METH'S IMPACT ON CHILDREN PROBED

Former Users Testify Before Senate Panel

WASHINGTON - Alison Bruno was 13 when her mother, a drug addict,
offered her methamphetamine.

"I was addicted from that day forward," recalled Bruno, now a
22-year-old Iowa mother of two girls. She smoked meth until she found
out she was pregnant at 15 and resumed after the baby was born.

"I would leave my baby with her dad, who was not an addict, for days
and weeks at a time. I felt like I needed meth to survive," said
Bruno, a college student engaged to be married. She said she has been
clean since she got treatment at a residential family program more
than three years ago.

Bruno and two other recovering meth addicts told their stories Tuesday
to the Senate Finance Committee, which is examining the impact of meth
on children.

"Meth poses unprecedented challenges to child-welfare agencies,"
testified Kevin Frank, regional administrator of child and family
services at the Montana Department of Public Health and Human
Services. "Over 65% of all foster care placements in Montana are
directly attributable to drug use, and of those, meth is a primary
factor 57% of the time."

Frank said hundreds more children are living with grandparents or
other relatives because their meth-addicted parents are incarcerated
or have abandoned them.

Nationwide, 40% of child-welfare officials reported increased
foster-care placements because of meth in the prior year, the National
Association of Counties found last July.

About 12 million people over age 12 have tried meth, the 2004 National
Survey on Drug Use and Health found.The number of people abusing or
dependent on meth more than doubled between 2002 and 2004, from
164,000 people to 346,000, testified Nancy Young of the National
Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare. She said pregnant women
are showing the fastest increase among those seeking treatment for
meth problems.

Meth is cheaply made in makeshift labs by extracting pseudoephedrine
from cold medicine.

"It's frightening," said Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, senior Democrat
on the Senate panel, of meth's rapid rise. At a recent meeting at a
high school, he said, four students told him their parents were users.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the panel's chairman, said children of
meth users are often neglected because the parent's high can last for
hours, and a binge for days. He said others are exposed to pornography
and sexual abuse because meth can cause a dramatic increase in a
user's sex drive. "Our nation's child-welfare system is already
overburdened," Grassley said.

Darren and Aaronette Noble, a married couple in Missouri, said a
family treatment program turned their lives around by helping them
understand why they abused meth and enabling them to work together.
They had each used meth for years and served time in prison. One of
their daughters was born addicted to meth.

"When I was using meth, I felt dead most of the time," testified
Aaronette Noble. "My teeth and my hair were falling out, and other
people had custody of my (four) children. My husband and I were
homeless and sleeping in our car."

Meth "tore our whole family apart," said Darren Noble, adding that the
family has changed since undergoing treatment and no longer associates
with meth users. He said he no longer craves the drug.

"I feel tempted at times," Bruno said after the hearing. "I have to
prepare myself for those moments." She said she still goes to meetings
to aid her recovery. "I'm an addict. That's not going away."