Drug Use

Melanie Boyd Timeline

Rational

Todays adolescence are more likely to experiment with drugs and alcohol than any other generation. Drugs of any type can be very dangerous and fatal, especially for those who have little knowledge surounding them. PDHPE has adopted a new approach for teaching about drug education called harm minimisation. It is hoped that with the appropriate knowledge students can make safe and informed decisions regarding their own health regarding drug and alcohol use.

Stimulus Material

"Melanie Boyd wanted to call for help at Townsville pharm party"

By Peter Michael

October 10, 2008 08:54am

TEENAGER Melanie Boyd begged her friends to call for help after taking a lethal cocktail of booze and drugs, an inquest was told. But by the time an ambulance was called, three hours after she was found "blue" and "struggling to breathe", the popular Townsville private schoolgirl, 16, was dead. In a tearful apology yesterday, Matthew Aubrey, 20, told an inquest into her June 2006 death that the first-time drug taker wanted to call for help when two fellow drug users at the "pharm party" fell into fits of convulsions. "Mel had a phone, she said if it's happened to them I don't want this to happen to me," Mr Aubrey told the Townsville Coroner's Court. But the six partygoers talked each other out of calling for an ambulance - because they did not want to involve the police. "It was not my party, not my house, not my call," said the youth, who was 18 at the time and the oldest at the party. "Knowing what I know now, I wish I was smarter." Parents Laurie and Julie Boyd angrily refused to accept his emotional plea for forgiveness as well as that of the teenage girl who supplied the drugs and hosted the beachfront house party. "We thought we were invincible," said the girl, whose identity has been suppressed by the court. She said she had not touched drugs since that fateful party. "It scared me straight. "I'm sorry it took something this catastrophic to make me realise how precious life is." "I think we thought we were better and it would not happen to us." Coroner Brian Smith presiding over the inquest heard "pharm parties", mixing alcohol, marijuana and prescription pills, had become popular among the nation's youth. In a twist, it emerged that the girls who snorted lines of a white powder, popped up to eight anti-depressants and pain killers, and slammed shots of rum had not taken speed, or crystal meth, as believed by police. "I told them (the other girls) it was speed. I wanted to be cool, I wanted to be accepted," the girl said. She said she emptied the contents of an unknown capsule into a bag which they divided up into lines, before raiding her mother's drug cabinet for blue and orange pills. "There is not a day that goes by that I don't think of Mel and wish it had all never happened," she said. The inquest continues.
(Michael, 2008)

Syllabus Outcomes

5.6 A student analyses attitudes, behaviours and consequences related to health issues affecting young people.

SLA

Drug Use
- Consequences of illicit and unsanctioned drug use

SLT

Describe the short term and long term consequences of illicit drug use on the individual and community

Skills

Communication
Descision Making
Interacting
Problem Solving

Description

- Students read the article on Melanie Boyd
- In small groups, students are then to design a timeline documenting the events that occurred up until Melanie was dead.
- At each point, students are to think of and write down a harm minimisation strategy that could have been implemented to lower the risk and save Melanie’s life. Eg, when Melanie was conscious and noticing the others convulsing, she could have called an Ambulance or her parents or a trusted friend and not have let the others talk her out of it.
- In the three hour gap between being found and calling an ambulance, students need to write down all the different ways in which her friends could have helped save Melanie that didn’t involve directly calling the ambulance.

Follow Up Activity

- Individually, students are to think about and write down a situation that they have witnessed or heard about or been involved in (NO NAMES ARE TO BE USED!) that involved drug use.
- They are then to think about and write down all the negative things that could have happened if things went wrong.
- Have a class discussion about some dangerous situations that have involved drugs and what can happen in these situations. (AGAIN NO NAMES)