METH REPLACING MARIJUANA AS TEENS' HIGH OF CHOICE

Drug Devastates Young In Certain Areas

LAKE ELMO, Minn. - They sit at a cafeteria table, gossiping and snacking
during a school field trip.

"Have you seen him? Has he gained the weight back?" one girl asked.

"Yeah, he looked so good," replied another from across the table. "His
cheeks filled in."

It's no casual lunchtime conversation. The teen they're talking about is a
recovering methamphetamine addict -- and so are several of the teens at the
table, all of them students who attend alternative high schools in the St.
Paul, Minn., area and who are trying to get their lives back on track.

While the methamphetamine epidemic often has been associated with drug labs
hidden away in the countryside, today's users frequently defy that image,
whether they are urban professionals or suburban homemakers.

Minnesota has been dealing with all of the above and is home to another
scary trend: Here, many young people and experts who monitor drug use agree
that meth is steadily replacing marijuana as the teenage drug of choice.

"Meth is the thing. It's what everybody wants to do," said Anthony, a
17-year-old student at Sobriety High School in St. Paul who first tried
meth at age 13 and has been in recovery since he overdosed last summer. He
and other students from alternative learning programs were allowed to speak
on the condition that their last names not be used.

Though statistics show that meth use among teens and middle-school students
has been level for the past few years, experts caution that those numbers
can be deceiving since meth seems to spread in pockets, leaving some
regions or populations relatively untouched while others are devastated.

"Meth is an oddball in that way," says Caleb Banta-Green, an epidemiologist
at the University of Washington's Alcohol & Drug Abuse Institute. "You
never know where it's going to hit."

But when it does, it often hits hard -- with few states evading meth's
reach in one population or another, including young people.

In Nebraska, for instance, two 20-year-olds who were high on meth froze to
death after getting lost in a snowstorm in January. And in Oregon,
officials recently reported that meth is now second only to marijuana --
surpassing alcohol -- as the drug that sends the most teens to treatment in
that state.

Nebraska and Oregon are among the nearly two dozen states that have
entrenched meth problems, most of them in the West and Midwest, according
to state-by-state advisories the Drug Enforcement Administration released
this year. And the DEA says meth is a growing concern in sections of nearly
every other state.

"It's here and it's ravaging our kids," said Dave Ettesvold, a drug
counselor at two high schools in the St. Paul area, including Harmony
Alternative Learning Center in Maplewood.

Already in Minnesota, a fifth of addicts who entered drug treatment for
meth use last year were younger than 18, according to Carol Falkowski, a
researcher at the nonprofit Hazelden Foundation, who tracks the state's
drug trends for the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Many teens say they like the long-lasting effects, including an "in
control" feeling and the ability to focus and stay up for hours.

"I just felt invincible," said Summers, a 15-year-old student at Harmony,
who got her first hit of meth at age 13 from a friend's drug-dealing older
brother. "You feel like you're better or stronger than everybody."

Summers smoked the drug, which also can be injected, snorted or taken
orally. But she quickly became so hooked that "if it fell on the chair, I'd
lick it off the chair."

It didn't take long for the effects -- emotional and physical -- to turn ugly.

"I'd look in the mirror and my face would look yellow. I'd say, 'I gotta
stop for a while or my mom will find out,'" Summers said.

Indeed, the physical effects of methamphetamine use are often jarring, from
sunken eyes and bone-thin frames to teeth that turn gray and deteriorate.

Changes in behavior also are common, with many meth users becoming edgy,
aggressive and paranoid.

Many Minnesotans are pinning their hopes on a proposed law that would make
it difficult for anyone to buy large quantities of cold medicine that
contains pseudoephedrine, a main ingredient in meth. A few states,
including Kentucky, Oklahoma and Illinois, have passed such laws.