Bogalusa bus stop littered with drug dangers, says parent

Scanning the ground at the corner of Virginia Avenue and Montgomery Street on a foggy morning Thursday, Kimberly Monson doesn’t see any empty drug baggies.

But she wouldn’t be surprised if she did.

“Last week, there was a green and a blue one, to be specific,” said Monson, a 35-year-old mother of twin 7-year-olds.

It’s here where her children, and about eight other students, get on the bus to go to Pleasant Hill Elementary. It’s also a place where drug users discard the small, often colorful baggies that are commonplace in Bogalusa’s drug scene, Monson said.

But that’s not all.

Last Saturday, one of Monson’s children found a discarded syringe in a nearby alley that she believes was used for illicit drugs.

The child brought it home and said, “Daddy, what is this?”

Luckily, the needle had already been broken off, but the incident set off an uncomfortable conversation about the dangers of drug use with 7-year-olds.

“They shouldn’t even know what that is,” Monson said.

In drug-plagued Bogalusa, however, an education on narcotics is something that may be unavoidable.

A week ago, Monson said her children came home from school saying that a “bag of weed” had been found on the bus — a bus where elementary students ride with middle school and high school students.

Monson said she never saw the bag of marijuana, but it was apparently the big conversation on the bus that day. She called the Pleasant Hill Elementary principal, but she doesn’t know if anything was done.

Monson said she’d rather teach her children about drug abuse in a book, and not have them bring home drug paraphernalia they find at the school bus stop or learn from high school students who ride the same bus.

A four-way stop at the intersection may be partly to blame. Drug-users who cruise by and stop at the intersection throw out used baggies so they won’t get caught with them, Monson said, adding the neighborhood isn’t one where you might think drugs are a big problem.

“I’ve been in this neighborhood since I was a kid,” she said. “It’s not something you would think you would find.”

Her grandparents lived in the area, and when Monson was growing up, she never saw dirty needles or empty drug bags.

But times have changed.

“There’s probably a lot more we don’t see,” Monson said, adding similar problems likely exist at every school bus stop in town.