REPORT ON METH DISPUTED LOCALLY

Methamphetamine is not the epidemic politicians and the media claim
it to be, according to a report from the Sentencing Project. But,
officials in the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office say the drug is a
significant problem locally.

"Mischaracterizing the impact of methamphetamine by exaggerating its
prevalence and consequences while downplaying its receptivity to
treatment succeeds neither as a tool of prevention nor as a vehicle
of education," wrote analyst Ryan King in his report.

The report compiled statistics from government studies performed in
2004 that show that 583,000 people, or less than two-tenths of 1
percent of the U.S. population, had used methamphetamine in the last month.

By contrast, four times as many people regularly use cocaine and 30
times as many use marijuana, the report said.

"Nationally that may be true, but in Mendocino County it's the
opposite," Commander Bob Nishiyama of the Mendocino County Major
Crimes Task Force said of the report's findings.

A separate government survey highlighted in the report showed that
methamphetamine use among high school students dropped 36 percent
between 2001 and 2005. Overall, use has remained stable since 1999,
according to the report.

Nishiyama said the creation, sale and use of methamphetamine appears
to be on the rise in Mendocino County. He said many of the people
arrested in the county have some amount of methamphetamine in their
system and that there is a direct correlation between methamphetamine
use in this county and rates of domestic violence and other violence crimes.

Nishiyama said he thought the report was self-serving and did not put
a lot of faith in its validity. The Sentencing Project is a nonprofit
organization that supports alternatives to incarceration for
convicted drug users and other criminals.

The report acknowledged that methamphetamine use is more widespread
than it was 10 years ago, but stated that data from the jail system
shows methamphetamine to be a "highly localized" problem.

Data collected from jails showed that in five cities in the Western
United States, the percentage of suspects who tested positive for
methamphetamine was more than 25 percent, according to the report.
Three of those cities -- San Diego, Los Angeles and San Jose -- are
in California.

Nationally, only 5 percent of arrested suspects tested positive for
methamphetamine, compared to 30 percent who tested positive for
cocaine and 44 percent who tested positive for marijuana, according
to the report.

"This is where it all got started," Nishiyama said. "California has
led the rest of the country in meth labs, but the rest of the country
is catching up."

In San Francisco, gangs have turned from selling crack-cocaine to
selling methamphetamine "because there's more money in it," Nishiyama
said. Thefts of pseudoephedrine are also increasing statewide, he said.

Currently, California is working on a law that would require anyone
who sells medications containing pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient
in methamphetamine, to keep those items locked up in the back of the
store. It is already illegal for a person to purchase more than three
items containing pseudoephedrine from a single store.