FINANCIAL TAB IS INCALCULABLE; HUMAN TOLL IS TRAGIC

It's impossible to tally methamphetamine's cost to society. Lab cleanup,
crime, work absences, injuries, domestic abuse and child neglect associated
with the drug consume millions of dollars.

"When you pay your tax bill, you just can't imagine the entire amount of
money - if you could add it all up - going to the jails and prisons, going
to the mental health facilities, going to the hospitals" because of meth,
said state Rep. Clel Baudler, a Republican from Greenfield, who has
proposed legislation dealing with a meth ingredient, pseudoephedrine.

The burn unit at University Hospitals in Iowa City treated 37 people from
2000 to 2002 for injuries related to meth, many from meth lab fires or
explosions.

"We started calling around the Midwest and then calling burn centers around
the country - there are about 100," said Dr. Patrick Kealey, medical
director of the burn center. "No one else had seen anything like that."

The 33 people treated so far this year and last for meth-related burns had
bills totaling $2.2 million. More than $470,000 of that was passed to a
collection agency and will probably go unpaid. "It's a large burden to the
hospital and then, in turn, the state," Kealey said.

Meth also is an environmental threat. Meth makers dump leftover chemicals
in fields and streams; blasts and fires are risks; and contaminants linger
in hotel rooms or houses where the drug was cooked.

"I've told farmers who have had labs in their old farmhouses that they are
renting that the best thing to do is throw a fuse in and stand upwind,"
said Baudler, a retired state trooper. "Burn it, because I would fear
renting it to anyone else."

Parents addicted to meth are focused on their drug, not on their children's
needs. The state is left to pick up the pieces in cases of neglect or
abandonment. At the extreme, death is the result.

Since spring, Iowa has seen these examples:

* Jaley Akers, a 6-month-old Burlington baby, suffocated in March after
slipping off her sleeping father's chest. Randy Akers awoke on a couch to
feel what he thought was a plastic doll pinned beneath his arm. It was his
daughter. Akers, now in prison for child endangerment, had been using meth.

* That same month, a Des Moines 1-year-old, Brooklyn Petithory, suffered
fatal brain injuries after her father, who said he was coming down from a
meth high, left her in a bathtub child-restraint seat with the faucet
running. David Petithory, sentenced to 27 years in prison, fell asleep
outside the bathroom as water covered the girl's face.

* A South Dakota woman was sentenced to 10 years in prison last month for
neglect and drug charges after her 3-year-old son was found running naked
through traffic at an Interstate Highway 80 rest area at Bettendorf in
June. Michelle Childers was in her car, trying to light a marijuana joint,
which she told police she needed to come down from a meth high.