LEGISLATORS LOOK TO TACKLE METH ISSUE

HELENA -- Criminal impulses were the last thing on Wendy Walraven's mind
when she started using meth. The mother of three wanted to be all the
things society asked of her: efficient at work, keeper of a clean house,
well groomed, talkative and vivacious.

And it worked. Until meth unraveled her world. Today, she idles in the
Montana Women's Prison in Billings -- a criminal. Wendy and dozens like her
behind bars have an eye-level perspective on the problem lawmakers, state
Corrections Department officials and Gov. Brian Schweitzer are trying to
fix in the 2005 Legislature.

Schweitzer has publicly stated his hope to use prevention and treatment --
lockdown, if necessary -- to break meth's tightening hold on Montana. A
stack of bills addressing meth in some form are pending in the 2005
session, including one that would curtail how, where and in what quantity
the cold medicine -- at the heart of methamphetamine's manufacture -- could
be sold in the state.

But will these efforts succeed or will they merely make lawmakers look and
feel good for trying?

One of the bills generating the most attention is Senate Bill 287,
sponsored by Sen. Trudi Schmidt, D-Great Falls. This bill, patterned after
a similar law in Oklahoma that has been copied by a host of other states,
would limit the number of doephedrine or ephedrine, like Sudafed,
containing cold and allergy tablets meth cookers need to make the drug,
could buy.

People could purchase only two packages or nine grams of the products in
any 30-day period. The medicines could be sold solely at pharmacies and
would be available only behind the counter, so people couldn't steal them.
People would also have to sign for the medicine and show some kind of
identification. The store would be required to keep those records for two
years.

"To me, it's a no-brainer," Schmidt said. "You want to make it as
inaccessible as possible."

The illegal drug is made by refining the ephedrine or pseudoephedrine out
of the pills, then cooking the drug with any number of common substances to
create a different, more potent chemical: methamphetamine. While meth
recipes abound, one thing most have in common is ephedrine or
pseudoephedrine, usually derived from everyday, over-the-counter medicines.

By limiting access to those legal medicines, meth manufacturers would have
a harder time making their drug, Schmidt said. Plus, law enforcement would
have a record of who bought pills, when and where.

The idea led to a sharp decline in the number of meth labs busted in
Oklahoma, from 100 labs found a month in 2003 to about 20 today,
information from that state shows.

Attorney General Mike McGrath said he supported the bill, but it may not
have the same powerful impact on meth in Montana.

"Between 80 and 85 percent of the meth we see is coming from either
California or Mexico," he said.

Glenda Rolle, a 36-year-old mother of two serving time at the women's
prison for meth possession, said cookers already know they can't buy large
quantities of cold medicine without alerting suspicions. Many already buy
the raw ingredients for meth one package at a time from stores all around
town. Some meth cookers even give a discount to their customers if they
bring in a box of cold pills.

"I know a lot of people that offer big bucks to go steal Sudafed," Walraven
said.

She suggests lawmakers make such medicines available only by prescription.
A bill to do just that was defeated on the House floor last week.

McGrath said he supports SB287. While it may not radically curtail the
number of meth labs in Montana, any lab is dangerous, prone to explosions
and environmental contamination due to all the harsh chemicals cookers mix
together to make meth.

Another bill, SB166, by Sen. Jerry Black, R-Shelby, would make it a felony
to steal anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer sometimes used to cook meth. The
bill unanimously sailed out of the Senate.

But a person can make meth without anhydrous ammonia.

"It's one of the favorite (recipes) right now," said Jamie Strohecker, 23,
mother of a 17-month-old baby and a prison inmate serving time for meth.
"There's tons of different ways."

One cheap substitute for fertilizer is the "strike strip" on a book of matches.

"Everybody that I now that was going out and stealing anhydrous weren't
really thinking about a felony," Rolle said.

Still, McGrath said the bill was important because it's just one more way
to make the manufacture of meth difficult.

The Lee Newspapers State Bureau spoke with four women serving time for
meth; three of them had children. All pointed to one overriding problem:
Right now, a person who has a felony drug conviction doesn't qualify for
welfare. That means she doesn't qualify for publicly funded child care or
food stamps. That makes it very difficult for former addicts to change
their lives when they get out of prison, especially if they have children.

"The majority of us, when we get out of here, we're on our own," Strohecker
said. "And you're struggling. It's like you're butting your head up against
a brick wall."

Plus, said Mona Sumner, clinical director of Rimrock Foundation, a Billings
treatment center with a wing for addicted mothers, most of the handful of
meth treatment centers that allow women to get help and keep their children
are funded, in part, with welfare money. If you don't qualify for welfare,
you can't get in.

"We have had to turn some patients away," she said.

The inmates described themselves in a nearly impossible situation: After
years of addiction, ruined credit and shattered job history, they will be
starting from scratch the day they get out of prison. They will have to get
a job that pays enough to cover rent, food, health care, daycare and
clothes -- a daunting task for someone who's never touched meth, to say
nothing of a recovering addict.

