting our children, victims of drugs

Our children are our future. They will be the ones fighting our wars, running our factories, paving new roads, building new homes, and they are the ones that will be working to make a better place to live. Our children are our future, but we are the ones that shape the minds and pave the way for our children to become that future. There is nothing more important than protecting our children and as we see time and time again, children are often victims of adults making bad decisions and breaking the law.

A child starts to learn even from the womb by absorbing sounds and motions. At birth, a baby's brain contains 100 billion neurons, roughly as many nerve cells as there are stars in the Milky Way, and that is almost all the neurons the brain will ever have. The brain starts forming about three weeks after conception. Before birth, the brain produces trillions more neurons and "synapses" (connections between the brain cells) than it needs. During the first years of life, the brain undergoes a series of extraordinary changes. A child will learn more in the first 4-6 years of their life than they will in the rest of their life. Children will learn from everything around them, including what they see, hear and smell. They learn from the people around them, and it is the people in their lives that will help mold and shape that child. When care givers of children make the decision to break the law and put their children in harm's way, they are not only placing the child in danger, they are molding and shaping that child for a life that will only bring that child more harm. Studies have shown that children of drug users are at a higher risk of abuse and neglect, physical and mental problems, removal from homes, and divorce and separation when they are older. It is a miracle that some children make it through childhoods like this, and many do not.

When we arrest people for drug use, manufacturing, and distribution, we find that these same people often steal and commit crimes to support their habits. This leaves a long line of victims behind them, but it is the children of those we arrest who suffer the most. The Sheriff's Office will pursue and seek out those who make these choices because our job is to protect the innocent. The focus should not be on those with drug problems, it should be on those with problems they are passing along to their children. We live in a country where opportunity and success should be what children learn, a place where children can be proud of whom they are, and where they came from. It is up to our community to hold those who commit these crimes and leave these children in the path of their destruction accountable for what they do. The Vernon County Sheriff's Office will have no sympathy for drug users, sellers, or manufacturers alike. We will relentlessly hunt down those who make others a victim of their choices.