LOCAL OFFICIALS ASK FOR FEDERAL HELP IN FIGHT AGAINST METH

Every day, area prosecutors and law enforcement officers battle a
"perfect storm" ravaging the community environmentally, socially,
emotionally and criminally.

On Friday, a panel of local officials asked the federal government
for help combating methamphetamine. One suggestion: Close the
borders, cut off the source.

The highly addictive drug is taking over communities, tearing apart
families, monopolizing law enforcement efforts, contributing to
violent and property crimes and affecting employers, the said.

People involved in the battle -- three district attorneys from
Northern Colorado, a sheriff, a local drug task force commander, a
county commissioner and the wife of a user who started support groups
- -- acknowledged at a U.S. congressional hearing in Loveland on Friday
that the problem and solution are complex.

Communities need treatment, prevention, intervention and more money
to battle the drug, they said.

But communities also need help cutting off the source.

In Colorado, the largest source is Mexico, said Lt. Craig Dodd,
commander of the Larimer County Drug Task Force, Denver Drug
Enforcement Administration Agent Jeffrey Sweetin and 13th Judicial
District Attorney Bob Watson.

About 80 percent of the drug consumed in the state comes from Mexico,
traveling up Interstate 25 then east and west on interstates 70 and
76. The statistic is based on a drop in small clandestine labs as
well as information gleaned in specific investigations, the officials said.

Five witnesses -- officers and prosecutors -- all suggested that
tighter border security is a necessary weapon in the battle.

However, Indiana Congressman Mark Souder -- a Republican who attended
the hearing with Colorado Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave and who
described the drug and its ripple effect as "a perfect storm" --
questioned that assertion.

After visiting a southern Border Patrol post and seeing confiscated
heroin and marijuana, he said he isn't sure.

"They're not getting any meth at the border," Souder said. "Why not?"

Is it, instead, coming from Canada? he asked. Are illegal immigrants
carrying it to the United States as passage fare?

All local investigation, said Dodd, Sweetin and Weld County Sheriff
John Cooke, points to it coming north from Mexico into Larimer and
Weld counties. They could not say how it is getting past patrols,
just that it is, and federal help is needed.

"We have to have border enforcement with all the drugs coming into
our country," Musgrave agreed.

"I daresay we have to focus on our northern borders as well."

By the Numbers

Larimer County

85 percent of adult drug court offenders listed methamphetamine as
their drug of choice in 2004.

28 percent of juvenile drug court offenders listed meth as their drug
of choice in 2005.

0 -- the number of juveniles who listed meth five years earlier.

52 children were placed out of their homes because of their parents'
meth use in the first nine months of 2005.

256 meth-related child protection investigations occurred in the same period.

12.9 pounds of methamphetamine were seized by drug officers in 2005--
almost double the amount in the two prior years.

Weld County

4 of the past five murders were meth-related.

50 percent of property crimes are linked to meth.

90 percent of forgeries are linked to meth.

183 children have mothers who, as inmates, participated in a Weld
County Jail survey about meth.

Mesa County

$3 million was saved by the building of a drug treatment facility
instead of a new jail.

$500,000 -- the amount that will be saved each year in operations
costs for the treatment facility as opposed to a jail.

Source: Witnesses at a congressional committee hearing held in Loveland