From the Harford County Office of Drug Control Policy:
Bel Air, MD) – The Harford County Office of Drug Control Policy in partnership with the Harford County Narcotics Task Force; The Homecoming Project, a certified inpatient treatment facility located in Bel Air; and Addictions Connection Resources (ACR), a 501(c) nonprofit organization that provides resources for all those suffering from the disease of addiction and to connect families to treatment resources, supplied funding to the Harford County Public School system. The goal is to take to every seventh grader in the school district to the Maryland Science Center to view the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) exhibit Target America.
Target America: Opening Eyes to the Damage Drugs Cause is a 10,000 square-foot exhibit produced by the Drug Enforcement Administration Museum that began a national tour in 2002. The exhibit presents both a global and historical overview of the many costs and consequences of drugs in society. A new portion of Target America focuses on Maryland and Baltimore. It explores the evolution of heroin abuse and enforcement in the area, the addiction science research taking place at Maryland universities, and drug abuse prevention groups working to educate students across the state.
Most Americans are unaware of the science behind the damaging effects of drugs on the mind and body or the other tremendous costs associated with the production, sale and use of drugs. The costs to society–estimated at more than $180 billion a year by a drug rehab Tampa–are born by all of us in some way. This exhibit is designed to open eyes to the science behind drug addiction and the countless costs of drugs–to individuals, American society, and the world–and to provide food for thought on how each and every one of us can make a difference.
Ginny Popiolek, supervisor of health and physical education for the Harford County Public Schools took a group of middle school health teachers to the grand opening to review the display at the Maryland Science center. Ms. Popiolek stated, “The DEA Museum display at the Maryland Science Center is a once in a life time educational tool that is available to our students. It’s a great opportunity for our teachers to have this enhanced information available to our students and to have instructions to use in the classrooms.”
Joseph Ryan, manager of the Harford County Office of Drug Control Policy was on the steering committee to bring the Target America Display to the Baltimore area. DEA reached out to Mr. Ryan to help with the vision to bring this asset to the community to help students understand the consequences related to abusing drugs and alcohol. Tucker McNulty from the Harford County Office of Economic Development and Beth Jones, supervisor of addictions at the Harford County Health Department were also on the steering committee.
The display will be at the Maryland Science Center until September 1, 2014. For more information about Target America lot onto the Maryland Science Center at www.mdsci.org.
The Harford County Office of Drug Control Policy is a division within the Department of Community Services. The Harford County Department of Community Services was established in 1979 via Executive Order and works daily to meet the needs of seniors, youth, people with disabilities and those struggling to overcome addiction. The Department works with federal, state, local and private agencies to ensure our county continues to evolve and remains dedicated to providing the best possible services for citizens and the community.
This is a form of child abuse. The entire exhibit is nothing but pro-DEA propaganda. It was originally put together in an effort to position the DEA to lobby for war on terror funding. The exhibit also politically exploits the real problems of drug addiction in order to promote their destructive drug war approach.
There are much better approaches out there for young people. Consider bringing in a speaker from LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition). That’ll provide them with some real facts and useful education.
Prohibition has finally run its course; the lives and livelihoods of hundred’s of millions of people (users and non-users) worldwide have been destroyed or severely disrupted; many countries that were once shining beacons of liberty and prosperity have become toxic, repressive, smoldering heaps of hypocrisy and a gross affront to fundamental human decency. It is now the duty of every last one of us to insure that the people who are responsible for this shameful situation are not simply left in peace to enjoy the wealth and status that their despicable actions have, until now, afforded them. Former and present Prohibitionists should not be allowed to remain untainted or untouched by the unconscionable acts that they have viciously committed on their fellow human beings. They have provided us with neither safe communities nor safe streets. We will provide them with neither a safe haven to enjoy their ill-gotten gains nor the liberty to repeat such a similar atrocity.
http://www.deatargetsamerica.com/
Reality.
Thank goodness for Jesse Bane. He is working hard in our communities and schools to get rid of the drugs. What would Harford County do without Jesse?
“What would Harford County do without Jesse?”
Come November we are going to find out the answer to that question.
Before the passing of the 1914 Harrison Act, every man woman and child could purchase medicinal cannabis, cocaine, heroin – any drug, if they had the funds. No gangs or cartels existed for these non-existent black markets. But that act decided the medical establishment had to relinquish jurisdiction over drug control to law enforcement. Per capita, drug addiction consumes virtually the same (-1.5 percent) of all users as it did over 100 years ago. The most obvious consequence to that paradigm shift of drug control? Close to two trillion dollars have been spent in the U.S. to deliver us a very robust, some would say malignant multi-tiered form of law enforcement, whose efforts paint them as the prerequisite sycophants that today’s murderous cartels owe their existence to.
A display of DEA “trophies” that actually represent DEA tokens of failure,,,because those 7th graders can still buy drugs for the road trip.
Thanks to amazing breakthroughs in medicine, we have many new drugs available each year to treat illness and disease. Without medications, the quality of life that many of us have come to enjoy would not be possible. We are able to control numerous conditions that would have claimed the lives of millions of people without new drugs and other treatment. All drugs have adverse effects but we take them when needed based on a risks to benefits ratio.
I think we need to be careful with such displays that over simplify and are fraught with generalizations. In the wrong hands, drugs taken by people who do not need them and for whom they are not prescribed is the problem that we should be addressing. We need to be focusing on behavior and the etiology of drug abuse, not the drugs.