A CITY WAGES WAR AGAINST ITS CANCER

Horror of Drug Epidemic Spawned New Solutions

You wouldn't know by looking, but this is a city with a crystal meth problem.

The Spokane River flows through the middle of this city, surrounded
on both sides by leafy parks. Two university campuses sit near the
city's core, and students tap away on laptops or chat with friends in
nearby pubs and coffee shops. Even as dusk approaches, female joggers
run solo through secluded stretches of Spokane's picturesque
riverside pathways.

The outward tranquility offers no hints of meth-related trouble among
Spokane's 200,000 citizens, but it exists in an overwhelming number
of arrests, property crimes and child neglect cases fuelled by the drug.

Last year, more than half of the 1,099 felony drug arrests recorded
by the Spokane Police Department were for methamphetamine.

Even when police don't find the drug, they turn up evidence of its
role behind other crimes.

"Methamphetamine use is probably responsible for 70 per cent of our
burglaries, 80 to 90 per cent of our vehicle thefts and 95 per cent
of our credit card and bank cheque fraud," says Lieut. Darrell Toombs
of the SPD's special investigative unit, which handles drug cases.

Spokane's experience with meth offers valuable lessons for a city
like Calgary, where the drug has so far turned up only in small
amounts. Emulating Spokane's successes and learning from its mistakes
could spare Calgary the same fate.

Stricter laws, along with police efforts and increased public
awareness, have helped lower the number of meth labs in Spokane
County from a high of 190 in 2002 to only 10 by mid-October of this year.

But meth use persists. Now, most of it comes from Mexico. It's
plentiful and cheap -- about $40 Cdn a gram.

"The use and abuse of methamphetamine is higher than it's ever been,"
says Lieut. Rick VanLeuven of the Spokane County Sheriff's
investigative support unit.

People from all walks of life get hooked on crystal meth. Others feel
the effects when addicts steal, neglect their children or contaminate
their homes with dangerous chemicals.

"It's not just low-income, dirty, grungy people," VanLeuven says.

It's often said that cancer touches everyone in one way or another --
either they get it themselves or have a loved one who is affected.

In that sense, meth is a cancer in Spokane County.

And, like the fight against cancer, victories against meth are
hard-earned, the result of considerable effort, research and innovation.

It may surprise Canadians weaned on rhetoric about America's "War on
Drugs" that the battle is being fought with a measure of mercy in
places like Spokane County.

Like a growing number of jurisdictions, Spokane County has a drug
court, which offers court-monitored treatment instead of jail time
for addicts. "Graduates" who complete the program, which takes at
least a year, get their criminal charges dropped.

About 75 per cent of drug court defendants are meth addicts. "Meth
permeates everything we do," says Judge Tari Eitzen.

The court aims to eliminate what's driving addicts to commit crime:
their addiction. People who make or sell drugs, and violent
offenders, aren't eligible.

Resistance from skeptics was fierce when planning for Spokane
County's drug court began in 1994, with detractors saying "hugs for
thugs" wouldn't do any good.

Eitzen says the proof is evident after more than a decade: only an
estimated 10 per cent of drug court graduates reoffend.

Although a third of defendants are kicked out of the program for not
complying, Eitzen counters that drug court still performs better than
regular courts, where the recidivism rate among drug offenders is
approximately 75 per cent.

David Morse's time in drug court is just beginning when he leaves
Eitzen's courtroom with marching orders from the judge on a recent
autumn afternoon.

Morse, 23, says he stopped using meth a year ago, while in custody
for charges that got him referred to drug court.

He reached out to his estranged mother in California. She replied
with a letter and pictures of a son from another relationship whom he
hadn't seen in six years. Morse also thought of his wife and their
young son here in Spokane.

"I realized I didn't want to live this life anymore," he says in an interview.

Morse now lives with his wife and five-year-old son in Airway
Heights, a bedroom community west of Spokane.

"I've had to cut off everybody -- people who say they're your friend.
But it's not about the friendship, it's about the drugs," he says.

For almost 10 years, though, Morse's life was "about the drugs."
Rolling up his left sleeve, Morse reveals an atrophied forearm and
skin scarred by a shotgun blast when he was 13.

