California PD Educates Kids About Meth

From The Reporter:

After watching thousands of his clients’ lives ripped apart by methamphetamine abuse, Solano County Public Defender Jeffrey E. Thoma last year decided to take personal action to help cut down on his future caseload of meth victims.

In November, Thoma launched an ambitious project whereby he would visit classrooms in each of the county’s 14 middle schools to talk to teens about the dangers of methamphetamine use and share his own insights into the damage the illicit stimulant has caused.

“Most of the people who have gotten hung up on methamphetamine have destroyed their lives,” said Thoma, who became the county’s Public Defender in 2004 after holding a similar post in Mendocino County for more than seven years. “I’ve had a lot of clients that had a methamphetamine problem. It’s just evil.”

Hoping to make a difference one classroom at a time, Thoma selected middle schools (usually seventh- to ninth-grade) for his personal

intervention program. He hopes to have visited classrooms from Dixon to Vallejo by the end of the school year.