FIGHTING A DEADLY DRUG

Cooperation between law enforcement and communities can curtail meth labs

Drugs. They're an urban problem. Usually it's the inner city, the ghetto,
the places where people are herded together, that produce drug
manufacturing, sales and addiction. The countryside, where folks commune
with nature and pay homage to a different lifestyle, is different.

That's been the standard thinking, and as with much standard thinking, it's
wrong. The countryside, as Sherlock Holmes once told Dr. Watson, abounds
with evils as bad or worse than the sinister city.

In North Alabama, evil's name is crystal methamphetamine. It is a highly
addictive "upper," offering some of the vilest attributes of crack cocaine
and other kinds of "speed." And it is ravaging countrysides, particularly
the Sand Mountain area.

Why are rural areas so alluring to crystal meth producers? Because the smell
of the chemicals used in this brain-destroying brew - battery acid,
antifreeze and the always sumptuous lye - is so potent you need to be miles
from folks in order to make it without calling attention to yourself.

And once you've whipped up a batch, you can find your clientele, because its
addictive powers are so strong that, as one physician says, "once you have
tried it, you no longer have any choice."

It's stimulative powers seem at first to be just the ticket for working
folks with repetitive jobs and long hours. But violence, paranoia,
confusion, insomnia and the overwhelming desire to get another fix
eventually creep up on you like a feral cat.

If you think this sounds like a threat more immediate than al-Qaida, you're
probably right. And if you think it is going to take more than the standard
practice of more law enforcement to target the problem, you're right again.

Not that increased attention by anti-drug units won't help. It will. So will
efforts to educate children about the drug and more resources for treating
meth abusers. But the biggest weapon in the fight against this menace may be
something the meth manufacturers hadn't counted on - other rural residents.

Folks in the county usually mind their own businesses and let others go
their own ways, but the increasing use of such environs for making illicit
drugs has people there aroused. Meetings on the subject draw hundreds of
concerned citizens. And these are people who are proving willing to work
with law enforcement officers in a makeshift ''take back the mountain''
effort.

Undoubtedly, they will want to work with retailers like Wal-Mart, as a
successful Missouri plan did, to report suspicious sales of chemicals to law
enforcement.

But chemicals can be bought elsewhere. And some manufacturers have taken to
distilling their chemicals while driving, which puts everyone of us in
danger. In the end, it will take the kind of alertness that the U.S.
government has urged us to adopt toward terror to drive away the meth makers
and dealers.

That primarily means stronger ties between communities and law enforcement
officers than ever before. From what's transpired so far, rural residents
are moving in the right direction.