Morse says his assailant was another boy avenging an earlier beating
at his hands.

The shooting began a painful recuperation that opened the door for
his first experience with meth.

"When I was a kid, I despised it," he says of the drug use he witnessed.

"I got shot, and everything inside me said, 'F--k it.' "

He started smoking meth, sometimes staying up for five or six days at
a time, reaching an agitated, paranoid state known as tweaking.

Three years later, Morse began injecting meth.

"Slamming" meth into the bloodstream via injection produces an immediate high.

"It was the worst mistake of my life. I needed it every day," Morse says.

He also resorted to selling meth at one point.

"I made money off of other people's problems."

Now, he wants to make money the honest way and plans to start his own
landscaping business. Even though he has multiple criminal
convictions, Morse is most worried about the stigma attached to being
a former meth addict.

"You can go to jail for smoking pot and people will hire you. Not
meth," he says.

"I don't blame people -- a year and a half ago, I would have robbed a
business blind."

While drug court tries to undo the criminal toll addiction takes on
the community, a specialized civil court is trying to heal the damage
drugs wreak on families.

Washington Child Protective Services launched 3,274 abuse and neglect
investigations in Spokane County last year.

CPS officials say they don't officially track how often drug use is a
factor, but the numbers show a steady rise since 2,933 referrals were
recorded in 2002.

Perhaps more tellingly, emergency referrals -- where imminent risk to
a child dictates response within 24 hours -- are making up a larger
percentage of the total. Between 2002 and 2004, emergency referrals
more than doubled, to 439 from 200.

When meth is involved, workers find children whose basic needs have
gone unattended while their parents feed their addictions.

"(The children) are hungry. When they're first put in placement, they
have hoarding issues with food," says Marilyn Walli, who manages a
program that works with expectant mothers and parenting mothers
abusing drugs or alcohol.

Although there can be environmental hazards for children living in a
home where meth is being made, an official who deals with the
contamination says the abuse children face at the hands of erratic,
violent parents is far harder to remedy.

"I'm more worried about a kid growing up in an environment where a
parent is a drug user and not feeding them properly," says Paul
Savage, an environmental health specialist with the Spokane Regional
Health District.

"Basically, they need a bath, food and a hug."

Reuniting children with their parents is the ultimate aim of family
treatment court, but it takes at least a year of treatment and
responsible living before that happens.

"The bottom line is not just whether they're going to get their kids
back, it's whether they're drug-free and going to be productive
members of society," says Marilyn Bordner, program director of New
Horizons, the agency that runs Spokane County's initiative with a
$2-million federal grant.

Data on 27 graduates who have finished the program since it started
in 2002 show only two who have lost their children again. Another is
currently "struggling," Bordner says.

A total of 69 clients entered the court between January 2003 and
January 2005. Between them, they had 135 children apprehended by
Child Protective Services.

"Economically, that's a huge impact," Bordner says.

Beyond the savings to taxpayers, Bordner adds putting families back
together increases the chances the children will grow up
well-adjusted and the cycle of addiction will be broken.

Chantel Martinson is one of the people who has managed to put her
life -- and her family -- back together.

Martinson, 33, graduated from family treatment court Monday, allowing
her to regain formal custody of her daughter, Kayla, 16, and son
Christopher, 10.

She opted for the court in August 2004, after her children were
apprehended while in the care of her ex-husband.

The kids were living with their father after Martinson sent them
there as her meth addiction worsened.

When her ex lost custody, authorities deemed her unfit to take them back.

How things got to that point, Martinson is eager to point out, is far
from the stereotype people have about drug addiction.

She was a good kid who grew up in a stable, loving environment. "I
didn't have a family where (drug use) was acceptable," she says.

Martinson first smoked meth when she was 22 and used it occasionally
for about 10 years. For a time, she owned her own business.

In 2003, things started going wrong. She lost her job, while at the
same time struggling to cope with a panic disorder brought on by a
serious car crash.

"I wasn't using, but the drugs were around me. I had allowed myself
to become part of that social setting," she says.

It wasn't long before Martinson began using meth regularly, reaching
a low point over the Christmas holidays -- the first since her kids
went to live with their father.

She started injecting meth.

