CAUTION URGED OVER METH-USE STUDY

Iowa's drug czar and the author of a new study on methamphetamine use
nationally hope Iowans and policy-makers don't misunderstand new
findings on the rates of meth abuse.

The study released this month by the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit
organization based in Washington, D.C., said rates of meth abuse have
been stable nationally since 1999 and have dropped significantly among
teenagers. It also says meth's portrayal as an epidemic nationally has
been exaggerated, and cites 2004 government statistics showing fewer
than 1 percent of Americans had used the highly addictive drug in the
past month, or roughly 583,000 people.

Both Marv Van Haaften, who heads Iowa's office of drug control policy,
and Ryan King, the study's author, believe meth addiction is a serious
problem in certain areas of the country.

King, whose organization opposes incarceration for nonviolent drug
offenders, said reaction to the study has been highly controversial,
with many people accusing him of being "completely out of touch."

"The study says clearly that we think meth has devastating
consequences for individual communities, but we were trying to take a
national perspective," he said Friday. "We knew it was going to be
going out on a limb. We just didn't realize how much. I think it just
speaks to the need to address the problem smartly."

While meth abuse is not a serious problem in much of the East, demand
for meth treatment in Iowa remains high: About 14.4 percent of roughly
43,000 adults who have sought help this year for addiction cite meth
as their drug of choice. Including youths, the proportion is 15.6 percent.

That's only a slight dip in demand from 2005 numbers, when the
proportion was 15.8 percent for adults and juveniles, Van Haaften said.

Nationally, Iowa has the eighth highest rate of meth addiction in the
country. That's also a slight improvement from a couple of years ago,
when the state had the fourth-highest rate of addiction.

Van Haaften said he agreed with the Sentencing Project's advocacy for
drug treatment. "The study says let's treat people more than
incarcerate them. That I find palatable," he said.

Next year, Van Haaften and Gary Maynard, Iowa Department of
Corrections director, also plan to make a push at the Legislature to
convert one of the state's prisons in 2008 to one that treats drug
offenders exclusively. About three in five Iowa inmates were
incarcerated for meth-related offenses in 2005.

The program would be modeled after one of the largest drug-treatment
prisons in the country in Sheridan, Ill. The Iowa facility would not
likely have all the trimmings of the Sheridan model, but its goal --
reducing recidivism -- would be the same.

Legislators passed this year on efforts to increase funding for meth
treatment, but Van Haaften said he believes they will be supportive of
a drug-treatment prison.

A law passed last year restricting the sale of meth's main ingredient,
pseudoephedrine, led to a 76 percent decline in meth labs found across
the state. But imported meth continues to be widely available for
addicts in Iowa.

King said prison-based drug treatment programs that sequester drug
inmates from others in the prison population and provide a 24-hour
therapeutic environment show promise. However, national research on
the effectiveness of such programs won't be available unless more
states initiate similar programs, which he said is likely.