SNOHOMISH COUNTY TAKES AIM AT METH ADDICTION

EVERETT - Ashley considers herself a normal teen.

She didn't start partying until age 16, when she began drinking and smoking
pot with her friends. It's what everyone does, she says.

Then one night somebody offered her a line of methamphetamine.

Ashley's father, who lives in California, is a meth addict. As she pondered
her choices, she thought, "That's why my dad can't see me," the Marysville
youth told a ballroom full of strangers yesterday. "I just wanted to try
it, to see what the feeling is. I got very addicted."

So do 96 percent of other people who try it, according to health statistics.

Meth - also known as speed, crystal and crank - is one of the most brutally
addictive drugs, and its popularity is surging.

To combat its growth, Snohomish County leaders yesterday sponsored a
methamphetamine summit, gathering a cross section of 435 community members
to learn about the crisis and to brainstorm strategies for responding.

"We know where the war must be fought, and it must be fought here," county
Prosecutor Jim Krider told the educators, social-service providers, police,
health professionals, students and civic leaders.

No hard data exist, locally or nationally, on the extent of methamphetamine
use. But social-service experts estimate about 2,000 of the county's
594,000 residents are hooked.

Nearly 60 meth labs - highly dangerous, explosive operations - were
discovered within the county last year, up from 10 in 1999.

Two-thirds of crimes committed in the county are related to meth, Krider
said, including burglaries and thefts that raise money to buy the drug.
Nearly 65 percent of state Child Protective Services cases involve parents
addicted to meth, said Cammy Hart-Anderson, a county human-services
coordinator.

"Once the criminals cook this stuff, there's not a person in this room
that's not affected," said County Executive Bob Drewel, who led the summit
at the Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel in Everett.

Ashley quit meth, enduring an agonizing withdrawal period, when she
realized she might not graduate from high school. "I had way too many
dreams and way too many goals," said Ashley, now 17. When she confessed her
secret to her mother and stepfather, they were incredulous.

That's typical, said Bridgette Perrigove, a psychologist with the Granite
Falls School District. The symptoms can be so hard to identify that about
one-third of parents contacted about their children's possible meth
problems insist it's not possible.

Meth is an upper, so when students first begin taking it they perform well.
They clean up their rooms, turn in all their homework assignments.

But then meth shows its darker side. Users get depressed and paranoid,
sleep through class, lose weight and their skin becomes blemished with acne
and ulcers.

Summit participants included a group of 11 middle-school students from
Granite Falls. In their community, the pressure to do drugs starts in
seventh grade, they said. Most teenagers smoke marijuana, they said, and
meth use is common too. Some kids do drugs with their parents, they said.

Dakoda Stefenson, 14, said he's never used drugs, although he was 7 the
first time he turned down marijuana.

He planned to take back to Granite Falls everything he learned yesterday,
to help set a good example for the younger kids in his school.

"I just want to let them know once you start you're probably not going to
stop," he said.