OUT OF TOUCH ON METH

A House Methamphetamine Caucus Would Not Be Needed If The Drug Czar's
Office Had Wiser Priorities And Strategies

Here's a tip for members of Congress who are frustrated over the White
House drug czar's shaky understanding of the methamphetamine epidemic: Make
him read The Oregonian's Metro section every morning.

Hardly a day goes by without more news of meth-related crime. Yet the
nation's drug czar, John Walters -- director of the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy -- has proposed cutting aid to local law
enforcement to combat the drug fueling all these homicides, assaults,
identity thefts, burglaries, sex-for-drugs transactions and so forth. For
enlightenment, he would do well if all he read were the stories about
meth's tiniest victims.

Recent ones in the news include the 3-month-old Tualatin boy whose
drug-crazed father squeezed him so hard he broke at least 11 of the baby's
bones.

And the 7-month-old Harrisburg boy who died alone in a hot car while his
mom was indoors doing drugs.

And the 2-month-old Milwaukie girl admitted to a hospital with a bruised
eye after her sky-high father struck her.

The common denominator in these depressingly frequent stories is not
marijuana use, which Walters' office regards as an epidemic and the
nation's No. 1 illicit drug problem. The connecting link is meth use, which
Walters' office does not view as an epidemic.

No wonder Congress is riled. When the national drug czar's priorities clash
so harshly with a majority of American sheriff's departments, which
consider meth the leading drug problem in their counties, something is
seriously amiss.

This disconnect has given rise to a House Methamphetamine Caucus, composed
of more than 100 members of Congress, including the entire House
delegations of Oregon and Washington. Its goals include securing adequate
funding for local law enforcement efforts against meth and educating the
federal bureaucracy about the scourge.

Funny, but you'd think that would be the drug czar's job. The fact that it
isn't suggests that the White House has been out of touch, even as the meth
epidemic has spread eastward from the West Coast to afflict almost every state.

Part of the problem is that Walters' office measures its success by
reductions in use of all illicit drugs. That means meth automatically gets
less attention than marijuana because millions more people are using pot.

Such logic seems nutty at the street level where meth, much more so than
marijuana, is driving up crime, disease and social disintegration.

That includes child abuse. The aforementioned news briefs out of Tualatin,
Harrisburg and Milwaukie are just a few of many recent Oregon examples.
Hundreds of other newspapers across the land are publishing their own
versions of the same sad stories.

John Walters should be reading them and seeing the size of the problem.

This doesn't mean losing focus on other illicit drugs. But it does mean
re-evaluating the nation's drug-control strategy and making sure local and
state law enforcement agencies have the federal funding help they need to
battle what the House Meth Caucus now calls the nation's No. 1 drug threat.

After all, 58 percent of American sheriffs can't be wrong.