METH PROJECT SET TO LAUNCH IN JANUARY

KIMBERLY - Eleven months of campaigning seems to have paid off for
the Idaho Meth Project.

Debbie Field, director of the Idaho Office of Drug Policy, told a
gathering of city and county officials Wednesday night that the $2.7
million media campaign will launch during the first week of January
to coincide with Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter's Jan. 7 State of
the State address.

Field said she is hoping the campaign, modeled after a highly
successful project in Montana and even using some of the same ads,
will convince teens ages 12 to 17 not to try meth. About $1.4
million has been raised through private donations for the project,
she said, enough to pay for the campaign for the first quarter
of 2008 and one-half of the second.

"The pain people are experiencing in our state turned into a
passion," she said, adding later that the money is about what she
expected to raise since the project began earlier this year.

Field's presentation to the quarterly Twin Falls County city/county
meeting, attended by officials from Murtaugh to Filer, lacked the
disturbing images, stories and videos of meth-addicted teens
featured in some of her community presentations.

Instead, Field focused on numbers. Meth has a 95 percent addiction
rate, she said. Taxpayers pay $55 a day for each of 3,331 male
prisoners in jail because of meth.

And she focused on what she described as the incredible support the
program has received from all areas of the state - the Magic Valley
chief among them, she said. Some of the money raised, she
emphasized, came from small donations and sales of "Not Even Once"
wristbands - the slogan also used for the Montana campaign.
And Twin Falls Dr. David McClusky, she said after her presentation,
plans to seek $1 million from the state's Millennium Endowment Fund,
money from its tobacco settlement, to largely finish off the
fundraising for the year.

Montana's project moved the state from fifth in the nation in terms
of methamphetamine trafficking and use to 39th in one year. Idaho
took over that fifth-place ranking, Field said, and she hopes its
project can accomplish the same thing.

Any long-term benefits from the campaign will require even more
funds in the future. But Field said she thinks fundraising will
become even easier once people see what the ads can do.

"We're going to be at it full-time," she said.

Her office has accomplished more than just fundraising, Field said.
Idaho is now the only state with one set tool for assessing the
level of drug use among its citizens, she said. And she's working to
change state Medicaid rules so the service pays for drug
treatment for those eligible.

Her work received kudos from at least a couple of those assembled
Wednesday evening. Twin Falls City Councilman David E. Johnson
thanked Field for her work, and regional Health and Welfare director
John Hathaway applauded the establishment of an interagency council
that reviews and approves all uses for anti-drug funding among the
eight state agencies that receive it.

"It's an opportunity to bring everybody into a coordinated effort,"
Hathaway said.