WITH INTRODUCTIONS FINISHED, GROUP BEGINS TACKLING METH EPIDEMIC

Over the next three weeks, a group of Casper citizens will whittle
down suggestions on how the city can treat and curtail methamphetamine use.

Introductions and anecdotal information was presented at the first
Community Facilitation Initiative meeting. A 22-member local citizens
committee who volunteered their services for the project will spend
the next several weeks discussing solutions to the community problem.

Speakers, including Casper Police Chief Tom Pagel and Mike Houston,
the executive director of the Central Wyoming Counseling Center,
helped describe the group's mission.

Pagel told the group that he'd given his first speech about the drug
14 years ago, when the state was starting to see a shift in
preference from cocaine to meth.

"Now it is time for action," he told the group.

He described for the group the rush that accompanies a 50 milligram
methamphetamine hit and the speed by which a user's heart rate and
drive increase The sensation typically lasts around 10 hours and is
about as safe as dropping a HEMI engine inside a Volkswagen Beetle, Pagel said.

He said that users described the drug as "greatest feeling they ever
had multiplied by 100," and that coming down was "the worst feeling
multiplied by 100." In 2004, 18 meth labs were busted in Wyoming,
which Pagel said was an atypically low number, based on recent trends.

Many on the citizens committee were familiar with such information.
The group included former law enforcement officers, local counselors,
health officials and the owner of a company that cleans up meth labs.

But some were less entrenched in the effort. Jill Wright, a teacher
at Dean Morgan Junior High School, asked Pagel how most users ingest
the drug. He told her it was a toss-up between smoking it and
injecting it with a needle.

Current and former Wyoming first ladies Nancy Freudenthal and Jane
Sullivan stopped by the day-long meeting at 10:30 a.m. to commend
those in attendance for taking on the problem.

In all, 12 speakers addressed the committee and defined the problem
from their respective professions.

The meetings are expected to bring about suggestions for how Casper
can better deal with the drug. Those suggestions could include new
state legislation, more city funding for treatment centers.

"Anything's possible," said Mary Louise Zander, co-owner of the
Business Resource Group, which put the project together.

Four additional meetings will take place this week, from 6:30-9 p.m.
at the old Coliseum Motors building at Collins and Wolcott avenues.
The public is encouraged to attend, and public comments will be heard
the last 30 minutes of each of the meetings.