METH SUMMIT II

The Focus Of This Week's Session In Fresno Will Be Treatment.

Fighting the battle against methamphetamine production in the Valley and
the state will be done on several fronts. There is an important law
enforcement function to be served, rooting out the producers and the
dealers who supply the poisonous drug. Environmental concerns are high,
given the toxic nature of the chemicals used to produce the drug, and the
utter indifference on the part of the producers and dealers to the damage
their work does to nature.

There is also a crucial treatment element, the effort to get people off the
soul-destroying substance and back into healthy and productive lives.
Treatmentment will be the focus of the second big "meth summit" in Fresno
on Wednesday.

The summit will be hosted by Rep. Cal Dooley of Hanford and California Sen.
Barbara Boxer. Elected officials, drug treatment and health care providers,
social service representatives and philanthropic leaders will join Dooley
and Boxer to discuss how the federal and state government, and local
officials, may best go about the task of redeeming the lives broken by meth
abuse.

The summit is being sponsored by the nonprofit California Endowment, a
private foundation that seeks to address health problems in the state. It
will be held from 10a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Fresno Doubletree Hotel, in
downtown Fresno. The public is invited; those who wish to attend are asked
to call Dooley's office at 441-7496.

The summit will consist of two discussion sessions. The first will discuss
ways to get more meth abusers into effective treatment programs for Valley.
The second session will focus on making existing programs better able to
cope with the human wreckage meth abuse leaves in its wake.

The scope of the methamphetamine problem went largely unnoticed and
unremarked upon until the Fresno, Sacramento and Modesto Bee newspapers
produced a major project on the problem last year. Since then the activity
surrounding meth and the problems it causes has increased a great deal.
support and leadership from Dooley and Boxer, as well as Sen. Dianne
Feinstein and other members of the state's delegation in Washington, D.C.,
have been effective in getting some light on the nature and size of the
problems we face.

Wednesday's summit, which follows one in January held to discuss problems
surrounding the actual production of the drug, will be another step in the
right direction. But we should not kid ourselves about what we face.
Sufficient resources for winning this fight don't yet exist. It will be a
long and expensive effort to get rid of meth, to clean up the environmental
damage this evil trade leaves in its wake, and to try to restore the
shattered lives of abusers -- and their families, especially children. It's
a fight we can't duck, though, and one we must not lose.