GET INVOLVED IN GETTING RID OF METH

For the past week, The Paris News has looked at a growing problem for
Paris and Lamar County in a six-part series: =93Methamphetamine: The
Rural Epidemic.=94

Methamphetamine is running neck-and-neck with crack cocaine as the
illicit drug of choice in Paris and Lamar County. It's a growing
problem, since 85 to 90 percent of all crime nowadays is linked
directly or indirectly to drugs.

Methamphetamine can be cooked in a kitchen or motel room in as little
as three hours, and the ingredients can be bought locally from an
assortment of local businesses.

Bills have been filed in the Texas Legislature to require a
prescription to obtain cold, cough and allergy pills -- from which meth
cooks extract ephedrine, a necessary ingredient of
methamphetamine.

In the meantime, as our series has shown, pharmacies and others who
sell the pills have taken steps on their own -- primarily because of
increased theft losses -- to move the medication to secured areas.

Our series also discovered that there are those who don't want to
discourage the business of those who need hundreds of the pills for
every batch of methamphetamine they cook.

=93There are some small stores that will take orders for how many pills
you want. There's always somebody willing to make a buck,=94 noted Sgt.
Jeff Springer, head of the narcotics division of the Paris Police
Department.

Tommy Moore, an officer with the Red River Valley Drug Task Force,
told us: =93I'm not going to say where, but there are such places within
our (five-county) jurisdiction.=94

All this to produce a drug that does tremendous harm to the human
body.

=93People hooked on meth are not eating, they're not taking care of
themselves,=94 said Lt. Don Fleming, head of the task force. =93You know,
your body no longer craves food and nutrients. All it wants is meth.
You just can't do that to your body, go 12 or 14 days without
sleeping, along with the chemical changes that meth is causing to your
brain.=94

Aside from the crime problem associated with meth -- and the incredible
health concerns of those who inject, snort or smoke it -- our series
also pointed out the incredible danger of amateurs dealing with
chemicals that are highly inflammatory and toxic.

=93We've got people dealing with hazardous and volatile chemicals that
have no real training, but somebody showed them, or they read
something on the Internet, and they think they know what they're
doing,=94 Fleming said.

=93They didn't pass high school science, but they=92re out there thinking
they're a chemist now. They=92re mixing things together without any
understanding of what it is that they're doing, and the potential for
danger is just incredible.=94

Add to that the environmental concerns -- after the meth is done, these
amateur cooks take their trash, all their leftover stuff, and toss it
out on the side of the road, or in somebody's pasture, or down the
drain, or into the city water supply.

How can you help?

Drug task force officers on every level say it's input from common
citizens that has proved most valuable to them.

=93Somebody tells us that somebody has dumped a lab on the side of the
road, and it leads us in the right direction. Or maybe somebody
complains about a peculiar smell, and we track it down, and it takes
us to a lab,=94 Fleming said.

=93Or perhaps the employees of a store, who are sharp enough to realize
that when someone comes in and buys 30 or 40 boxes of matches, or four
cases of starter fluid, or a case of coffee filters and a case of nail
polish remover, that that's not a normal purchase, and gives us a call.=94

We encourage you, as citizens, to keep the ball rolling. Call the
police, the sheriff's office or Crime Stoppers whenever you become
suspicious of things going on around you.

Get an address where strange behavior is occurring, perhaps an
automobile license plate number.

=93Truthfully, just telling us that somebody came in and bought all this
stuff, that doesn't do us any good, by itself,=94 Fleming said.

=93If they can't give us a direction to look, if they can=92t give us
something to tie suspicious purchases to, all that does is confirm
what we already know, that there are a lot of people making meth
around here.=94