CUMBERLAND SHERIFF TO BUILD CENTER FOR CHILDREN OF METH USERS

CHATTANOOGA - Misery and suffering that methamphetamine causes for
children have the Cumberland County sheriff working to open a safe
house, with toys, beds and volunteers on call.

''Right now the only place we've got to deal with kids is here in the
jail,'' Sheriff Butch Burgess of Crossville said.

Burgess, himself a foster parent, said children are being exposed to
the poison vapors from cooking the illegal drug in his county along
the Cumberland Plateau.

The Tennessee Department of Children's Services last year removed
almost 500 children from the custody of parents who were using or
making meth.

Burgess said he has grant money and a building for his planned child
advocacy center. He said retirees have volunteered to stay with
children who are removed from meth-making parents. Doctors also have
volunteered to provide medical services, he said.

''We've been trying to tell everybody east of us what is coming,''
Burgess said.

In McMinn County, Sheriff Steve Frisbie is having a shower building
constructed to wash off people who are considered contaminated from
exposure to cooking hazardous chemicals such as brake cleaner. Frisbie
said the shower building also is for his officers who might be exposed
to the poisonous chemicals.

''This seems to be the popular drug right now,'' he
said.

While the long-term health effects from such exposure or from using
the highly addictive stimulant drug are not known, researchers say
children commonly suffer respiratory problems, tremors, difficulty
with coordination, an intolerance to human touch and a susceptibility
to learning disabilities.

In addition to the hazardous materials and threat of explosion from
making the drug, meth users are prone to hallucinate and become
aggressive, in some cases violent. Their children often are neglected
or abused.

Federal records in Chattanooga, Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis
reflect what agents describe as a growing popularity and an apparent
eastward migration of the drug.

''It has spread to the plateau and then to the east,'' said Joey
Reece, resident agent in charge at the Drug Enforcement Agency office
in Knoxville. ''We got it from both ends, from the Sequatchie Valley
and the Cumberland Plateau.''

DEA records for southeastern Tennessee show 464 clandestine labs
busted so far in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, compared to 334 in
all of fiscal 2002. Reece said the count is 165 labs elsewhere in East
Tennessee so far in fiscal 2003, which he described as an increase
from last year.

Reece said meth is ''destroying a lot of families.'' He said that
among illegal drugs, meth ''is outpacing everything else in growth by
leaps and bounds.''