Happy Friday. Here’s our recap of the top stories Patch covered on the North Shore this week:
Police departments in Beverly, Salem and other North Shore towns are seeing an increase in reports and arrests for crystal methamphetamine, a powerful, illegal stimulant that has plagued other parts of the country for several years.
Meth was sold over the counter as an inhaler until 1964 and as a prescription medication until 1970, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration labeled it a controlled substance after a sudden increase in reports of abuse.
By the 1990s, there were new ways to make the drug illegally, and those versions were reportedly four to six times stronger than the commercially-produced version. Since then, the meth problem has been largely confined to rural areas of the south, west and Midwest, which offer geographic isolation that is ideal for setting up meth labs.
The Drug Enforcement Agency says most of the crystal meth used illegally in the U.S. is produced by amateur chemists, although some is imported illegally from other countries. The Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 led to a sharp decline in illegal meth lab seizures in the U.S., but had the unintended consequence of increasing demand for meth imported by drug cartels.
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Other North Shore crime news this week:
Schools
The Danvers school committee is scheduled to discuss the culture at Danvers High School and racist social media posts by certain students when it meets Monday.
Earlier this month, Superintendent Lisa Dana sent a note to parents and students to say administrators were looking into posts by students that were “contrary to our mission to provide an inclusive school environment free from discrimination” after being contacted by current and former students.
Other North Shore school news this week:
Politics
Two local boards were accused of violating the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law this week. In Beverly, resident Charles Kostro said some Beverly School committee members may have privately deliberated a school reopening proposal before it was publicly presented at its Aug. 6 meeting. Kostro’s complaint asks the school committee to have its counsel review the incident and provide a full account of what happened.
And in Swampscott, selectmen were accused of violating the state’s open meeting law by not having public deliberations about a controversial new trash pick-up policies in a complaint filed with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office on Aug. 10.
In a six-page letter to Selectmen Chair Peter Spellios outlining the complaint, Wayne Spritz and Mark Miller said Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald formed a Waste Reduction Task Force without deliberation from the select board. The task force approved the new rules, which cut the amount of trash Swampscott residents can throw out each and increased the price of overflow trash bags.
Other North Shore political news this week:
Coronavirus
It was another tough week in the COVID-19 fight in Salem, which couldn’t get off the state list of municipalities with the highest risk of coronavirus infection. Meanwhile, five students and five to seven staff members at Salem Public Schools’ LEAP Saltonstall Summer program were asked to quarantine after another staff member tested positive for the coronavirus. The program was closed for the week, which the scheduled last week of the program.
In Marblehead, an employee at the Coffin School and another person who works at Green’s Ace Hardware both tested positive for the coronavirus, forcing people at the two workplaces to enter precautionary isolation periods.
And, finally this week: It wasn’t all doom-and-gloom on the North Shore this week. A Danvers family vacationing on Cape Cod found a message in a bottle that took 11 years to cross the Atlantic. And read about a heroic rescue of a dog named Molly in Swampscott.
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