METH USE GROWING, PSYCHOLOGIST SAYS

The worst fears of more than 350 Oklahoma substance abuse treatment
professionals were reconfirmed Thursday -- the methamphetamine epidemic is
spreading rapidly eastward and shows no signs of letting up.

"It's becoming an endemic public health problem like heroin," said Richard
A. Rawson, a California research psychologist who has been working on meth
dependency for 15 years. "Sophisticated Mexican meth traffickers now know
how to move the product in a way that increases their chances of having an
ongoing market."

He made the comments during an Oklahoma Department of Mental Health meth
training session at the Ramada Hotel and Conference Center.

Dawson said many meth users will be led to heroin because most people can't
take meth indefinitely.

"It makes you crazy," he said.

That was of little consolation to Callie Hathcoat, the director of a 16-bed
chemical dependency facility in Tahlequah. She said the meth trade is
flourishing in northeast Oklahoma even without out-of-state traffickers.

She said she came to the meth conference because of what the highly
addictive stimulant is doing to her community.

"I'm sad because meth users are getting younger and younger -- many are 18
and 20 years old," she said. "And it's frustrating to be on the phone with
people day after day, particularly parents, telling them I don't have a bed
for their children."

While their names may go on a waiting list, in reality many meth users
simply go back to their drug use, Hathcoat said.

Often, meth treatment requires long-term residential care followed by up to
two years of outpatient counseling.

Even after they stop using meth or switch to another drug, many meth users
remain psychotic, Dawson said.

"We don't know what exactly is going on," he said. "It may be genetic or it
may be because of the type of meth they are using."

Rawson said support for meth treatment programs is lagging nationwide
because meth hasn't captured the attention of the nation, particularly the
East Coast whose lawmakers have focused their interest and appropriations
on the nation's crack cocaine problem.

With clandestine meth labs spreading to Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and beyond,
Rawson said the illegal drug will garner more respect in Washington.

"Methamphetamine, unfortunately, is spreading eastward rapidly," he said.

It's also the second-most widely used illicit drug in the world with an
estimated 40 million users, Rawson said.

Among countries, Thailand has been hard hit, while California remains the
meth capital of the United States.

This week, two air tanker pilots were killed fighting a northern California
wildfire allegedly started by a man operating a meth lab, Rawson said.

Despite the hazards meth poses to the public, Jeanne L. Obert, co- founder
and executive director of the Matrix Institute on Addictions in Los
Angeles, said Californians thought for a long time that meth would
disappear like other drug fads.

"Here we were in the middle of a meth epidemic, and when we talked about
how bad meth was it didn't register with anybody," Obert said.

Oklahoma, which reported about 1,000 meth lab seizures last year and is on
a record pace this year, is dealing with some of the same problems as
California.

While prosecutors and courts are turning increasingly to innovative
sentencing programs, state health officials acknowledge a critical need for
more treatment options.

Treatment advocates will meet next week with members of the Legislature's
Appropriations and Budget Subcommittee on Health and Social Services in an
attempt to double existing treatment capacity for all levels -- inpatient,
residential, detoxification, halfway houses and outpatient care -- and
triple the capacity for adolescents.