CHILDREN OF METH USERS FIND THEMSELVES TRAGIC VICTIMS

Drug Is 'Destroying Families,' Official Says

CROSSVILLE, Tenn. - They are children displaced by methamphetamine, removed
from homes tainted by the powerful drug and taken away from addicted
parents often facing criminal charges.

''The saddest thing you can ever see, come in at 3 or 4 o'clock in the
morning, and see a kid sitting there with a paper bag. That's all their
worldly possessions,'' Cumberland County Sheriff Butch Burgess said.

Their number is growing, with a year-old law pushing nearly 500 children of
parents making or using methamphetamine into the care of foster homes or
relatives.

While the parents clog the court systems of many Tennessee counties, it is
the children who create a less visible but equally tragic burden.

Police often rush into their homes, arrest their parents and take the
children to a hospital to scrub their skin clean of hazardous chemicals.
The children can't take a blanket or toys with them when they leave home
because the items are considered contaminated.

Then, they sit outside a jail or a courtroom to wait for someone to take
them to a new home.

''It is destroying families,'' said Theresa Looper, a Children's Services
team coordinator for Cumberland and six other northern Cumberland Plateau
counties. ''I would like to tell you that people's children are more
important to them than being addicted to meth, but that's not true. It just
gets such a grip on them they can't turn loose of it.''

Meth, sometimes called the poor man's cocaine, is made from easily
purchased items such as Ephedrine in cold tablets, drain cleaner, iodine
and lye. Usually snorted or injected, it makes users feel euphoric,
energized and powerful. Longtime addicts can go days without sleep, and
often become aggressive, paranoid and experience hallucinations.

In the 1960s the drug moved from the military, where it had been given to
troops to fend off sleep. It slowly grew in popularity until the 1990s,
when the ease in making it and concealing it found a new generation of
users, including housewives, college students, factory workers and - parents.

A national report compiled by the Drug Enforcement Administration
Intelligence Center in El Paso, Texas, showed that children were found in
at least 1,504 meth lab seizures in 2002.

Burgess said the chances children taken from meth homes will return to
sober parents are slim.

''I've never seen a parent yet that has gotten straight, that has gotten
over it,'' he said.

Last year, 22 children in Burgess' county along the Cumberland Plateau were
taken from homes where meth was made and he expects that number to grow
this year.

Addicts get so wrapped up in making and taking the drug that they neglect
their children, he said. He recalled one couple who made meth in a chicken
coop while their three children slept nearby.

''The parents would just lock them up,'' Burgess said. One of the children
was in a ''baby bed with chicken wire over it.''

Earlene Yvonne Speer, a General Sessions and Juvenile Court judge in rural
Grundy County, 70 miles south of Crossville, said children are brought into
her court who have grown up breathing the poisonous fumes from meth labs.

The children are accustomed to strangers visiting their homes at all hours,
and seeing their parents make, use and buy the drug. Sometimes they go
without food, bathing or schooling.

Still, because they know no other life, ''I have children begging me,
'Please don't take me away from Mama and Daddy,' '' the judge said.

She said she tells parents: ''You can have your meth or you can have your
children, but you can't have them both. You have made a choice.''

Medical experts know little about the long-term impact of using the drug,
or exposure to the vapors from mixing and boiling - commonly referred to as
''cooking'' - household chemicals to make it.

Richard A. Rawson, associate director of the Integrated Substance Abuse
Program at UCLA, said a pilot study showed that young children whose
mothers exposed them to meth during pregnancy were ''significantly de-layed
in verbal learning skills,'' in addition to slowed physical development.

Rawson said meth is possibly more damaging than cocaine be-cause it appears
to destroy the nervous system.

''The idea that meth does possibly produce permanent damage to certain
areas of the brain is a real concern,'' he said.

Cumberland County Assistant District Attorney Gary McKenzie recently
prosecuted two young mothers whose newborns tested positive for meth.

One of the babies showed signs of withdrawal when first placed with a
foster family. The second baby ''would shake uncontrollably and cry for no
reason, be up at all hours.'' McKenzie said. ''It seems to be OK now. The
thing we don't know is the long-term effect.''

The babies' mothers made plea deals for 12-year prison sentences. McKenzie
said they each chose to avoid a trial and a possible maximum 25-year sentence.

Meth children at risk

The Tennessee Department of Children's Services has removed 488 children
from their homes since Jan. 1, 2002, because their parents were using or
manufacturing methamphetamine.

More than half, 273 children, were in southeast Tennessee: Polk, Bradley,
Marion, Grundy, Franklin, Bledsoe, Rhea, Meigs, McMinn and Sequatchie counties.

Other areas and the number of children removed are:

. Upper Cumberland - Macon, Smith, Cannon, Warren, Van Buren, White,
Putnam, Cumberland, Fentress, Overton, Jackson, Clay, Pickett and DeKalb
counties. 123 children.

. Southwest - Tipton, Fayette, Hardeman, McNairy, Hardin, Decatur,
Henderson, Chester, Madison, Hayward and Lauderdale counties. 34 children.

. East - Hamblin, Scott, Morgan, Roane, Loudon, Monroe, Blount, Sevier,
Jefferson, Grainger, Claiborne, Union, Campbell and Anderson. 18 children.

. South Central - Perry, Hickman, Lewis, Wayne, Lawrence, Maury, Giles,
Marshall, Lincoln, Moore, Bedford and Coffee counties. 11 children.

. Mid-Cumberland - Stewart, Houston, Humphreys, Montgomery, Dickson,
Robertson, Cheatham, Williamson, Rutherford, Wilson, Trousdale and Sumner
counties. 11 children.

. Shelby County, 10 children.

. Lewis County, 5 children.

. Davidson County, 2 children.

. Northeast - Hancock, Hawkins, Sullivan, Washington, Carter, Johnson,
Greene, Cooke and Unicoi counties. 1 child.