Saturday, May 23, 2009

Keep Meth Out Of Indian Country

The shocking truth is that Indian Country is being TARGETED by drug traffickers!

According to Department of Justice figures, about 70% of the methamphetamine being distributed in our communities today is being smuggled into the country. While the mom & pop cooking operations are still a serious danger to anyone who encounters them, smugglers have found much more efficient distribution methods. They are targeting Indian Country and trying to infiltrate our tribes & tribal governments, move into our Indian Housing projects, marry our tribal members, and corrupt our tribal law enforcement and justice centers.

Meth is a dangerous threat to Indian Country, and in fact all rural & urban areas. We must throw every resource possible at this problem to eliminate the market for meth as well as stop meth from coming into our communities.

One of the suggestions at a recent workshop sponsored by the Department Of Justice was to set up a coalition of regional tribes & agencies to share information between professionals on the forefront of this fight. So many of the grants are specific to a tribe, population group or geographical area, that sharing information can be tough. We want to change that.

Meth may be the biggest threat to Indian Country since smallpox. It's largely responsible for the increase in crime everywhere, and responsible for huge jumps in domestic violence & child abuse figures. This blog will be used to educate the public about the threat of meth, We need to constantly remind our youth to resist the pressure to experiment with this highly addictive drug.

Our business website regularly receives emails requesting contacts for drug & alcohol treatment centers in urban areas. People are out there looking for help anywhere they can find it, so I want to provide a resource where they can find it. I'd want to compile a list of urban Indian Centers and other agencies that offer drug & alcohol treatment services. Please help me collect information on these centers with phone, location, etc.

Our business website gets upwards of 1500 hits a day, so it's the perfect forum to educate the public about the threat of meth, list treatment resources, and give people a place to post their requests for information, Best Practices, or whatever concerns that other people in the field might have already figured out how to handle.

Let me know of other valuable websites that I should put in the "Links" section.

I'm turning this blog into a "Keep Meth Out Of Indian Country" blog, and will also host web pages on our business website to list resources, emails, contacts, etc. The links to the blog and the Community Action pages concerning meth will be placed at the top left hand corner of the home page of http://www.littlecrowtradingpost.com We'll start it out this way and I'll explore new platforms as we go.

Janet Littlecrow
Inter-Tribal Coalition Against Meth
stopndnmeth@gmail.com