A new cookbook, which Spittin’ Grits introduced last fall and which can foster discussions about methamphetamines and other drugs while around the dinner table, is now available to purchase. Back Around the Table: Celebrating Food, Family and Recovery is for good eating and for good talk.
Its goal is to support bringing families back together around the table and to encourage communication, awareness, and prevention of drug abuse.
Part of the proceeds of the sale of Back Around the Table will support Alabama’s ZEROMETH ad campaign.
Back Around the Table’s availability it also timely.
“Smurfing”
This word that used to denote silly cartoon characters is the current nickname of the activity of buyers’ going around to stores to get as many cold tablets as possible to use in cooking meth, a dangerous and toxic activity. Yesterday the AP Wire service released a story, “Meth flourishing despite tracking laws, say feds” by Jim Salter, which ran in many U.S. newspapers and which you can read here.
According to the AP story, meth-related activity in general is on the rise again, including “smurfing”: “up 34 percent in 2009.” These numbers comprise arrests, seizures of the drug, and the discovery of abandoned production sites, and three states lead the way: Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. Alabama is also high on the list. According to the DEA, meth is the one of biggest threats in our state.
The DEA’s U.S. map of meth lab incidents, shown below, rates the states’ meth activity.
An Anti-Drug Campaign
Anti-drug campaigns have come and gone. Mostly gone. Drugs have kept on coming and haven’t gone. The ZEROMETH campaign is different: it is specific to methamphetamines; it is targeted at young people instead of parents (Parents – The Anti-Drug) or no one in particular (Just Say No) or at users in general, but with no force behind it (This is your brain on drugs); it is based on what is known from users and from science; and it is tough.
One Alabama District Attorney who was involved with the campaign from the ground up, Jimmie Harp, Jr., Etowah County, describes the ZEROMETH campaign this way:
ZEROMETH is a hard hitting and gritty campaign. . . .The television ads, print ads, and other supporting media are designed to create a dialog between our youth and their parents, teachers, coaches about the life-threatening and dangerous consequences of trying meth even one time.
Order Back Around the Table here:
http://www.backaroundthetable.com/Orderforum.html
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