FOCUSING ON THE BATTLE AGAINST METHAMPHETAMINE

Call it Bikers Coffee, Chalk, Chicken Feed, Crank, Crystal Meth, Glass,
Go-Fast, Ice Meth, Methlies Quick, Poor Man's Cocaine, Shabu, Speed, Stove
Top, Trash or Yellow Bam. By any name, methamphetamine with its associated
criminality, violence, profound damage to the ecology, and the destruction
of individuals and families, is very bad news.

Precursor chemicals and ephedrine, the basic ingredients of meth, and meth
itself are flowing into the Western United States from Mexico and from
Asia, despite some very courageous and successful Drug Enforcement
Administration operations that have made the work of the dominant Mexican
cartels a lot more difficult. Small, homegrown meth labs abound. The drug
is much too available and its consequences much too grim.

Judges, lawyers and social workers in San Diego have learned what street
cops already knew -- that some speed freaks' minds are so splattered by the
drug that they actually forget they have babies to care for. That is
remarkable -- even in the universe of drug abuse.

On the streets and in the rural and desert settings where meth labs are
often found, police in California who are battling against the tide of
meth, face possible armed assault in both undercover and patrol situations.

Some headlines in this newspaper this year tell the tragic meth story so
well: "Meth labs sprout in forests (May 20); "Meth labs sprout in Central
Valley, Farm region haven for drug production (May 13); "35 pounds of meth
found"; Teen girl held (May 5); "Meth, lab gear at storage unit land
Escondido men in custody (April 19); "Meth lab found at airport; 9 held
(March 26); "Couple sentenced for killing partner in meth lab" (March 24)."

Ultimately, it is always about death -- of a criminal, an innocent
bystander or a neighborhood.

Into this environment, and with the strong intent to be of substantive
help, comes the International Counterdrug Technology Symposium, a three-day
conference of experts in law, medicine and related sciences, who are
aggressively seeking new, technology-based solutions to the plague of meth
and other drugs that are taking lives and wounding the quality of life here
in San Diego and across our country.

We began with a rare, daylong interdisciplinary science panel including
several of the world's most famous medical researchers as they seek new,
effective approaches to preventing and treating drug addiction. Among this
group was Dr. Bruce Hamilton of the UCSD School of Medicine and Dr. Simon
Cherry from UCLA.

Dr. Linda Chang of Brookhaven (N.Y.) National Laboratory also presented.
Her team has used a neuro imaging machine sponsored by the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy's Counterdrug Technology Assessment
Center (CTAC), to question the long-term impact of meth. What the machine
produced was clear evidence of deeply damaged brains -- even worse than had
been feared.

These subjects had difficulty remembering words and moving their bodies
with normal physical grace. So even if a meth user escapes the acute
paranoia and violence associated with taking the drug and finally quits,
awful long-term health consequences may be just around the corner.

Because we need to know even more about meth and other drugs of abuse and
their interaction with the brain, CTAC is sponsoring the construction of a
dozen state-of-the-art PET and MRI brain scanning machines and is placing
them in the hands of medical researchers across the country who dedicate
their time to drugs of abuse investigation, including a team at UCLA.

Yesterday, the federally sponsored symposium broke into many smaller
conferences, including one on how to discourage meth dealers from stealing
chemical precursors from business people with legitimate needs for the
chemicals.

Today, the wide-ranging science dialogues continue, and we will hear a
speech by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer on the implementation of
Proposition 36 and its connection to a computer-based treatment system we
sponsored called DENS. The system receives new patient intake data by modem
from over a hundred drug courts and treatment centers in California and
across the nation. It tracks drug abuse trends in virtual real-time and
helps treatment professionals quickly diagnose the needs of new arrivals.

During the symposium there has been considerable talk about how we can
further improve our technology transfer program, which over the past three
years has allowed us to put one or more pieces of high-tech crime-fighting
gear into hands of narcotics police in more than 2,500 local and state law
enforcement agencies. These high-tech systems already have been credited
with helping make major cases against drug traffickers while also improving
officer safety.

Brandenstein is chief scientist for the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy.