DAMON, South Dakota –
Nora Ladd at first did not know what she was looking at when she found dabs, or “shatter,” in her 17 year old’s room. She at first thought the amber-colored drug was crack, due to the “crack-pipe” type rig and torch found with it. Dabs is a concentrated form of marijuana with up to 90% THC.
Nora immediately went to the internet to find out just what her teenage son, Scott, was up to. Nora says she would have preferred that it had been crack since she read dabs were extremely dangerous. “I read you could blow up from smoking dabs because it’s made with butane. I flushed it down the toilet, fearing for my life because it could have combusted any second. Then I called Bert and we agreed something had to be done.”
Nora insisted Bert, her husband, convert his “man-cave” in the basement, because it was was the safest place for their son to be. She had him quickly transformed the space into a “Rehab” while their son was staying a friend’s for the weekend.
Authorities say that although Scott has been kept in the basement since before Christmas vacation started, the parents will be permitted to keep him there until his 18th birthday in May. Social workers have determined keeping him in the basement is the appropriate thing to do, given the severity of his addiction to marijuana. Natalie Parker of DHHS says, “The basement a clean, adequate facility. It has a private bathroom, mom’s home cooking- really all children should be so lucky.”
Some are calling these measures extreme and say “shatter” is neither explosive or harmful, but local users are either too high, or afraid of coming-out as smokers, to campaign for Scott’s freedom.