SCARING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF READERS WON'T WORK

To the editor:

Kimberly Mills' series on the hazards of methamphetamine labs was
obviously well-intentioned. Unfortunately, I see it as a disaster and
a disservice to your readers.

Our society recognizes different addiction and acknowledges that
successful treatment modalities -- never ideally effective -- are
remarkably comparable for all forms.

Unfortunately, more and more incarcerations is not one of the useful
tools.

Admittedly, I've been on a crusade that the horrors of meth lab
contamination is a widely-hyped myth. Your series stresses "every
ingredient used to make (methamphetamine) can be purchased legally
over the counter" and confirms their relative safety.

How is it that you and others -- who know better -- go on to wildly
claim "toxic hazards" when pseudephedrine from nose drops is spilled
on the ground.

The involved chemicals may whet the appetites of the regulatory and
the abatement industries, but those chemicals don't differ from those
found in hardware stores, pharmacies and high school chemistry labs.
Granted, throwing a lighted match or cigarette into any solvent will
certainly make it explode just as it would the gasoline I have in my
car. Remember the vast majority of chemicals -- unlike bugs -- don't
jump out of the ground to attack and if kids eat dirt with those
chemicals in it, they're not absorbed.

Conceivably you -- and the federal and state "authorities" who
constantly seem to cry wolf about those awful environmental hazards --
are convinced that scaring the bejeebers out of your readers is the
way to solve the addiction problem.

Your motives may be lofty, but your messages, filled with so many
half-truths, are bound to fail.

Finally, please stop sending toddlers who live near meth labs for
thorough physical exams; show me one who has ever turned up to be
indicative of a related illness.

Furthermore, incarcerating their parents all too often starts the kids
on the road to recurrent foster care and its negative aftermaths.
You're justified in adopting an advocate position, so long as your
readers recognize that some stretching of the truth is likely to be
involved.

WILLIAM O ROBERTSON, MD
Medical Director, Washington Poison Center
Professor of Pediatrics, UW School of Medicine