A Madness Called Meth: Editorial

WE ARE LOSING THE DRUG WAR IN OUR OWN BACK YARD.

Speed, crank, crystal, ice: Whatever its street name these days,
methamphetamine represents a threat -- not only to the people who use it,
but to their children, their neighbors, the environment and the wider
community.

Unlike previous drug scourges, the meth epidemic is uniquely American in
origin. Alarmingly, as a team of Bee reporters from Modesto, Fresno and
Sacramento document in today's special 18-page section, "A Madness Called
Meth," California's great Central Valley is meth's principal breeding
ground and the place where the bulk of its victims live.

Overdosed meth addicts crowd Valley hospitals.

From Redding to Bakersfield, their abused and neglected children swell the
rolls of foster care. With increasing and deadly frequency, the makeshift
labs where they cook their drugs erupt into flames, spewing toxic chemicals
and leaving poisonous residues that threaten groundwater and force costly
cleanups.

The number of drug labs discovered in California has soared, from 559 in
1995 to more than 2,000 last year. Police -- local, state and federal --
have spent countless hours and millions of dollars chasing meth
traffickers. They close a lab only to find that three others pop up to take
its place.

They cut off the supply of one ingredient chemical and the meth merchants
find a substitute. Penalties are stiff, but when the choice is between
$6.40 an hour picking fruit or a dead-end job in the city, and thousands of
dollars a day cooking meth, an endless supply of people will take the risk.

What is meth's lure? The drug floods the brain with dopamine, a natural
chemical that stimulates pleasure.

Soon the body craves more and more. Over time, meth addicts can't live
without it. The craving is so powerful that if they can't buy from
suppliers, meth addicts will make their own brews, using recipes available
over the Internet or in book shops, with ingredients that can be purchased
in bulk from drugstores.

The side effects of chronic use include itchy scalps and skin, scabs from
all the scratching and teeth that fall out. The drug triggers
sleeplessness, agitation and violence.

Researchers say the damage to the brain may be irreversible. Because meth
has not generated the kind of gang warfare and shootouts that have attended
other drug epidemics in the country -- cocaine, for example -- Congress has
failed to recognize or address the magnitude of meth's growing threat.

Compared with federal drug-fighting funds approved for other states and
regions, Bee reporters found that Central California's meth-fighting
efforts have been shortchanged. While San Diego gets $10 million from the
federal government to combat drug trafficking, Milwaukee $4.5 million and
Lake County, Indiana, $3 million, the nine Valley counties that stretch
from Sacramento to Kern receive just $1.5 million from the federal
government, the smallest drug-fighting budget for any region in the country.

That has to change.

Money is needed in large amounts for education, enforcement, treatment and
environmental cleanup.

Unfortunately, politicians, at both the state and federal level, have
failed to grasp the scope of the problem.

Gov. Gray Davis inexcusably vetoed a bill that would have created meth site
cleanup standards.

He called the $3 million price tag too expensive, a shocking indication of
how steep the learning curve is, even for our own governor.

Where are our champions in Washington, the Valley's representatives in
Congress -- Gary Condit, George Radanovich, Calvin Dooley and William
Thomas? Where are our senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer? What
can we expect from our state legislators, Jim Costa, Chuck Poochigian, Dick
Monteith, George House, Mike Briggs, Sarah Reyes, Dean Florez and Roy Ashburn?

Predictably and understandably, local and state governments' limited answer
to the meth threat has been to attack the supply side. It's a response
weighted toward cops and prosecutors, leaving little for education,
treatment and cleanup.

One recent evening in Kern County, 29 officers, county sheriffs' deputies,
city police, and state and federal narcotics officers gathered to bust one
meth dealer, a man who'd been under surveillance for months.

Bee reporters totaled up the law enforcement cost for putting just six
members of a big Fresno-based meth ring in prison: $2.1 million.

An adequate police response to attack the supply side of the meth threat is
essential. But it's also true that the money will be largely wasted if
government doesn't act simultaneously to reduce demand.

Resources to attack the demand side -- money for treatment and education --
are almost nonexistent. In Butte County north of Sacramento, meth addicts
desperate for treatment are instructed to call a number every Monday
between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. Mostly they are told to call back later.

Beyond more treatment, there is an urgent need for education about the
special dangers of this awful drug. Anyone tempted to try meth should see
the before-and-after pictures of Jackie Hughes, the former Sears model
reduced after years of meth abuse to a toothless crone with bald patches on
her head and scabs on her face. They ought to hear the story of Douglas
Haaland Jr., the father who, agitated after coming down from an eight-day
meth binge, beat his 4-year-old son to death and will spend the rest of his
life in prison.

They should see Amber Walker, the 3-month-old who died of starvation,
wide-eyed in her crib in a squalid Bakersfield motel, leaving behind a
meth-addicted mother who rarely touched her.

"The Madness of Meth" is both a warning and a plea. To the public, it's a
warning about the dangers this drug poses: Don't try it. To policy-makers,
it's a plea -- and a demand.

We need more help to to stop the traffickers, to clean up the toxic mess
they leave behind.

And we urgently need resources to treat the addicts more effectively and to
educate the vulnerable. Without serious investments in all those areas, the
chase will never end. Meth will win and we will lose.