Children Are Everyone's Business

We are not allowed to vote, get a tattoo or go to jail until we are 18 but the powers that be, made the drinking age 21 for a reason.
The brain is still forming at 18, some say it does until the age of 25 (and for some even later) and there have been many stories of kids doing stupid things in the news as of late: It’s what they do.
Sadly some don’t survive their own stupidity, sometimes they take others with them.
People of my generation are ready to condemn and denigrate these kids at the drop of a headline, without realizing that the biggest thing we had to deal with was commercial pot and Annie Green Springs wine, and if we were real lucky and Pat Slack didn’t catch us and kick the crap out of us on Ebey Island: Shrooms. Then acid made it’s appearance but it was too much for most of us.
The rotgut wine had maybe a 3% alcohol content and I know many a kid who spent the night in the woods over by The Chicken in Lake Stevens throwing up all night.
Commercial pot probably was weaker then smoking oregano
Most of us just watched one dumb*ss take acid and decided real quick we weren’t going near it, but mushrooms were another story and if you were lucky you also knew that one guy who could make wine out of the mushrooms, usually a hippie from Arlington.
Then there was the honorable mention of quaaludes, oh boy, if you could get one of those you were the star of the party. Bill Cosby ruined them by making them the second “Date Rape Drug” next to alcohol though and they stopped making them.
MDA made the club scene (methylenedioxiamphetamine) and cocaine in the later years
The laundry list of stupid things I did before 21 is far too long to even fit in a book, I was such a prolific idiot I could do 20 to 30 stupid things a day, somehow I survived it, many of my friends did not but there are still about 120 of us who did.
Those are the people I discuss these headlines with because they know… These kids today are dealing with drugs that are far more sinister then anything we ever had to.
Heroin, Crack, Ecstasy, Oxycontin, and Meth are no joke. Even the alcohol is more lethal then it ever was. All these drugs competing for your business… Add those to a brain that is still forming and you can only expect the worst possible outcome.
The scariest part of this is that we have no idea of how this will effect them genetically or the children they will have. Many won’t even survive the addiction themselves in spite of every attempt humanly possible to save them.
The crappiest part is there are a few drugs out there that can help but the pharmaceutical companies make far more off of pedaling methadone then Suboxone or Lofexidine so most of the people who could use it will never benefit from it.
90% of the children and adults who end up addicts don’t end up there “on accident”, I don’t know if they intend to get hooked on it but I know that they are in such an incredible amount of pain that they would do anything to just not feel it, or to feel anything else.
If we take a look at Jaylen Fryberg, it is obvious he grew up in a violent home and whether anyone wants to acknowledge it or not he was still bullied because of his heritage, prejudice is still very much alive and well in Snohomish County, more so then any western Washington County. Sadly 4 others who were innocent got caught in the crossfire of his rage and pain, Shaylee Chuckulnaskit, Zoe Galasso, Andrew Fryberg, Gia Soriano
Another one of 4 precious children we just lost Lynnishia Larson she was featured here as missing earlier in the year, with a foster mother actively searching for her and then our worst fears were confirmed, her and another girl had been abducted into sexual slavery by some scumbag pimps in Tacoma, sadly just a few months later she lost her life in a car wreck on the Tulalip reservation. Her parents? Who knows, but she didn’t end up in foster care because things at home were going great.
Now we have Leah Lund who may have had a child at 16 yrs of age but the baby’s whereabouts are still unknown. My fear is that the child died from complications of being born addicted, that is most people’s fear. We know that she was being questioned and her family was not allowed to be present or have any communications with her when she was picked up. We also know from her sister’s plea on facebook that her childhood left much to be desired but that she still had people who loved her dearly.
There was a young girl who was just on her way to get her life in order killed in an accident on I-5 just recently Erin Narte, now she is gone and her little girl will never get to see her succeed.
The meth and heroin epidemic we have going on here in Snohomish County is not just statistics, they are human beings most not old enough to drink, most from horrific backgrounds.
Makes you wonder how many  teachers, neighbors, or family members were aware of the abuse that they endured and said, or did nothing.
Child “Protective” Services is not much better, in some cases they place children in far worse homes then they came from, but then they cover it up until a child ends up dead.
Now that the city of Everett has declared war on homeless people, and is making even the act of standing on the sidewalk a crime, it is only going to get worse. The city is worried because their shiny little kid jail sits mostly empty, they need to find a way to fill it up. So the less money they spend on treatment the more they can guarantee people like Ron Gipson a job where he is free to sexually and emotionally torture women at work.
These children, the shells, the ghosts of these children are all of our responsibility. We need to demand that the County and cities quit putting so much money into failed new courthouses, or stupid statues for pigeons to crap on and use that money for early childhood education, counseling and for drug treatment.
If you think those kids aren’t your problem, wait til one of them kills one of your family members, or robs your house.
Worse yet wait til your kid becomes one of them and it can happen, no matter how well you raise them or how involved you are with them, they can make that one wrong friend and it is out of your control.
If you are an abusive or absent parent you can pretty much guarantee this is the road your children will take if you don’t do something to change yourself and to change their lives.
Make govt accountable in how they spend your hard earned tax dollars. Vote smarter, get rid of the trash running this county and in your own towns, instead of letting them give their buddies cushy overpaid jobs, and venturing out into failing projects wasting millions of dollars in the process that could go to treatment and housing