THERE'S NO LACK OF SOLUTIONS FOR ELECTED OFFICIALS BESET BY
METH

By Kimberly Mills, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Board

Because of any of a hundred reasons, meth caught Washington
napping.

It could be that law enforcement and public health officials were
preoccupied with the big three drugs - heroin, cocaine and marijuana.

It could be that no one was paying attention to the canary in the coal
mine - Pierce County, which became the meth capital of the state in
one decade.

Or it could be that a drug problem needs to become a drug crisis to
force elected officials to act, the concept of prevention still being
too foreign to them.

Whatever the reasons, significant swaths of Washington are awash in
meth, not only from Mexico and California, our two source countries,
but from homemade batches cooked up in rental houses, motel rooms and
vehicles.

The stimulant, which dwarfs crack cocaine in the potential to corrupt
people and property, has law enforcement stumbling onto meth houses
while serving warrants, substance abuse treatment providers scrambling
to devise an effective protocol, and environmental specialists loading
up hazardous waste dumps with toxic concoctions.

Now it's catch-up time. Meth deserves our undivided attention, both to
help the counties where its incursion has been the greatest and to
prevent it from gaining a toehold in the others.

There is no one solution, but many. What follows are practical and
strategic steps that elected officials from Olympia to the other
Washington should take:

Congress and the state Legislature should split the $15 million
first-year cost of a thoughtful, multifaceted plan to blunt meth's
impact at the ground level. Under the holistic approach of the
Washington State Methamphetamine Initiative, money would be divvied up
among law enforcement and prosecution, public health and ecology,
community education and prevention, and family services.

The Legislature should order Child Protective Services to duplicate a
California program that treats children found in homes where meth is
made as victims, not accessories to crime. In California's Drug
Endangered Children program, social services workers are part of a
multidisciplinary team; while police arrest the suspected meth makers
and collect evidence for possible criminal charges, the workers focus
on the children's special needs. Because of the risk of exposure to
hazardous chemicals used in making meth, children are taken to
hospitals for on-the-spot exams and follow-ups through the next 18
months.

Each time a child is found in a meth house - a routine occurrence in
many Washington counties - prosecutors should charge the parent or
caregiver with second-degree criminal mistreatment, along with
manufacturing meth. The charge comes into play when a parent, a person
entrusted with the physical custody of a child or a person employed to
provide the child the basic necessities of life has "created an
imminent and substantial risk of death or great bodily harm ... "

Allowing children to live in houses strewn with chemicals where the
risks of explosion and fire are high qualifies as neglect at best,
child abuse at worst. The sentence that parents would receive,
probably less than a year, isn't as important as the message that
children are precious to this state.

The Legislature should continue expanding the Parent-Child Assistance
Program, which matches drug-addicted women and newborns with
paraprofessional advocates for three years. Besides helping the woman
through substance abuse treatment, schooling and job training, the
advocates make sure their children get the best possible start in life.

The Legislature should pass a supplemental appropriation of $4
million, which was inexplicably left out of the state budget last
spring, to pay for drug courts. Though they've proven their worth in
saving both lives and money, many drug courts are in jeopardy because
the hodgepodge of funding sources they depend on is drying up.
Particularly hard hit are the drug courts in King, Pierce and Spokane
counties, whose federal funding expired June 30.

Legislators won't have to spend a dime to help some of meth's most
unlikely victims. Anhydrous ammonia is being pilfered from farmers
around the state because, besides being an inexpensive fertilizer,
it's a staple of one popular meth recipe.

Legislatures in several Midwestern states have passed laws upgrading
the theft of anhydrous ammonia from a misdemeanor to a felony;
Washington should follow suit. Model legislation would make it a Class
C felony to possess anhydrous ammonia with the intent to make meth or
possess it in a container it's not designed for. More important, it
would shift the liability for any harm done to the people responsible:
the thieves.

