THE WAR ON METH

Congress is becoming a bigger player in the war on methamphetamines,
which have spread from a mostly West Coast plague to a national
scourge. In so doing, Congress is finding itself at odds with the Bush
administration about where meth belongs on the national priority list.

The geographically spotty nature of the methamphetamine problem had
been a political liability in the 1990s. It was hard to drum up
support in Congress for the anti-meth effort when many lawmakers
didn't know much about it.

But it was a growing menace in the West and a few other states. In
2000, Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, and about 20 other House members
created the bipartisan Congressional Caucus to Fight and Control
Methamphetamine. The mission of the "Meth Caucus" is to educate the
rest of the 435 representatives about the scourge of methamphetamine
addiction and get more money to fight it.

But in the aftermath of 9/11, the administration tilted away from
grants directly to local police departments for anti-drug programs in
favor of funneling money via the Department of Homeland Security.
President Bush's proposed 2006 budget would make even more drastic
cuts in law enforcement grants.

In the meantime, the Meth Caucus now has about 100 members and a
growing influence. The Los Angeles Times last week wrote, "The Bush
administration's effort to shift federal money away from traditional
police programs and toward anti-terrorism measures is running into a
tough obstacle: the growing 'meth caucus' in Congress. (Its) influence
reflects the political pressures created by the spread of
methamphetamine through rural communities in the Midwest, where some
police agencies are besieged.

"It also shows a modest swing of the pendulum back toward domestic
concerns, such as the drug war, that were once priorities but were
overshadowed by the post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism push."

In Clark County alone last year there were nearly 20 meth lab busts,
and meth was implicated in thousands of criminal cases, many of them
burglaries and robberies to get money to buy more meth.

Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., who, like Baird, was one of the original
four chairs of the Meth Caucus, said "The problem has grown faster
than the money chasing the problem."

Baird this month was instrumental in winning approval of an amendment
to an appropriations bill that earmarks $20 million to fight
international meth trafficking (read: from Mexico, source of much West
Coast meth) and improve investigation and prosecution of meth offenses.

Meanwhile, the Senate is making progress on legislation that would do
nationally what some states, including Washington, have done to fight
meth production: limit the sale of cold remedies containing a meth
ingredient.

There's no good news in the spread of meth, but expansion of the
problem across the country has, in turn, meant more clout for the war
against it.