HELPING METH'S YOUNGEST VICTIMS: CONFERENCE FOCUSES ON CHILDREN OF USERS

Thousands of California children are living in toxic waste sites as their
parents cook, use and sell methamphetamines, making them among the most
critically at-risk children for abuse, neglect and medical problems, a
parade of experts warned this week.

Last year alone, more than 1,000 children were found living in clandestine
"meth" labs seized by law enforcement officers in California. Of those
children, between one-third and one-half showed traces of the drug in their
systems, according to data presented at a Drug-Endangered Children
conference. The session, which drew nearly 500 participants from across the
nation, was held Tuesday and Wednesday at Sacramento's Doubletree Hotel.

Violent outbursts associated with methamphetamine use often are targeted at
children and others living in the household, experts also noted.

Surrounded by photographs showing young children who were bruised, filthy
and living amid bottles of chemicals used to brew the drug, law enforcement
officers and child welfare experts urged communities to create special task
forces to focus not on the abusers but on the children.

For years, "we hooked (handcuffed) and booked the suspect, put the kids with
the nearest person and moved on," said Mitchel Brown, an assistant chief
with the state's Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement. "But you can't leave a kid
in that home."

Brown was honored at the conference along with his wife, a Butte County
district attorney's investigator, for helping start the state's premier
Drug-Endangered Children task force, which incorporates social workers, law
enforcement officials and prosecutors to ensure children taken from meth
labs are protected.

He described methamphetamine addicts who routinely sell or inject the drug
in front of their children, or hide drugs in their babies' diapers.

Brown said children get high on meth by inhaling secondhand smoke from their
parents' pipes. Others eat food that is contaminated by being refrigerated
next to chemicals used to make meth or "crank."

"Unless you break the chain of events in their lives, these kids are our
future felons," he said.

Methamphetamine, with its relatively cheap, long high, has long been
considered a California drug, although its popularity has begun to spread
east.

Between 1994 and 1998, the number of labs seized nationally increased
sixfold from 263 to 1,627, said Sue Foster, research director of the
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

She described the problem as most acute in rural areas, where law
enforcement officers are far-flung and communities often lack the tax base
to provide comprehensive medical, mental health and other resources to
specifically address the needs of children in meth homes.

"Meth has come to Main Street today," Foster, the conference's keynote
speaker, said Wednesday. "And there is cause for alarm."

In seven of 10 child abuse or neglect cases in the United States, substance
abuse was either the cause or a contributing factor, according to
researchers working under Foster who surveyed nearly 1,000 social-work
professionals nationally.

About 22,000 infants annually are abandoned at birth in hospitals nationally
by addicted mothers, she said. Most of those babies also test positive for
drugs. And the numbers of children in long-term foster care have
skyrocketed.

"It is alarming to realize that the most unsafe place in our society is in
the home," said California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who spoke at
Tuesday's dinner. "Although it's still generally the case that that's where
children are nurtured and loved, statistically, that's (also) where most
kids are killed -- at home."

Lockyer and others -- including a deputy in U.S. Attorney General Janet
Reno's office who spoke via video -- lauded the California communities that
have created DEC programs. Seven of those counties are supported by grants
from the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning.

Several other counties, including Placer and Solano, started programs
independently, "because it's the right thing to do," said Sue Webber-Brown,
the Butte investigator who spearheaded the state's first program. "You have
to do it out of hide if you don't have the (grant) funds."

Dr. Ed Melia, a pediatrician and adviser on children and youth for the
state, urged listeners not to miss the opportunity to effect change.

"This moment in history, where there is an impetus to create safe families,
is critical," he said.