A START IN METH FIGHT

January Summit Is A Small But Important First Step.

An important summit meeting will take place early next year, as crucial as
any gathering of world leaders: The subject is how to fight methamphetamine
trafficking in the Central Valley, and the stakes are as high as any issues
of war and peace.

The meeting is being co-sponsored by Reps. Cal Dooley, D-Hanford, and Gary
Condit, D-Ceres, and by California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The
meeting comes amid heightened awareness of the growing epidemic of meth
manufacturing in the region, and the increasingly costly toll the insidious
drug has on lives, public health and the economy.

The problem was spotlighted in an extensive special report by the Fresno,
Modesto and Sacramento Bee newspapers earlier this year. That report
painted a staggering picture of addiction, abuse, disease and environmental
degradation caused by meth "cookers," who brew up the drug in makeshift
laboratories from a recipe of easily obtained chemicals, leaving behind
hideously toxic wastes and broken lives.

The problem is no longer limited to Central California: Labs are popping up
in the Midwest and along the East Coast, and the January summit must focus
at least in part on the need for Congress and the executive branch to begin
top view meth suppression with the same urgency given to marijuana, heroin
and cocaine.

Attending the summit will be more than 80 federal, state and local law
enforcement and elected officials. Invitations are also going out to
social-services representatives, farmers and environmentalists, all of whom
have a serious stake in the battle. The general public also is invited. The
meeting is scheduled for Jan. 9 at the Downtown Club.

The summit will have a direct impact on federal funding to fight the
methamphetamine problem, which has been inadequate to this point. It is
also important that state officials take away a better understanding of the
scope of the problem, since state efforts have also lagged badly.

Dooley helped secure $1.5 million for the Central Valley High Intensity
Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Program for the current fiscal year, is
hoping to get approval for $2.5 million for the 2001 budget. Some of the
money would help police agencies involved in the program cover some expenses.

But that's really only a drop in the bucket, considering that those entire
sums could be consumed in the cleanup of just one medium-sized meth site,
so bad is the toxic waste associated with the drug's production.

The January summit is a good start, and its organizers deserve praise for
that. But it is only a start, and a modest one at that. This is a problem
that will be years and years, and millions of dollars, in the solving.