OFFICIALS: METH IS THE NEXT DRUG TO FIGHT

As city officials and health care advocates increase their efforts to
prevent OxyContin and heroin abuse in Gloucester, they are also wary
of a drug that has slowly moved toward the East Coast:
methamphetamine. "It really is coming, and we are not going to be
exempt from this at all," Jack Vondras, the city's director of public
health, said of the drug, commonly known as meth. During a discussion
Tuesday of an opiate-use report completed by the Healthy Gloucester
Collaborative, questions from city health officials turned toward
meth, which has devastated parts of the Midwest. Getting prepared
Meth, or ice, is a highly addictive stimulant that can be either
snorted, injected, orally ingested or smoked.

It can be manufactured in labs using cold medicine containing the
drug pseudoephedrine and products available at any hardware or
convenience store. In a response to the growing problem, cold pills
containing pseudoephedrine have been pulled from store shelves in
pharmacies across the country and are now only available from a
pharmacist. "We went around to every drug store and every supermarket
with a list of articles (used to make meth)," said Kenneth Sucharski,
a Manchester police detective and head of the Cape Ann Drug Task
Force. "We went into one hardware store and the owner said, 'I sell
every one of those.'" Sucharski said within one to two years police
are expecting meth to become just as big of a problem as heroin or
OxyContin present on Cape Ann. "It makes heroin look like Christmas
candy," Sucharski said. "It's the ultimate destroyer." With
Gloucester detective Sean Connors, Sucharski said he attended special
training conducted by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency designed to
alert local police forces to the dangers of meth and its hazardous
manufacturing process. The materials cooked up to produce the drug
are highly toxic and will contaminate the ground the lab sits on. The
last major arrests on Cape Ann occured on Taylor Street in Gloucester
two years ago, when police and Drug Enforcement Administration agents
found an operational meth lab inside a married couple's locked duplex.

It was estimated that it would take $30,000 to clean up the waste
left behind. When a lab is located, a special DEA task force -
Clandestine Lab Enforcement Team - is brought in because local and
state police do not have the safety equipment needed to pull off a
raid. The agents don special suits with portable oxygen tanks to
protect them from the deadly gases produced by the chemicals. "It's
so volatile and so explosive that the automatic weapons have a flash
suppressor on the end of the weapons," Sucharski said. "I can't tell
you what it smells like because there's nothing else that it smells
like." Prevalent in Midwest In rural communities across the Midwest
and West Coast, meth labs have sapped local resources.

Harsher laws have done little to prevent mothers - more than 50
percent of meth users are believed to be women - from cooking
chemicals and exposing their children to the harmful vapors.
According to the state of Illinois Web site, from May 16, 2005 to
Oct. 31, 2005, police found more than 109 children lived in meth lab
environments. "When it hits, it hits so hard and so fast that no
matter how well you're prepared, you're playing catch-up," said
Master Sgt. Bruce Liebe of the Illinois State Police. "It's like
trying to jump onto a moving train." He said troopers assigned to a
special meth response team have seized about 1,000 labs per year for
the last three years and are now required to undergo hazardous waste
operative training during their time in the academy. But in 1997,
when he said the drug first began to trickle into cities and towns
across the state, no one knew the effects of the chemicals found in
the labs. One trooper in southern Illinois had to retire after only
five years of service because the chemicals had so severely impacted
his lung capacity, he said. But for now on Cape Ann, heroin and other
opiates are causing the most damage. Carol Yenawine, site director of
Health Education Services on Washington Street, said that at a
state-wide meeting of methadone clinic directors last month, nearly
all reported an increase in the number of young people in their early
20s coming in for treatment for heroin and other opiate addictions.
HES is serving 150 clients with a waiting list of more than 30, she said.