In another low-cost move, the Legislature should adopt the model state
chemical control act, which creates a monitoring system to track
chemicals from source to use. This strategy doesn't interfere with
legitimate businesses but should help deter meth manufacturers from
appropriating immense amounts of the legal chemicals they transform
into the Schedule II drug.

The Legislature must deliver the funds so badly needed by the
Department of Ecology spill operations section. The near-doubling of
meth labs in the state in just one year has created a budget crisis
for the agency. An extra $749,000, for four more workers and the
one-time expense of four trucks, is easily justified. By law, the
department must dispose of the toxic wastes from all meth labs,
whether dumped by the roadside or discovered in dwellings.

Congress should authorize more agents for the U.S. Customs Service at
Blaine and points east. Mexico and California aren't the only sources
of our meth woes. Because Canada places virtually no controls on
chemicals, it is believed that some companies, legitimate and
otherwise, are relocating in our neighbor to the north. Although meth,
as a finished product, doesn't routinely come into Washington through
Blaine, the chemical precursors do.

There's no doubt meth recipes can be found in a variety of places,
including the Internet. But there's also no reason that Amazon.com
should be trafficking in books that instruct people in breaking the
law. Shame on you, Jeff Bezos. Just because you can sell guides to
meth manufacturing, and making explosives for that matter, doesn't
mean you should.

For more info State Narcotics Investigators Assoc. 360-867-0523
www.wsnia.org

NW High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area www.mfiles.org

Alcohol/Drug Helpline 206-722-3700, Seattle area 1-800-562-1240,
statewide www.adhl.org

MOMS & Women's Recovery Centers 253-798-6655

Parent-Child Assistance Program Tacoma: 253-272-3411 Seattle: 206-323-9136

[sidebar]

BEGINNING AGAIN

By Kimberly Mills, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Board

The fact that cocaine preceded meth as a drug of prevalence in Pierce
County is a blessing.

In 1988 the county responded to worries about infants exposed to
cocaine by launching a treatment program that specifically addressed
maternal use. It evolved into the MOMS program (Maternal Outpatient
Management and Support), which uses a holistic approach to help
addicted women, no matter their substance.

By 1993 and 1994, the cocaine epidemic was dwindling and MOMS began
seeing meth clients in substantial numbers. Meth is now the primary
drug of 30 percent of MOMS clients in Tacoma, ahead of cocaine,
marijuana, alcohol and heroin.

While "the science of treating stimulant use disorders is barely a
decade old," according to the new treatment protocol of the U.S.
Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, similarities between cocaine and
meth have already become apparent.

One is the harm done to babies of women who snort, smoke, eat or
inject meth while pregnant. Like the offspring of cocaine users, these
infants don't bond well, can't soothe themselves and don't find
cuddling comforting. They tend to be of lower birthweight. What isn't
clear - research on meth has been limited to rat brains - is exactly
what other effects the drug has on fetuses.

Pierce County would make an ideal laboratory for such research, which
would be immensely worthwhile, if only to prepare communities for the
next epidemic of a stimulant.

But what becomes of the meth and cocaine babies already suffering?
State funding willing, there is the Parent-Child Assistance Program,
which in its own infancy was a federal demonstration program at the
University of Washington called Birth to 3. It offers an invaluable
form of follow-through for alcohol- and drug-addicted women and their
children up to age 3.

The program matches the drug-addled women with paraprofessional
advocates for three years, beginning most often when they give birth.
Thus the program gives them one thing they sorely lack - consistency.
Advocates stick like glue to their clients, sometimes after
time-consuming efforts to get them to trust.

The hallmarks of meth addiction - psychosis, inability to focus,
paranoia, hypersexuality - are wholly incompatible with good
parenting. As advocate Teresa Austin observes of her clients: "They're
physically there but emotionally unavailable."

It's a given that the desire to use is greater for these women than
the consequences, even if they are losing their children to the state.

Here are stories of two of the luckier women who, with the help of
advocates Austin and Robin Neiswender, are among the first to graduate
from Tacoma's PCAP program.

Deborah Jackson, though pregnant, weighed all of 80 pounds when Austin
first laid eyes on her, and she had been in the county jail for 30
days for stealing a generator, a chain saw and clothes. In Jackson's
meth-muddled thinking, she was going to exchange the items for
bicycles, which in turn she could sell for cash to satisfy her craving
for meth.

"She looked like she had just been pulled out of the gutter," Austin
recalls, noting that Jackson's skin was the telltale pasty white and
her brown hair was stringy. She talked "about a thousand miles a minute."

Although Jackson proved to be "time and emotionally intensive" -
calling Austin collect around the clock - the advocate found "a
desperation about her that attracted me."

Luckily for Jackson, neither she nor her son tested positive for drugs
at his birth; meth doesn't stay in the system as long as other drugs.
She was free to take the baby home - and smart enough to partner with
Austin in the PCAP program.

Jackson began with other drugs. She smoked pot at 8, began drinking at
9. At 14 or 15, pregnant with baby number one, she switched to meth.
Drugs were one way of medicating herself over the molestation she
endured at home.

"The more crank I used, the more I felt like I was unstoppable," she
recalls. "After a while, I felt like I had a shield on."

Jackson would pack her kids off to relatives when she planned to use.
Other times she would wait until they were asleep to shoot up. She
bought meth; she stole it. "A lot of times I took it from people I
didn't know." She was evicted, forced to stay in places with no
electricity. She stole food from Safeway, or grazed there.

She used during two of three pregnancies. "I cared. I tried and tried
to get an abortion," she says of one pregnancy. "I was hoping that one
day I'd take a real big hit and that would take care of it."

No one can tell Jackson with any assurance that her children were not
adversely affected by her drug use. The research simply isn't there.

Like a cat with nine lives, Jackson lucked out over and over again -
and so did the county's motoring public. Once, after being on a meth
high for six to seven days, she took to the roads. Her paranoia made
her think police officers were everywhere, so she peered into cars to
see if the occupants wore badges. Driving to Olympia once after
combining crank with liquor, she rear-ended a car.

If Austin hadn't been so persistent, Jackson, now 26, knows she "would
have left the (last) baby at the hospital and gone back to using." Her
other incentive to kick the habit was the man who, after doing meth
with her, decided it wasn't for him and declared there wouldn't be a
"them" if she continued to use.

On Oct. 15 Jackson celebrated her second year of sobriety amid
preparations to move to Oklahoma, where she and her boyfriend hope to
start a construction business. "In my life today, I don't have to do
certain things not to use," she says. "I choose not to use."

When she's awake, that is. In her dreams, she still
uses.

Melisa Torrey chose to live in DuPont, a city south of Tacoma where
"nothing ever happens." She also chose as friends people who are
straitlaced and religious. Her drugs of choice today are coffee and
nicotine; she has a drink every other month.

For the first time in a long while, the 23-year-old brunette is
calling the shots unclouded by a haze of drugs.

It was an easy progression from others abusing her - physically,
sexually, emotionally - to abusing herself. Torrey's initial encounter
with drugs was at age 15, when a woman dealer around the corner from
her dad's house offered her meth.

Normally a "pretty tired person," Torrey relished the endless energy
that meth supplied.

Sometimes she continued to use when she knew she was pregnant. Other
times she felt so badly about the harm that could come to her
developing child that she became suicidal.

When she was prostituting to support herself, meth was a powerful
asset: "I worked all night and slept all day."

Shortly after delivering her third child, Torrey hooked up with the
PCAP program at a Tacoma hospital. She's been clean and sober now more
than three years. If all goes well, Torrey will graduate in January
from a program training her to be a medical transcriptionist.

"Every once in a while, I still want meth for the energy," she admits
freely, saying she still tastes the drug in the back of her throat.

But she's been taught to distance herself from the people and places
consumed by meth. "I have standards now. I didn't care who I hung
around with then."

[sidebar]

LITTLE-KNOWN METH IS COCAINE'S BIG RIVAL

By Barry R. McCaffrey, Special To The Post-Intelligencer - McCaffrey
directs the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Methamphetamine is one of the worst drug menaces ever to threaten
America. Dr. Michael Abrams of the Broadlawn Medical Center in Des
Moines, Iowa, describes meth as the most malignant, addictive drug
known to mankind.

Once largely confined to sections of the West and South, this deadly
speed-trap of a drug has been racing across our country -- leaving a
trail of crime and death in its wake.

Meth now threatens to replace crack cocaine as the most virulent,
illegal substance linked to violent behavior. Chemically and
physiologically volatile, meth pollutes both the internal and external
environment. This drug poisons land and water around clandestine labs
where it is made, just as it ravages the flesh and blood of individual
victims.

A powerful stimulant of the central nervous system, meth is associated
with paranoia, stroke and heart attack. Many of our communities in the
western half of the nation have experienced tragic fires caused by
explosive ingredients in this superamphetamine. In addition,
byproducts of the drug's manufacture leach into motel rooms and other
temporary sites where methamphetamine is "cooked."

Unsuspecting families who next rent the rooms, become violently ill.
Dumped into rivers or buried in holes, meth contaminates soil and
groundwater, working its way up the food chain from plants to animals.
Clean-up for this drug is so hazardous and expensive that property
owners who discover spoiled real estate often cannot afford to render
it safe. Landscapes and lives literally have been "wasted" by deadly
chemicals.

The best weapon against meth is education. We can protect youngsters
from corrosive drugs by speaking honestly and openly. In schools and
churches, youth groups and sports clubs, on television and radio, we
must teach one another to resist caustic substances that destroy life.

For citizens already caught in the gruesome grip of illegal drugs, we
must offer treatment. The justice system now has more than 400 drug
courts across the nation that can break the cycle of drugs and crime.
Without help in conquering addiction, former criminals, and the
streets to which they return, are unlikely to become drug-free.
Without treatment, illegal drugs are themselves a life sentence -- and
all too often a death sentence.

The Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act of 1996 targeted
precursor chemicals, at home and abroad, used in making this drug. We
also increased penalties for trafficking and for the production or
possession of equipment involved in manufacturing controlled substances.

The Methamphetamine Act provided for seizure and forfeiture of
regulated compounds (inside and outside the United States),
restitution for cleanup charged to defendants convicted of meth
manufacture, mail-order restrictions, coordinated law enforcement,
public/private education programs, public health monitoring and research.

Further scientific study is critical because there is currently no
specific treatment protocol for meth. Our administration is funding
research in this area. This terrible drug affects brain chemistry for
up to six months following a binge, say Dr. Alan Leshner, director of
the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Because this synthetic drug is
cheaper than cocaine, there is a greater potential for widespread abuse.

Meth is associated with permanent brain damage in long-term users.
There has also been a dramatic increase in deaths connected with meth.

Meth poses a grave danger to all of us. Only by working together -- on
the national, communal and family level -- can we meet the challenge.

[sidebar]

RESEARCH ON METH LACKING

By E. Michael Gorman Special To The Post-Intelligencer - E. Michael Gorman
is a research scientist at the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute at the
University of Washington.

Methamphetamine is the most widely used synthetic drug in Washington
state and in the United States today; by almost any measure it
constitutes an epidemic.

In terms of admissions to publicly funded treatment programs in the
state, it now outranks both heroin and cocaine, and much like these
drugs, it carries significant HIV and Hepatitis C risks, both due to
injection drug use and loss of sexual inhibition.

(More than one third of those entering treatment in Washington report
histories of injection drug use; by 1998 fully half of those going
into treatment were women, far greater than is the case with cocaine
or heroin.)

Without too much exaggeration it can be said that methamphetamine
threatens the very fabric of society by its impact on police and
criminal justice systems, environmental and public health
infrastructures, substance abuse treatment programs and social and
child welfare services.

