FIGHT METH THROUGH COMMUNITY ACTION

Our position is: Like Crothersville, communities should rally to fight the
growing threat of methamphetamine.

Still wrapped in sadness and outrage, residents of the Southern Indiana town
of Crothersville have united to fight back against a drug trade that took
the life of a beloved child. It's a battle that should spread rapidly across
the state.

Like many rural communities in Indiana, Crothersville has been plagued by
drug dealers making and selling methamphetamine. Fifty-five meth labs were
raided in Jackson County last year.

Now a little girl, 10-year-old Katlyn Collman, is dead, apparently abducted
and killed because she saw residents of two apartment buildings handling
meth one day last month. In response, Crothersville residents are trying to
raise $400,000 to buy and tear down the apartments and build a playground in
their place. Already $100,000 has been donated, a measure of the passion and
commitment that Katlyn's loss has engendered.

Some Indiana communities employed a similar strategy to good effect in the
late '90s, when trafficking in crack cocaine and its treacherous offspring
- -- murder, robbery and burglary -- were on the rise. Lake County used
federal grant money to raze dozens of abandoned houses that were havens for
drug use. And violent crime in Haughville on Indianapolis' Westside was cut
dramatically after a community-policing program helped residents clean up
vacant lots and demolish empty buildings.

Katlyn's death should spur a renewed commitment from state and local leaders
to confront Indiana's meth trade. Last year 1,549 labs were seized in
Indiana, up from 427 in 2000. A state police task force has been set up, and
bills making their way through both the state legislature and the U.S.
Congress would restrict access to the primary ingredients used to make the
drug.

But there's great value in individual communities taking a stand, organizing
to fight a deadly trade and pushing out dealers who endanger entire
neighborhoods. Crothersville is leading the way.