Parents call for rehab law change
THE father of the 17year-old boy who became the face of the Gold Coast’s ice epidemic has called on the government to make rehabilitation stints mandatory for drugaddicted kids.
Kalib Reynolds’ father, Grant, wants laws changed to allow parents of methamphetaminedependant children to force them to engage with rehabilitation and mental health agencies.
“The question for our politicians is very simple,” Mr Reynolds said. “Why won’t you make and pass the laws we want and need for our kids’ safety?”
Kalib is accused of snatching a bag from a 79-year-old woman as she returned to her car at the Carrara Markets last Sunday.
This week a heartbroken Mr Reynolds walked out of court at his wit’s end, refusing to take his iceaddicted son home.
He said his family had struggled with his son’s addiction “24 hours a day, seven days a week for four and a half years”.
Yesterday, the tearful father sat in the courtroom as his son’s matter was mentioned again.
Kalib did not apply for bail and will spend several weeks in custody while coming down off the drug.
Mr Reynolds yesterday offered an apology to the victim of his son’s alleged crime.
“Sorry does not seem enough but unfortunately that’s all I can offer at the moment,” he said. IT’S like talking to a woman twice her age.
But this is not a woman, it’s a school-aged girl – intelligent, articulate and high on meth.
“Methed up,” she calls with a wry smile.
She’s too afraid to have her name or even her age published – nervous speaking pub- it, licly at all – but she hopes her story will prompt authorities to provide a designated rehabilitation facility for children.
Her first hit of meth was shortly after her 12th birthday – in a few short years it had developed into an alarming 7g a day habit, funded by often-violent crime.
By the time this teenager sat in court, about to be sentenced to her second stint of juvenile detention, she’d lost more than 20kg.
Her throat ravaged by the chemical smoke and her appetite non-existent, she would not have survived another two days if she hadn’t been locked up, a doctor said.
It was the same day her mother heard for the first time about her daughter’s well-hidden habit.
“I looked at my mum, she had two tears running down and she couldn’t hold her face properly.
“My mum’s tried her best for us but things have happened. I had a five-day comedown. I couldn't understand what people were saying to me for three days. I couldn’t understand English. I should have been hospitalised.”
This girl does not want that life for others and she’s frustrated that nothing effective has been done to prevent it.
The education sucks, the treatment is all wrong and the stigma leaves addicted kids feeling like there’s no one to talk to apart from each other.
“We got Happy Healthy Harold in Year 4, but that’s it. I’d been told ‘Don’t do ice’, but I was too young and I was already on it.
“There’s just not enough education, kids get told ‘Don’t touch it, don’t touch it’, but you don’t see the emotional side, you don’t see your mother or how she feels.”
The incoherent speech and scabby faces of recent anti-ice campaigns do not convey the