ALTERED STATES

From Utah To Tennessee They're Fighting Meth. Here's What Georgia Can Do

Farmers in Illinois look out for strangers trying to steal fertilizer.
Store clerks in Tennessee report suspicious customers buying large
amounts of cold pills. In Colorado, a trailer to wash chemicals off of
children from drug-making homes is about to hit the streets.

As Georgia struggles with its rapidly growing methamphetamine problem,
the core message from other states battling the spread of the illegal
stimulant is: Act now, before the problem overwhelms law enforcement,
the courts, social services and drug treatment centers.

Never before has such a potent drug been so easy and cheap to make. By
buying or stealing ingredients and cribbing a recipe from friends or
the Internet, a person with very little money can set up a small meth
lab -- and endanger everyone nearby with toxic chemicals, fires and
explosions.

Like moonshine stills of the past, meth labs are popping up all over
Georgia to feed the state's growing habit. From 1999 to 2003, the
number of labs raided by police jumped from 29 to 439, GBI figures
show.

"Methamphetamine is basically homegrown and has moved through
communities traditionally that didn't have a problem," said Dr. H.
Westley Clark, director of the federal government's Center for
Substance Abuse Treatment in Maryland. "Because it is homegrown, it
has caught people unaware."

No single step will stop meth manufacturers and users, national
experts say.

"This is not a simple thing," Clark said. "It requires all levels of
community -- the social service community, the law enforcement
community, the faith-based community, the education community and
others -- to focus on it."

In May, Gov. Sonny Perdue signed into law tougher punishments for
people who make and sell meth. The law makes it a felony to possess
more than 300 of the over-the-counter cold pills needed to make the
drug. It also makes it a felony to possess any amount of anhydrous
ammonia, a common fertilizer, with the intent of making meth.

A Perdue-backed child endangerment bill that would punish adults who
make the drug around children is expected in the upcoming legislative
session.

Other states are doing more. They're developing statewide strategies
and ramping up large public awareness campaigns; giving courts and
police more tools to deal with methamphetamine makers and suppliers;
creating laws and services to help children from meth-abusing
families; and supporting specialized treatment programs to wean people
from the drug.

Shannon Herman, 19, of Douglasville says she used the drug for three
years and now faces methamphetamine possession charges.

"A lot of my friends are addicted to the stuff, and their parents
don't even know," she said. "It's everywhere."

Anti-meth summits

California, Washington, Hawaii, Tennessee and other states have held
methamphetamine summits in recent years, bringing together
politicians, judges, police, teachers, social service workers, church
leaders, community organizers and others to create statewide plans for
dealing with the problem.

Michigan's Office of Drug Control Policy called such a meeting in
March 2002. Four months later the summit group published its plan,
which attacked the problem on several fronts.

Michigan officials distributed videotapes to all sheriff's departments
showing how to spot methamphetamine. The state handed out locks to
farmers to safeguard chemicals that meth makers might try to steal.
Judges received training on users' behavior and about treatment and
punishment options. The state also has set up a resource Web site.

"We got the word out that meth is coming into Michigan," said David
Bush, an inspector for the Michigan State Police. "We didn't want this
wave to kill us."

Public awareness

A lot of meth is cooked up in makeshift labs using cold medicine and
other common materials, such as lithium batteries and matches. And a
lot of people have no idea that their neighbors might be making the
illegal drug next door.

Several states have launched large-scale public awareness campaigns
about how to spot a meth lab, as well as the dangers of making and
using the drug.

California has distributed thousands of educational videos about the
drug. It runs public service announcements on television and radio and
sends speakers to community groups and churches.

In Arkansas, Pat Huckeby, director of a state-funded drug prevention
center, spends much of her time at school meetings, chili suppers and
other gatherings, telling people how methamphetamine can hurt people.
She recently started training local business leaders how to spot meth
abusers among their workers.

"If there are three people gathered together and they are willing to
listen, I will tell them about the evils of methamphetamine," Huckeby
said. "Public awareness has been a big issue. You still find people
who don't believe it's out there."

Her agency now sends out a former user to speak about the
drug.

"He tells people that meth affects everybody. [Meth users] write bad
checks. They take on debts they can't pay. They drive under the
influence. They hurt or leave their families. All of us pay for the
wreckage they leave behind them."

The unique nature of products that meth makers need requires special
education efforts among various groups, like store clerks and farmers.

Tennessee this month began asking store employees to call a toll-free
number to report suspicious purchases of items that can be used to
make the drug.

In Illinois, the state's farm bureau has joined the public education
campaign to teach farmers to watch out for thieves trying to steal a
fertilizer, anhydrous ammonia, from tanks on their land. The ammonia
- -- which is highly toxic and can burn a person to death -- is used in
one of the more common ways of making meth.

