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Meth Awareness Organization (MAO) annually organizes a concert to bring awareness of the dangers of meth to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and especially to the young people. MAO started out three years ago to bring awareness of the dangers of meth following the death of Chantel Wilson, a 15 year old who took one hit of meth and died within minutes. The first Death to Meth Concert was a combination memorial concert and awareness concert in memory of Chantel Wilson so that there might never be another child who died because they were not aware of the dangers of this drug.

The Meth Awareness Organization recognized that nobody else was doing anything about the meth problem on the reservation, and decided to have a Death to Meth 2 Concert. The youth on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation are in crisis: the school dropout rate is skyrocketing, the alcohol and marijuana use is out of control, the meth use has tripled in the past three years, and the inhalant abuse is destroying healthy minds daily. And there is a frantic need to inform the youth on the reservation about the dangers of any type of drug use.

Young adults are having children before they have a chance to mature, leaving their parenting skills to be developed as they battle addictions and try to raise young children. In turn, their children are learning addictive behaviors that they have learned from addicted young parents and they in turn pass that learned addictive behavior onto their own children. Some of the reservation parents are as young as 14-15 years old., and in one case, there is an 11 year old mother. The reservation is extremely impoverished, with up to an 85% unemployment rate. The most glorious jobs, in the eyes of the desperate, are the local drug dealers who have money to “help” young parents by providing a few dollars for gas money, or groceries, etc. if one is willing to sell their drugs for them. Once addicted, the young parents are turning more and more to methamphetamine and huffing because they are the cheapest drugs available on the reservation.

Many parents have contacted us and asked us to address all drugs being used on the reservation, including cocaine and crack , pharmaceutical drugs, and the huffing --especially Toloul, which is a paint thinner made from toluene. The elders in the community see the abuse of all of the above drugs as detrimental to the health and development of our future generations.

The concert itself gives the young people the opportunity to attend a drug and alcohol free event as well as to “see” and “hear” something that they would usually need to travel off of the reservation in order to experience. The concert strives to give the young people the opportunity to have that experience on the reservation because many young people will never have the chance to experience any concerts. Further, we strive to provide the youth with an opportunity that might change the negative choices available to them by providing the opportunity to make positive choices in order to have healthier families.

The MAO will, provide information booths on drugs, alcohol, teen-pregnancy, positive parenting, and other information provided by interested community members.

We have found that young people communicate through music and that music is one of the most effective ways to deliver a message to them. By making this a community event and taking the “drug use” stigma out of the concert, we will get the message of the dangers of drugs to our reservation.

You can contact us by e-mailing justesw@hotmail.com

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