Yet we are behind the eight-ball, and much as was the case of Chicken
Little, there is much running around and shouting about the sky
falling and little coordinated national, state or regional effort to
address pressing prevention, treatment, interdiction efforts or
related research concerns.

Meth is a prime candidate to be the "crack" of the late '90s. Consider
it the drug of the millennium; it will surely be with us well over the
hump into the brave new world of 2000.

Already in Santa Clara County, California (aka Silicon Valley),
methamphetamine abuse ranks as the first drug of choice for those
entering treatment, exceeding even alcohol. Unheard of? In many
Washington communities treatment admissions have risen tenfold since
1992.

Despite its growing impact, the methamphetamine crisis has generated
little awareness and less action. Consider that on the state level
twice in the last four years modest legislative efforts to establish
statewide coordination and related efforts failed abysmally and/or got
shredded in Olympia in last-minute budgetary cutting.

No significant constituencies perhaps? Or too many?

As a state we are in potentially deep trouble because we haven't paid
attention to the painful and difficult issues in our backyards and the
way we deal with them. We haven't been able to work well together and
have not understood the need for adequate behavioral assessment
efforts linked to appropriate, and culturally informed, prevention and
treatment efforts.

Right now it seems that each constituency, each community has all the
answers. We have law enforcement on one side, other interdiction
efforts in a different corner and prevention and treatment somewhere
in the middle, not linked to or informed by current prevention or
treatment research efforts. We lack adequate data with respect to:

- - What the true scope of the problem is, demographically,
regionally,

- - Where it is going next, and how

- - What's working and what isn't in terms of law enforcement, community
and school education, prevention, treatment and

- - How these areas relate to public health prevention or treatment
sciences.

This is not to say that that such efforts couldn't be undertaken; it
is just that the understanding isn't there yet. We are not all on the
same page.

Which brings me to subject of research.

Research represents a critical component of any effective management
strategy to address the growing methamphetamine problem, along with
law enforcement, the judiciary, and prevention and treatment efforts.
Without an adequate data base informing the various other strategic
components, we will never know where we are now, where we are going or
how to get there effectively.

Let me say that no component in and of itself is sufficient to
adequately address the problem. Interdiction helps, but interdiction
alone will not suffice. We could build a wall around the state and
unless we understand the "demand" side of the equation, we will waste
millions of dollars in waging a local war on drugs.

By the same token, prevention, education and treatment programs need
to be informed by current and timely research and evaluation so that
they may be truly effective. It is all well and good that local
initiatives are taken, but unless they can be linked to other ongoing
research and evaluation efforts we will never really know which
strategies are effective.

Last month's National Institute on Drug Abuse town hall in the Seattle
area provided an excellent opportunity for this kind of interface, but
much more is needed. In particular, there need to be expanded
community and school assessment, data collection, epidemiological,
behavioral, prevention efforts linked to treatment and judiciary and
law enforcement initiatives.

Washington's methamphetamine problem is complex and requires an
appropriately insightful and data-driven response. Painful as it is to
acknowledge, the problem didn't occur overnight and will not be solved
quickly.

The methamphetamine epidemic represents a serious public health threat
to the welfare of the state and its management requires all players be
at the table to develop an appropriate social and science-based policy
response.

[sidebar]

THE POWER OF METH MYSTIFIES NON-USERS

By Roger C. Lake, Special To The Post-Intelligencer - Roger C. Lake is
president of the Washington State Narcotics Investigators Association.

Substance abuse is never just someone else's problem. It is our problem --
our community's and neighbors' problem, our city's and county's problem and
our state's and nation's problem. As we move into the next millennium,
substance abuse has no socioeconomic boundaries. The most devastating
effect substance abuse has is the negative impact on the next generation.

If you play Trivial Pursuit with crime statistics, your answer is Substance
Abuse to any question involving the cause for most crimes. Substance
abuse-related crime is what law enforcement is spending its time and our
tax dollars on, to investigate, prosecute and incarcerate the entrepreneurs
that deal in the taking of souls -- our youth's, our families' and
friends', our colleagues' and neighbors' souls.