Six chaotic months of quitting and relapsing followed. Martinson lost
so much weight, family members noticed and her mother urged her to
get treatment. After discovering she was pregnant, Martinson quit using.

She was arrested for driving while suspended. Her daughter convinced
officials at the lock-up to place her mother on

suicide watch, guaranteeing she would be behind bars for at last three days.

"She knew I'd be clean that way," Martinson says.

She relapsed again -- on Kayla's 15th birthday, and miscarried not
long afterward.

Being unable to look after her kids when her husband lost custody,
however, was the final straw.

She's grateful family treatment court has allowed her a chance to be
a mother to her children again. "It's really going to be up to me
now," she says.

Meth crept into Washington from California, following a pattern
police had seen in the past with other drugs.

In 1998, there were no known meth labs in Spokane County, which is
home to about 420,000 people in eastern Washington.

A handful of labs appeared in 1999, and were easily handled by a
Washington State Patrol team that responded to calls throughout the region.

By 2000, however, meth labs were popping up all over the state and
local police had to learn from scratch how to deal with them on their own.

"It caught us totally off-guard," Toombs confesses.

The SPD spent $400,000 on equipment and had trained 24 officers to
respond at the height of the lab epidemic.

At the same time, state officials recognized slowing the juggernaut
was a job far bigger than the police alone could handle. In 39
counties, meth action teams with representatives from law
enforcement, government agencies, the justice system and local
businesses began meeting.

In Spokane County, one of the biggest successes was the establishment
in 2003 of a local Meth Watch program, which trains retailers to spot
suspicious purchases and to report them to authorities.

While cold remedies, camp fuel, acetone and lye are all legal
products, buying any of them in large quantities or in combination
now sets off alarm bells with educated retailers.

Public education also involves speaking to students and community
groups about the perils of meth in the belief prevention will have a
big impact as time goes on.

"Now that the labs are down and we have a pretty good handle on that,
we're looking at doing presentations. That's been our new big focus,"
says Julie Alonso of the Greater Spokane Substance Abuse Council.

Stores also agreed to move both ephedrine and pseudoephedrine
products behind the counter to cut down on stealing.

The problem was so bad, one veteran investigator recalls, that a
large retailer found out half its stock had been stolen when
employees began moving packages of cold pills behind the counter and
discovered many were empty.

Retailers are now required by law to put products with ephedrine or
pseudoephedrine behind the counter after Washington's state
legislature passed new rules that also restrict sales to customers
over 18 with valid photo ID.

Starting on Jan. 1, retailers also must begin recording purchases in
a log and limit customers to two packages within a 24-hour period.

A local legislator who supported the law says it will help, but it's
not a cure-all.

"We shouldn't harbour any illusions that if we get rid of the
production, that we're going to eliminate (meth) here," says Rep.
Timm Ormsby, a Democrat who represents an inner-city Spokane constituency.

As long as people use crystal meth and are able to make it with legal
ingredients and a little help from the Internet, the industrious are
going to try.

On a recent October morning, members of the SPD's special
investigative unit process a lab found by patrol officers inside a
camper parked on a city street.

The camper has been towed to a secure enclosure, where team members
don protective suits with breathing equipment. The precautions are
necessary because chemicals used to make meth can be volatile and the
fumes dangerous.

You don't need to be a chemist to make meth, but disaster can result
when amateur cooks try to cut corners.

"They're still morons," Toombs says. "That's why we get explosions."

There were three or four confirmed meth-related fires a year when the
lab epidemic was at its worst, though police suspected many more.

"One guy had skin coming off his face, his neck and his arms. He said
he was making doughnuts and he got splattered by the grease," Toombs recalls.

Inside the camper, officers find tins of camp fuel and glassware with
layered liquids in them. The liquid likely contains meth in different
stages of completion, which will be confirmed by laboratory tests.

A meth recipe found on a chair and stolen prescription pills
containing ephedrine are even more damning evidence. Officers
fingerprint the articles to connect them to the suspects.

As his team performs a task that has become all too commonplace,
Toombs is optimistic the community's combined efforts against meth
are making a difference.

"We're never going to stop it, but I honestly believe we're gaining
on it," he says.