USE OF METH SURGES IN IOWA

Officials Say More Women Are Hooked

Iowans' hunger for methamphetamine appears to be growing again
despite unprecedented attempts to fight the highly addictive
stimulant, state officials say.

"It's extremely disturbing this time," said Bruce Upchurch, the
state's drug policy coordinator, "especially considering the
potential effect of state budget cuts." Prison authorities and drug
counselors say a greater proportion of meth users in trouble now are
women compared with three years ago, when the state's epidemic with
the stimulant was thought to have peaked.

Authorities say they face additional challenges from ecstasy and LSD
trafficking, which have grown considerably in recent years. But
problems created by those illicit club drugs still pale next to those
wrought by meth, Iowa's hard drug of choice.

Consider:

* In the spring, drug agents found 5,000 hits of LSD, enough to take
the whole of Iowa State University's freshmen class on a
hallucinogenic trip, in an Ames neighborhood thick with students. The
seizure was one of the biggest LSD busts in state history, easily
dwarfing all the ecstasy netted so far this year, state narcotics
agents said.

Yet, dose for dose, 76 times more imported methamphetamine than LSD
has been seized this year by the state; 310 times more meth has been
found than ecstasy.

That excludes the methamphetamine confiscated by federal agents and
that found in hundreds of small clandestine labs around the state,
the numbers of which are growing again.

Ken Carter, state narcotics division director, predicts Iowa's 24
drug task forces will take in more meth by year's end than in 1998, a
record year for seizures.

* Just last month, the proportion of Iowa inmates entering prison who
reported meth as their primary drug of choice rose to its highest
level ever - 30.2 percent, Upchurch said.

For the first time, women entering the prison system admitted using
methamphetamine more than alcohol, a surprising 43.14 percent of all
incoming female inmates.

* More people than ever have begun to flood Iowa's treatment centers
for methamphetamine use. During the state's last fiscal year, 4,745
people - roughly one in every 600 Iowans - were screened or admitted
for the drug, said Janet Zwick of the Iowa Department of Public
Health.

That's roughly 700 people over the previous fiscal year, many of whom
received far less treatment than is recommended to treat the hard-to-
kick drug.

John Garringer, executive director of the Area Substance Abuse
Council in Cedar Rapids, said almost 51 percent of his agency's meth
clients are women, up from 40 percent in 1999. The treatment
programs, which include several rural areas in eastern Iowa, also are
seeing record numbers of meth clients.

"We're just seeing a resurgence, and I'm not sure why," he said. "We
really can't keep up with the demand for services."

Targeted by Mexican drug cartels as an area ripe for trafficking,
Iowa was largely taken by surprise in the mid-1990s as meth began to
claim thousands of addicts and overwhelm rural law enforcement,
Carter said.

Crime triggered by the drug's erratic nature spread across the state.
Small-time cookers of the synthetic drug grew exponentially,
discarding toxic heaps of spent ingredients and crude laboratories
fashioned out of rubber hoses, glass and metal.

By late in the "90s, however, the number of drug agents in the state
had doubled, a full-time clandestine meth lab team was up and
running, and laws targeting cookers, dealers and traffickers offered
new weapons to fight the scourge. Iowa was among six Midwestern
states to share $12 million annually in extra federal money because
of acute meth problems.

Last year, Upchurch and other drug officials reported for the first
time they were cautiously optimistic that the state had seen the
worst of the drug. Meth seizures appeared to be dropping, as did the
number of clandestine laboratories discovered. Treatment providers
such as Garringer noted a dip in 2000 in the number of meth clients
over the previous couple of years.

But the optimism was not to last.

Drug seizures by state agents are on the rise this year, and the
federal Drug Enforcement Agency continues to find large quantities of
imported meth in Iowa, said Mark Hine, the DEA's resident agent in
charge. Agents in the past year uncovered two shipments of more than
32 pounds, some of the biggest seizures since meth arrived in Iowa.

What's more, the Dakotas, Illinois and Minnesota have begun to
experience the kinds of meth problems Iowa, Kansas and Missouri have
had for years. Drug agents say roughly 85 percent of Iowa's supply is
still believed to travel an interstate pipeline from Mexico and
southern California.

Hine, Carter and others are encouraged by Congress' approval this
year of $1 million for a 17-county coordinated drug task force,
headquartered in the southern portion of the state.

Drug officials also are reorganizing the state's 24 drug task forces
to make the most out of available resources, modernize techniques and
ease the sharing of drug intelligence, Upchurch said. Authorities
continue to work with retailers to prevent large sales of chemicals
used to make meth, such as starter fluid, pseudoephedrine tablets and
ether, he said.

Yet, around Iowa and the Midwest, the problem appears to grow with
every new addict taken in. "I think much of the initial curiosity
about meth is gone," said Marshall County Sheriff Ted Kamatchus. "The
state has done an excellent job of promoting the down side of
addiction. We're just dealing now with good, old-fashioned users who
are hooked on it."

Garringer and others predict Iowa will experience a growing crime
problem, as likely budget cuts will reduce already strapped drug-
treatment resources. Already, agencies such as his have waiting lists
of three to four weeks to receive outpatient counseling and treatment.

The Area Substance Abuse Council lost four staff positions following
the last rounds of cuts, he said. "The problem with waiting lists in
our field is that people can't wait," he said. "We need to be able to
provide services or we're going to lose them to drug abuse."