"When you relapse again, the first person to open their arms to you is a
dealer," Strohecker said.

All the women said they deserved to be punished for using meth, but denying
recovering addicts services only pushes them to the margins of society,
where they're likely to start using again and costing taxpayers even more
money.

Schmidt's SB29, which passed nearly unanimously out of the Senate last
month, would remove that welfare restriction. Murderers and child molesters
can get welfare and food stamps, she said. Why should we deny those things
to addicted mothers?

"The ones that want to change and better their lives, we should do whatever
we can to help them," she said.

Schweitzer has stressed drug prevention programs to cut down on meth use.
The former addicts interviewed said prevention classes, perhaps as part of
regular classroom studies, could work, but it's got to be realistic.

You can't just scare kids by telling them meth will instantly ruin their
lives, Rolle said. Because at first, meth will actually seem to make their
lives better.

"These programs start out telling all the negative factors about meth," she
said. "And a kid goes out and tries it and has a great time. All of a
sudden, they have all the energy to do their job after school. Then, all
we've done is made ourselves look like liars."

Rolle's first experiences with meth were really positive. The first three
months she used, Rolle dropped from a size 22 to a size 9-10. Talk about
positive reinforcement. But by the time meth started ruining her life, she
was addicted and couldn't stop.

All the inmates said meth was really great at first. Strohecker went from a
shy introvert longing for friends, to a popular, talkative socialite. They
lost weight. They had more energy.

It would take a serious prevention program to convince women that being
slender, popular and energetic is bad.

But eventually, Walraven said, "you lose everything. I've lost everything.
It's a downward slide. And I've tried to tell people. But right now they're
really enjoying it."

Rep. Rosie Buzzas, D-Missoula, has a measure, HB73, that would allow
residents of counties or cities to tax themselves to pay for drug and
alcohol prevention programs. The bill is now pending before the House.
Buzzas has stressed the money should go only to programs that are
scientifically proven to reduce drug use.

One thing everyone seems to agree on is that Montana's criminal justice
system needs to change to deal with the new face of crime in the state.
Nearly 200 women are locked up at the women's prison, agency information
shows. About 85 percent are nonviolent offenders; almost all of them
addicted to something, usually meth.

The average yearly cost for one woman behind bars is $26,955. For men, it's
$29,678.

About half -- 47 percent --are not there because they are so dangerous, a
judge sentenced them to prison, but because they could not stay away from
drugs and alcohol while on probation.

State Corrections Director Bill Slaughter wrote in an open letter to
lawmakers that the state must find better, cheaper ways of dealing with
addicts.

Meth has clearly changed the task of the Corrections Department, Slaughter
wrote. As it stands, the state's prisons are growing at about 4 to 5
percent a year. His agency asked lawmakers to begin considering adding 500
new prison cells to the state's system.

But the agency also had good luck with lockdown treatment for alcoholics
and supports the idea of a lockdown treatment center for meth -- an idea
Schweitzer also endorses.

Even without changing the state's laws, at least part of the corrections
system is already moving in that direction. The Montana Women's Prison
recently replaced the institution's in-house boot camp program, which
attempted to reform young criminals with strict, military discipline, with
a "therapeutic community" wing, modeled after traditional substance abuse
treatment centers.

Women in the program live in a special, less restrictive part of the
prison. They don't have cells, but group bedrooms, said Linda Bofto, an
addictions counselor at the prison. The idea is not to merely lock up the
women, but to teach them how to be adults in society, sort an immersion
program for appropriate behavior and healthy thinking.

"They're learning a whole new language," she said. Every woman has a job.
They are taught how to confront each other appropriately, how to talk about
their feelings and, ultimately, how to think and act in a healthy, new way.

The program lasts up to six months, when the women will go to a prerelease
center to put their skills to use.

"The warden has a goal of doing it prison-wide," Bofto said.

Sumner said the state needs a whole new philosophy on dealing with meth.
She wrote her ideas in a letter to the governor.

Right now, she said, the state doesn't seem very serious about treating
criminal addicts. Yellowstone County receives a total of about $175,000
from the state for substance abuse treatment, she said. That's about what
it costs to keep seven women in prison for a year, to say nothing of the
cost of foster care for her children while she's incarcerated.

"The state of Montana needs to pony up," she said.

Rimrock Foundation's Michel's House, the only meth treatment center in
Billings that allows women with children, has room for only six families at
a time. The city needs at least two more.

"We turn down about two people a week," she said.

There are only two other facilities like Michel's House in the state, one
in Great Falls and one in Missoula.

There is also a terrible shortage of "clean and sober" housing for people
who want to get clean, but don't need to actually live at the center,
Sumner said.

Sumner also said the state needs to seriously expand the few drug courts in
Montana. Drug courts fuse the criminal justice system with treatment, by
sentencing addicts to treatment outside the prison system.

"But we need enough treatment dollars to be able to service the needs of
those courts," she said. "We know what works. If our goal is to reduce
prison beds, the state needs to put some money into this."