DEA, STATE LEADERS TACKLE METH EPIDEMIC

BELLEVUE -- In his first day as new director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, Asa Hutchinson came to town to discuss Washington state's
unfortunate ranking as second in the nation in methamphetamine laboratories
discovered.

"The uniqueness about this drug is that it affects users and others,"
Hutchinson said. "Each time a person gets hooked, society suffers an injury."

Hutchinson, just confirmed by the U.S. Senate as DEA director last week,
addressed the Washington State Meth Summit in Bellevue, a gathering of
several hundred law people from across the state coming together to find
solutions to the state's burgeoning meth problem.

Twenty-seven of the state's 39 counties were represented by law enforcement
officers, treatment providers and representatives from local, state and
federal agencies that deal with child protection, criminal justice and
health care.

The two-day summit will become a model for other states struggling to
handle meth problems, Hutchinson said. The summit ends today.

"More than 661 (meth) labs were seized last year in Washington," Hutchinson
said. "The lab operators create a toxic waste that costs $2,000 to $4,000
to clean up. This year, Congress set aside $48 million to clean up labs --
and it's not enough."

In addition, meth has become a greater problem in rural areas than in inner
cities, and many meth cooks dump their chemical wastes in forests where it
kills the surrounding vegetation.

"Experts say you can be hooked with just one use," Hutchinson said. "It
causes more damage to the brain than heroin, cocaine and alcohol. Meth
addicts forget they even have children."

U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., is the founder of a congressional meth
caucus, a bipartisan group with 74 members. Participants in Monday's summit
want to establish a similar state meth caucus, an idea enthusiastically
received by state Rep. Al O'Brien, a Mountlake Terrace Democrat who
represents the state's First Congressional District.

"We are facing an epidemic," said U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who
also attended the summit. "The meth epidemic is every bit as devastating as
the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1990s."

Cantwell is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will conduct a field
hearing this fall on methamphetamine to educate the committee about the
severity of the problem.