LAWMAKERS PREPARE LEGISLATION IN DRUG WAR

Increasing Education Programs And Treament Top The List Of Proposals.

It will take a few weeks for details to become clear, but lawmakers who
took part in the Central Valley Methamphetamine Summit are pledging to
introduce legislation to address some of the concerns raised by summit
participants.

Law enforcement officials and others at the summit, held Tuesday in Fresno,
asked for more federal agents, more equipment, and tighter laws and
regulations to help them address the region's meth problem, especially the
hundreds of industrial-sized meth-manufacturing labs that are scattered
throughout rural California.

The summit was organized by the state's two Democratic U.S. senators,
Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and Reps. Cal Dooley, D-Hanford and
Gary Condit, D-Ceres, partly in response to an 18-page investigative report
that ran Oct. 8 in the McClatchy Co.'s California newspapers, including The
Bee. With the 107th Congress still getting itself organized and a new
president awaiting inauguration, staff members said it is likely to be
several weeks before specific plans can be made to deal with issues raised
at the summit.

"It's going to take a few days to analyze the written testimony and the
verbal comments and attempt to synthesize it into an agenda," Dooley
spokeswoman Gina Mahony said Wednesday.

One piece of legislation that is already being prepared would address an
issue that got little attention at the summit -- the difficulty that many
meth users have in getting treatment if they don't have health insurance.

At the summit, members of Boxer's staff distributed remarks that were
prepared for her in which she pledged to introduce a bill that would help
to ensure treatment on demand for chronic users of meth and other drugs.

Saying that the number of substance abusers who are not in treatment
exceeds the number who are, Boxer proposed to boost federal funding for
state, local and nonprofit drug-treatment programs by an unspecified amount.

She said the bill for unmet treatment needs in California alone is $330
million.

A Boxer staff member said the bill is likely to be introduced within a week
or two of the inauguration. In addition, Boxer and Dooley said at the
summit that they plan to convene a second summit dealing with treatment and
other issues, such as prevention and education, related to reducing the
demand for drugs.

Another lawmaker who attended the summit, Rep. Douglas Ose, R-Sacramento,
will propose adding several counties to the existing federally designated
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA, in the Central Valley, a
spokesman said.

The HIDTA task force combines federal, state and local enforcement
personnel in a coordinated attack on the meth trade.