My wife and I have two little girls under the age of five. They are bright and happy, and we would stop at nothing to keep them safe. Every night, I tuck those two girls into their beds, and I say a little prayer that God would keep them healthy.
Not every child in BC is so lucky.
In hundreds of other homes across this province, children sleep in beds with hastily-wired electrical cables running past them. Toxic mould grows in the walls. Poisonous drug precursors litter the house. Dirty needles lay in the living room, and meth residue is all over the kitchen.
This is a new social issue in British Columbia, and it should break the heart of any one who cares about children. These are drug-endangered children, and there are hundreds of them living on borrowed time.
As a Langley Township Councillor, the issue of drug-endangered children first came on my radar when I received a memo from our fire chief. Like many other municipalities, Langley has put together a Public Safety Inspection Team, which inspects suspicious electricity users for safety violations. We do it because these homes are far more likely to burn than others, and we need to protect our neighbourhoods. In the memo, our fire chief reported that the team found evidence of children living in 36 of the 158 grow-ops they discovered.
As I tucked my two little girls into bed that night, I thought about those 36 grow-ops that children lived in. I thought of these kids, living in an environment with shoddy electrical work that could cause a fire at any time. I thought about the toxic mould growing inside the walls—often undetected behind the drywall. That’s why we had strengthened our Langley building bylaws to make sure that homes that had been used as grow-ops or meth labs were brought back up to a healthy standard. I thought about the dangers of living in a home that could be the target of an organized crime grow-rip.
I started reading, researching, and asking questions. I found the story of little Deon, Jackson and Megan White, three preschoolers killed in a meth lab explosion in California. I saw pictures of babies—the same age as my little Danica—with burns from meth precursors on their faces. I saw pictures of meth ingredients contaminating the same kitchens that kids eat in. I read about power cables running under cradles to grow-ops. I read about needles and drugs being found next to sleeping infants.
These drug-endangered children are being abused by the carelessness and high-risk lifestyle of their parents and guardians. And they deserve better protection than we are giving them in British Columbia.
I’m not the only one who thinks that. Police officers I speak with feel the same way. So does the BC Association of Social Workers. And criminologist Darryl Plecas. And the Government of Alberta, which has a law protecting drug-endangered children.
While the BC Government has moved to protect children from their parents’ second-hand cigarette smoke in cars, it has ignored the hundreds of children living in grow-ops and meth labs.
In 2006, Alberta passed a Drug-Endangered Children Act, which sent a clear signal to police officers, social workers, and the justice system: children growing up in grow-ops or drug labs are being abused. Their parents are subject to prison terms and fines. The children are seized and put with other family members or in another safe environment.
In BC, our social workers don’t even have a uniform provincial protocol on how to deal with children found in these homes. Each region makes its own policies, despite three years of lobbying by the BC Association of Social Workers for a province-wide directive.
We need to do more for these drug-endangered children. The health studies are staggering. “Children living in those labs might as well be taking the drug directly,” says John Martyny, a medicine professor with the National Jewish Medical and Research Centre in Denver. A US Attorney’s Office study shows that as many as 80 per cent of children rescued from meth labs in the US test positive for toxic levels of the chemicals used in meth production. These chemicals can cause cancer, severe skin conditions, tremors, lead poisoning, kidney, lung and liver diseases, and more.
On the grow-op side, the mould from the growing process can cause chronic respiratory problems, neurological damage, and cancer.
That doesn’t count the psychological harm from living in such an environment, or the elevated risk of fires and explosions.
Every child deserves a safe and happy place to grow up. When will British Columbia step up to the plate for our hundreds of drug-endangered children?
To help bring attention to the plight of these children, I have put together an information package. Click the links below to see more. I'm also working on preparing a resolution to bring forward to Langley Township Council and the Union of BC Municipalities.
Drug Endangered Children Info PacketAlberta's
Drug Endangered Children Law and
Info SheetChilliwack's excellent
crystal meth studyBC Association of Social Workers
press releases and
draft protocolWisconsin's Drug-Endangered Children Program (note: includes photos that will break your heart)
