METH AND MENTAL ILLNESS

The methamphetamine epidemic began in the West and is moving east, with
devastating effect.

The drug is now affecting urban, rural and suburban communities nationwide.

For county governments across America, meth abuse causes legal, medical,
environmental and social problems.

County governments and their citizens must pay for investigating and
closing meth labs (which are hazardous waste sites), making arrests,
incarcerating and trying lawbreakers, and providing treatment for addiction
as well as other serious medical consequences.

Meth's Effects Profound

There are also many social effects that must be dealt with.

In an alarming number of meth arrests there are children in the home, who
often suffer from neglect and abuse.

Highly flammable and explosive compounds make the labs a danger to the
community, and for every pound of meth produced five to seven pounds of
toxic waste remain, which is often released into the environment through
drains or surface water run-off.

Nowhere in Maricopa County has the meth epidemic's impact been felt more
severely than in our jails.

There are over 9,200 inmates in our jail system and the population
continues to accelerate. While our Commission of Justice System
Intervention for the Seriously Mentally Ill has been working to divert the
mentally ill out of our jails, we have discovered there is a connection
between the meth epidemic and mental illness.

Here are a few facts: 95 percent of our inmate population is in jail
directly or indirectly as a result of drug or alcohol use.

About 25 percent receive psychotropic drugs prescribed by our correctional
health doctors to treat the symptoms of mental illness. Cost to the tax
payers last year was over $5 million.

Methamphetamine poses much different physical, emotional and mental effects
on its users than cocaine, heroin, marijuana and most illegal drugs. While
coming down from the "high" created by the use of meth is easier in many
ways than from these other addictive drugs, meth drains its users to the
point of total physical and emotional collapse. It creates severe
depression and paranoia and very often near-permanent mental illness, which
then must be treated with anti-depressants and behavioral therapies in
order to restore the balance of healthy cognitive skills required to
function in society.

Sound The Alarm

We now realize our growing jail population may indeed be a result of the
explosion of meth amphetamine use. With tax monies, we are funding the
prescribed drugs and counseling to treat meth-addicted inmates who must
deal with the consequent symptoms of mental illness.

We continue to seek better programs and solutions to these difficult
problems. We need to sound the alarm to our youth and to every potential
meth user in our community.