Blake Roderick, manager of the Pike County Farm Bureau in west-central
Illinois, said farmers started to notice about five years ago that
people were tampering with their anhydrous ammonia tanks.

The farm bureau has begun distributing warning labels that remind
farmers to be on the lookout for suspicious people -- and also warn
thieves that farmers are watching for trouble. The bureau has
distributed about 800 stickers so far and plans to put a label on
every anhydrous ammonia tank in the state -- about 30,000 tanks.

"Ten years ago, we worried about hunters cutting fences," Roderick
said. "Now it's something much worse."

Anti-meth laws

Many states have passed laws to try to curtail meth making and to step
up prosecution of offenders.

Illinois law now defines chemicals used to make the drug as "explosive
compounds or incendiary devices" -- allowing prosecutors to charge
meth makers with the additional crime of possessing explosives.

In Minnesota, a bill proposed last month would require store owners
and clerks to keep a close watch on sales of cold medicines containing
ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. The bill also would create a fund to
educate retailers and the public about the dangers of
methamphetamine.

Cliff Riedel, a prosecutor in Fort Collins, Colo., said judges have
been diverting nonviolent, first-time meth users into special
treatment programs, which appear to be having some success. But he
said Colorado has been increasing punishments for manufacturers,
making it more likely that those convicted will spend time behind bars.

"Hopefully, some of them will start to say, 'It ain't worth it,' " he
said. "If you are involved in making it or selling it, you've got to
go to prison."

Protecting children

People who expose children to methamphetamine now face severe
penalties in several states. Georgia currently has no such laws.

Chemical residue and fumes from cooking meth can severely damage a
child's health. In some states, authorities who find children living
in meth-lab homes immediately take them outside and scrub them down.

One of the toughest statutes is in Missouri, where manufacturing the
drug with children present is punishable by up to life in prison.
Colorado amended the state's child abuse statutes to make it a felony
to manufacture meth near a child.

Washington state law requires police to contact social workers
immediately if they find a child at a meth lab. Georgia has no such
requirement.

New laws are just one way to try to protect children from the drug's
dangers. Drug Endangered Children programs -- started more than a
decade ago in California -- are catching on throughout the country.

In Idaho this summer, police, social workers and health workers
launched a five-county program requiring that children found in
meth-lab homes be medically evaluated within hours, said Idaho State
Police Director Dan Charboneau. The program also requires police on
drug raids to spend time gathering evidence of child neglect, and
calls on prosecutors to crack down on people who make meth with
children present.

"There are some people in our society who continue to say drugs are a
victimless crime, and that's a lie," said Monte Stiles, assistant U.S.
attorney in Idaho. "Little children are hurt every day."

Communities in Arizona, Oklahoma, Washington, Colorado, Utah, Iowa and
Missouri now have such Drug Endangered Children programs.

Next month, officials in metro Denver will roll out a traveling
decontamination trailer especially for children evacuated from meth
labs. The trailer has shower stalls and bright pictures of monkeys and
tigers and lions on the walls.

"We don't want to provide any more trauma than they've already had,"
said Capt. Rich Randall of the North Metro Fire District.

Treatment programs

Methamphetamine is a powerful stimulant that excites the brain and
central nervous system. Chronic users who want to quit require special
treatment. No drug has been found to help people stop using meth. The
most successful programs so far involve intensive therapy, frequent
drug testing and months in group treatment centers, according to the
National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Most drug treatment centers, however, don't tailor programs for
methamphetamine users.

The federally funded Methamphetamine Treatment Project has set up
centers in Western states; the project is based in Los Angeles and run
jointly by the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs and the Matrix
Institute on Addictions. The outpatient treatment, which runs for 16
weeks, uses 12-step techniques similar to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Dr. Richard Rawson, a UCLA psychiatry professor and one of the
nation's leading methamphetamine abuse experts, said treatment
programs need to last four to six months to be effective.

"When they stop taking methamphetamine, their brain needs to heal, to
biologically return to normal," he said.

He also said that frequent urine testing, to make sure people are not
using again, is useful. Much of the therapy focuses on coaching the
person to develop a life that does not have room for meth abuse. Drug
courts in California, he said, have been helpful in forcing meth users
to confront their problem.

"If put into proper kinds of treatment, meth users can recover," he
said.

In South Dakota, the state's pilot programs for meth treatment are
intensive and expensive, says Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse
Director Gilbert Sudbeck.

"You have to be in treatment a lot longer," Sudbeck said. "We're
talking about probably spending about $350,000 on 20 initial people.
But the results have been good so far, and finding a model that works
will save us money in the long run."

Staff writer Craig Schneider contributed to this article.