DRUG USE AMONG YOUTHS RISES IN BOONE COUNTY

Expenses are soaring as youthful offenders take a bite out of the budget.

Boone, Ia. - Ron Fehr has marked 2000 as a year of firsts. But the Boone
County sheriff isn't celebrating.

It's the first year he has busted a 17-year-old for running a
methamphetamine lab. It's the first year that one deputy will not be enough
to tackle drug crime in the county. And it's the first year Fehr's budget
could run out trying to handle it all.

The county's jail and youth-detention expenses will balloon by nearly
$400,000 in the next fiscal year, which begins in June.

More Kids Involved

"We are seeing more kids involved in the use of drugs, marijuana and, more
extensively, methamphetamine. That doesn't surprise me because meth is such
an easy drug to make," Fehr said. "All they have to do is know someone who
has a recipe or they get it off the Internet. Kids probably know how to use
the computer better than adults do."

Boone County's jail expenses are expected to rise $195,000 next year, to
$500,000. Deputies transport prisoners to other counties in Iowa and
Missouri because the county has no jail. The process has spread Fehr's
staff thin, but voters last spring defeated a bond issue to build a jail.

When Fehr took the job in 1989, the jail's budget was $89,000. In fiscal
1999-2000 it was $305,000, which already is gone. Fehr will ask the county
board of supervisors for emergency money to last until June.

The county's share of costs incurred at the Iowa Juvenile Home in Toledo
also will snowball, said Philippe Meier, the county auditor. Taxpayers in
Boone County shelled out $73,000 last year for the home in Tama County.
Next year, they'll pay $191,000.

Although adults still are largely responsible for the county's drug
arrests, Fehr acknowledges a relationship between the higher expenses and
juvenile drug use.

"They've got a charge of theft or vandalism, but drugs might have been the
reason they did what they did," Fehr said.

Officials at the juvenile home aren't surprised by Boone County's
predicament. Bob Eppler, the home's superintendent, said methamphetamine
and cocaine use are rampant.

"They're Hooked"

"We've got kids coming into the institution with very serious chemical
dependency histories," he said. "They're hooked, they've been using for
significant periods of time, and it's difficult to reach them and to get
them off.

"That's not just Boone County; that's statewide."

About 100 youths, ages 12 to 17, stay at the unlocked juvenile facility,
Eppler said. About 80 more names are on a waiting list.

School counselors work with students who want to quit using alcohol and
drugs, students who have been released from youth shelters, and those who
have been caught using drugs.

The Boone school district's substance-abuse counselor, Angie Nielsen, said
students are graduating from alcohol and marijuana to more dangerous drugs
such as meth and hallucinogens.

Nielsen has counseled 115 students since she started her job last August.

"It's sad to say, but a lot of times parents are giving it to them," she
said.

Fehr, the sheriff, said the numbers in Boone County would have shocked him
10 years ago. Not anymore.

"It's just another statistic that tells us society is deteriorating. Things
have changed dramatically, and it just seems to me that there are a lot of
people involved in drugs," Fehr said. "We need help."