Missions Monday

Missions Monday

Posted by Ashley Hoover

It is estimated that of the 40 million street children of Latin America, 70 percent are addicted to glue. Twenty eight million customers, who consume about 28 million gallons of glue a month. That's a big market. And the biggest producers are US multinationals...

In Latin America and other parts of the developing world, the drug of choice among street children is solvent-based shoe glues. These products, produced most commonly in bases of toluene and cyclohexane offer them an escape from reality and take away the child's cold, despair and hunger -- in exchange for a host of physical and psychological problems, including hallucinations, pulmonary oedema, kidney failure, liver problems and irreversible brain damage. Sudden death is also possible. Furthermore, glue keeps kids stuck in the street.

Glue sniffing is a pragmatic response to an unliveable situation. Street children sniff glue because it "takes away" the children's hunger, cold, and despair. It also gives them the "courage" to steal...

Once addicted, their personalities change. They become more aggressive. Glue destroys any future these kids might have once envisioned for themselves. They become enslaved to the vapours. Meaningful psychosocial rehabilitation of a glue-addicted child is near impossible.

They buy it from cobblers and hardware stores who repackage the narcotic products in baby food jars and plastic bags. For these local outlets, the children's addiction ensures a steady stream of income. For those who make the glue, it is big business. We must work, now, to build a consensus that children are more important than profits -- and advocate for changes in corporate marketing policies which bring harm to those who are our most precious resource now and for our future.

Source: www.homelesschild.org

"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." -James 1:27