The 60 chicken house project that is planned for the south end of Coffee County has more than just the neighbors worried. As it turns out, an advocacy group for meth heads nationwide is also concerned. Jillian Cruz, spokesperson for Tweakers United, the nation’s largest methamphetamine advocacy group, reached out to The Golden Peanut after she read our story that broke the news of the project to the community. I set up a phone interview with her on Thursday afternoon. You can read our interview below.
The Golden Peanut (GP): What concerns you and the Tweakers United Board of Directors about the chicken houses:
Jillian Cruz (JC): How close the chicken houses are to Green Acres. We’ve been following the Green Acres area for a long time. It’s one of the most prolific meth communities in the Southeast. Green Acres is a real meth success story.
GP: What does meth have to do with the chicken houses?
JC: Have you ever seen a chicken on meth? It’s very scary. Chickens will get out of the houses and into the woods. Some will go to Green Acres. It’s inevitable. We are afraid that they will get hooked on meth and bring it back to the farm.
GP: Green Acres is a long way from the chicken houses. Highway 441 is also in the way. The distance and the highway isn’t enough to keep the two separated?
JC: We’ve done some measuring. It’s only about a mile and a half the way the chicken flies.
GP: The way the chicken flies? Chickens don’t fly that far.
JC: They do if they’re on meth.
GP: Elaborate, please.
JC: The Fellowship of American Research Technicians, which we call FART for short, has done a lot of studies on different animals. They’ve noted how animals respond to different substances. When it comes to meth, chickens are the worst. A tweaked out chicken is a sight to behold. They’re aggressive, nervous, more likely to make noise, and they will form packs. Think of it like a violent poultry gang. The evidence also shows that meth awakens carnivorous tendencies in chickens. Meth head poultry will often shun regular chicken feed and begin eating meat. Nothing their size or smaller is safe. We’re talking squirrels, rats, mice, cats, opossums, even raccoons. Once, FART researchers observed a pack of three chickens that were tweaking hard kill and eat an adult coyote. It was a brutal fight and the birds didn’t have many feathers left when it was over. But the chickens won.
GP: Neighbors are worried about the impact the chicken houses might have on the nearby Satilla River and some of the other animals in the area. Are tweaker chickens more of a problem than the other environmental concerns?
JC: The damage that meth’d up chickens can do would be far worse than anything else. They kill and eat anything. They would destroy the environment. It wouldn’t take them long to establish themselves as apex predators. 441 won’t stop them. Escaped chickens will make it across the highway and get hooked on meth. They’ll easily get back across the road. Have you ever seen a tweaker give up? Do they let anything stand in their way? Meth chickens are as stubborn as meth addicted people. There would be some casualties on 441 for sure. But it wouldn’t take but a few to get out of Green Acres and back to the farm before the place exploded. Think feeding Gremlins after midnight but with feathers. A farm with 60 chicken houses would have over a million birds on site. A fraction of that many chickens tweaking would be a disaster. This could be catastrophic. There would be no way to stop it. Escaped chickens could easily make their way to Green Acres. Like criminals who return to the scene of their crimes, they would come back to the farm. You can’t imagine what would happen. You don’t know how bad it will get. And trust me – you don’t want to know.
After we got off the phone with Jillian, we sent FART a request for comment. They responded with a short statement (which was nice; a short FART is always better than a long one): “For the last decade, the distinguished and accomplished FART staff have conducted countless studies that document the effects many of the common street drugs have on animal populations. Poultry tend to have an ominous and uncontrollable response to illegal substances, particularly methamphetamine. In our researchers’ collective opinion, there are two choices: Eradicate methamphetamine from Green Acres or do not proceed with this project. Given how entrenched meth is in that area, it seems the most appropriate course of action is to forego the project.”