Program takes viewers on a tour of the disastrous consequences of methamphetamine abuse. Going beyond the health risks of this increasingly popular drug, recovering meth addicts describe damage to family relationships, burns and disfigurement from lab explosions, and the problems they face finding work or completing school. Beginning with a police raid on a lab, this documentary-style video/DVD interviews law enforcement authorities, hospital ER doctors, social workers, and recovered addicts and their families, to show the horrors of meth abuse. Viewers learn how meth destroys the brain and body of users, how meth lab toxins poison children living in and near the meth labs, how police, emergency services, and social services are overwhelmed by the epidemic. The wide path of destruction cut by meth abuse is vividly portrayed…the personal costs to meth addicts and to society…of unfulfilled dreams, destroyed lives, broken families and devastated communities.
Includes:
video, plus teacher’s resource book, student handouts and pre/post tests in digital format
Awards
Telly Awards: Bronze
CINE Golden Eagle Award
Freddie Awards: Finalist
Columbus International Film & Video Festival: Bronze Award
Reviews
Highly Recommended Starting with live footage of police raiding a methamphetamine (meth) laboratory in a Salt Lake City home, this film grabs the viewer’s attention and keeps it. The knowledge and experience imparted by several rehabilitated drug addicts adds tremendous power to this docu-drama. The viewer is persuaded through their real life stories that even just trying meth once, is one time too many.
This highly addictive drug wreaks havoc in the life of the user. Their lives as they knew them become an all-encompassing passion for the next meth high. The film discusses the ramifications of both personal and physical deterioration.
The film relates one tragic story of a young mother who overdoses; and, one addict in recovery who expects to become a drug counselor in the future, among others.
An empathetic addiction counselor and a doctor are interviewed and discuss the long term physical and mental health damages of meth usage. Graphics and statistics emphasize the meth epidemic in America. It knows no social, political, financial or geographic boundaries. It is everywhere, and our young adolescents need to have the knowledge and information to resist peer pressure to try it.
HRM delivers the video with a current curriculum to lead discussions and engage students in the classroom, including an extensive bibliography with resources that are packaged in a 3-ring binder. The Teacher’s Resource Book is well done. The production of the video is professional and of high quality. But, it should be noted that some of the video clips are used in other HRM videos on substance abuse.
This particular video is specific enough to stand on its own merit as it relates to one powerful drug, methamphetamine. It can also be paired with other HRM drug education videos, for use in the classroom or other educational setting.
This resource is highly recommended for school media centers.
- Kristin M. Jacobi, J. Eugene Smith Library, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT
Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO)