Children continue to be the real victims of drugs

We recently served another search warrant at a home looking for drugs, and like many other times, we found there were children living in the home. This was one of the worst homes I had been inside because of the condition in which the occupants were living. When someone brings drugs into a home, they slowly become indifferent to their lifestyle, and the one that suffers the most is the child.

In this particular home there were dugs, meth pipes, marijuana pipes, and bongs all over the house. We found children's toys in the same places as the drugs and even found candy in a children's container next to a meth pipe. There was so much trash and other items in the living room that you could not sit on the furniture, and one room was even packed so full of clothes that you could not walk into the room.

The kitchen was covered in dirty dishes with mold growing in them, and there were so many dead and live roaches on the floor, you could not walk around in the kitchen without hearing crunching sounds. The kids were playing on a bedroom floor when we found them and there in were dirty clothes, trash, and a broken glass meth pipe within feet of where we found them.

They say a parent can provide a child with the best education possible, but no matter how much training and teaching you give, they will do what they see, not what they are taught. We attempt to educate children about the dangers of drugs in our schools and throughout other community activities, but we can never replace the influence a parent has on their child. If you say "drugs are bad" and then smoke a meth pipe in front of a kid, they will grow up thinking it must be OK because dad did it. If you are too high to wash your dishes and clean your house, your kids will grow up thinking that is a "normal" way of living.

We have a lot of people in our community who have drug addiction problems and they need our help. But I am growing more and more concerned that while we are trying to save the parent, we are losing the child. Children are very resilient and can rebound from just about anything, but they have to have a positive influence in their life.

Being away from your child is very hard, but if you cannot give up drugs you will not be a positive influence and you will do more harm to a child than good. We arrested a mother once and had to drag her away while she was screaming at her kids, "Do you see what the cops are doing to mommy?" The kids were crying and no matter how hard we tried to show the kids we were not the bad guys, it was easy to see there was already fear and hatred for us in their eyes. They were not growing up thinking the drugs in their mom's life were bad, they were being taught the cops were.

If you know of someone who is ruining their life with drugs, you are not protecting them by not reporting them, you are hurting their children. Do the right thing and help us protect the real victims of drugs.