Ironwood students learn dangers of meth

IRONWOOD - Students in Ted Sim's history and social studies classes listened to presentations by fellow students on the harmful effects of methamphetamines throughout the day on Thursday at Luther L. Wright School in Ironwood.

Juniors Madison Ofstad and Scoti Tanula, along with school resource officer Adam Clemens, of the Ironwood Public Safety Department, discussed different aspects of meth in the community and the impact it has on the body.

According to Ofstad, she and Tanula decided to do the presentation as part of their CNA class, and will be taking the presentation to a competition at a later time.

"This gives us some practice to get everything together," Ofstad said.

Clemens said the girls approached him about the presentation, something he thought was "really cool.

"They developed their own program, which I reviewed," Clemens said. "They did their own research and really wanted to show the students the evils of meth and hope the program is beneficial for the students."

While doing the project, Ofstad said she was surprised by how quickly people become addicted to meth after just trying it once.

"I was aware of the effects of meth, but I was kind of surprised by the addictive nature," she said.

During six presentations throughout the day, Tanula and Ofstad described the ingredients in meth, how to take it, the short- and long-term effects, what to look for if suspicious that someone is making meth and treatments for addiction.

According to Clemens, 47 meth labs were found in the Upper Peninsula between January and October 2013. Gogebic County had 25 meth-lab related cases during that same time-frame. To help combat meth labs in the community, the county has upped the punishment for first-time offenders.

On average, first-time offenders are sentenced to four to eight years in prison and can go as high as 20 years.

After the presentation, Clemens also showed students examples of different drugs besides meth, including cocaine, marijuana and synthetic drugs.

He showed them different markings on drug paraphernalia and packaging, all marketed towards children.

"They are coming after you guys," he said to the students.

Students asked a variety of questions about drug use and participated in a before and after presentation quiz to see how much information they retained.

"The girls did a great job on this project," Clemens said. "Doing this project was really commendable because they wanted to make an impact with the students. Hopefully it will be beneficial."

Tanula and Ofstad will continue the presentations today in other classes at LLW.