Pharmacologist Lewis Lewin once said: "Those who believe they can enter the
temple of happiness through this gate of pleasure, purchase their momentary
delights at the cost of body and soul. They speedily pass through the gate
of unhappiness into the night of the abyss."

Our government services were able to hold substance abuse in socially
acceptable abeyance until methamphetamine entered the picture. Washington
state is receiving literally tons of meth from southern California and
Mexico every year.

For the same positive reasons that we are a leading international port,
Washington state is, unfortunately, a destination state for meth
entrepreneurs. We also hold title as one of the leading states for the
number of meth labs in the nation. Are you aware that we have more meth
labs per capita than California?

The other unbelievable truths in our state are that we export meth and that
treatment facilities have waiting lists up to four months long for
court-ordered treatment. We have so many meth labs in our state that there
is usually a two-day wait before the Department of Ecology can dismantle
these extremely hazardous labs. We also are finding that traditional drug
treatment has a very low success rate for meth addicts.

It only takes 20 minutes to manufacture methamphetamine. Every ingredient
used to produce this drug can be purchased legally over the counter.

Pierce County leads the world (yes, the world), in the sale of lithium
batteries. Lithium is a key ingredient in manufacturing meth.

Some retail outlets sell pseudo ephedrine, a key ingredient in cold
medicine, at 10 times the regular retail cost to meth manufacturers. They
claim no knowledge of what it is used for, yet know full well it is
poisoning our society.

Anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer used throughout the state, also is employed
in meth manufacturing. It sells on the market for roughly $1.15 a gallon.
Anhydrous ammonia is stolen or purchased by criminals and sold for $100 a
gallon to meth cooks.

It is not uncommon to locate dumpsites with hazardous chemicals in urban,
rural and park areas. We are also finding sites with up to 3,000 empty
pseudoephedrine bottles, which indicate large-production meth labs in the area.

Why is this drug so popular? Why are 92 percent of the people who use meth
addicted to it? Recent studies of the brain are proving that
neuro-adaptation takes place in the brain's pleasure center, causing our
brains to crave only methamphetamine over love, food, shelter and parenting.

The power of meth to take control of a person's life is absolutely
unimaginable to anyone who is not under meth's control. When a meth addict
is given the choice between caring for his or her children or taking meth,
the meth addict will always pick meth.

On a daily basis, police officers arrest people, your loved ones, friends
and neighbors, who make this very choice. Imagine the craving you would
have for water if you went without for three days. What would you do to
obtain water, for you and your child? Once meth takes over, you will
forsake everything else.

It has nothing to do with will power, status, money, love or devotion. Our
most daunting problem is that 25,000 of our high school students have used
meth in the last 30 days.

Education is an integral part of the solution -- prevent people from ever
taking meth. Virtually every discipline involved in substance abuse issues
is totally overwhelmed. We desperately need your involvement to stop the
infusion of one of the most powerful central nervous system stimulants
known to man.

In 1940 President Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt said: "Narcotics is the worst
of all crimes except murder and perhaps even more offensive against society
than murder itself. In the case of murder you take away the life of a
fellow human being. In the case of distributing narcotics you take away the
mind of the individual and make his life intolerable for the good of his
own soul."

If we as a society continue to allow the proliferation of meth labs and
use, we will certainly pay a much higher price in the future. Personal
safety, abused children, domestic violence, dysfunctional families, lost
lives and an overburdened judicial system will result. When we allow
illegal behavior to continue we are paying for it many times over in our
future.

We need the cooperation of manufacturers, retailers and all citizens. The
meth epidemic is way too big and much too complicated for law enforcement
or any other discipline to handle independently.

We must all participate in finding the most effective and efficient
solutions to this overwhelming problem. An easy way to educate yourself
about meth addiction and its effects is to call the Washington State
Alcohol and Drug Clearinghouse at 1-800-662-9111 and ask for free brochures
and related Web
sites.