CHEYENNE TAKING COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO METH PROBLEM

CHEYENNE -- Declaring that methamphetamine abuse and addiction could not be
treated simply as a law enforcement problem, community leaders here
announced a comprehensive program to reduce meth use, including community
education, policing and drug treatment.

The Cheyenne Meth Initiative, which kicked off, seeks to make people aware
of the extent of meth's grip on Wyoming and the broad-based efforts needed
to fight it.

D. Reed Eckhardt, editor of the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle and president of the
board of the Cheyenne Meth Initiative, said many people were in denial that
meth affected their communities. He said community education was the only
way to let people know the extent of the problem.

Meth has been a problem across Wyoming. Officials in Cheyenne said they
didn't understand the extent of the problem until they heard Casper Police
Chief Tom Pagel say that meth was responsible for 80 percent of the crime
in his city. And a tribal judge on the Wind River Indian Reservation, Lynda
Munnell, was among those arrested in May in connection with a meth ring.

Police and the Laramie County Sheriff's Department said they didn't have
conclusive numbers, but that initial calculations showed that between 40
percent and 50 percent of local crimes were meth related. Most were
property crimes, but in at least one case police think a meth user was
killed over a drug debt.

Carolyn Yeaman, who works with both the Cheyenne Meth Initiative and the
Wyoming Department of Family Services, said 70 percent of first-time meth
users wound up addicted to the drug -- more than double the rate for
first-time cocaine users.

And, she said, increasingly children are being removed from their homes
because of their parents' meth problems.

Already the Cheyenne Meth Initiative has been working with retail store
managers to limit and track sales of cold medicines containing
pseudoephedrine -- a key ingredient for homemade meth.

Yeaman said it would take a comprehensive effort not only to prevent meth
abuse and addiction, but to help those who already were addicted.

"Those who make it from meth addiction have the medical, community and
family support they need to get through it," Yeaman said.

"It's not unattainable for our folks who are meth-addicted," Yeaman said.
"But boy, it certainly creates a hopeless situation."