THREATENED BY METH

Drug A Growing Danger To Ky.'s Young People

Children scavenging for food in chaotic homes; burned or hurt by dangerous
chemicals or explosions; so contaminated they have to be stripped and
washed when they are found.

These are not images from Fallujah or Calcutta, Afghanistan or the Congo.

These are images from Kentucky. This year. Today.

An initiative announced last week to train people to identify and help
children who have been exposed to methamphetamine and its toxic production
brought into focus some rarely seen victims of Kentucky's latest illegal
drug of choice and profit.

Meth began making its way into Kentucky in the late 1990s, starting in the
west, where law enforcement officials now consider it the leading illegal drug.

Meth lab seizures in Kentucky have skyrocketed from 66 in 1999 to 515 in a
little over 11 months this year. There were children in 66, or almost 13
percent, of the labs seized this year.

The "high" that meth delivers can last for hours or days. The central
nervous system stimulation combined with sleep deprivation can make users
delusional, paranoid and violent in the short term, experts say.

Long-term physical effects include liver, kidney and lung damage and
increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke.

And that's the impact on the people who choose to use it.

"This drug probably impacts more of our society than any other drug we have
or will ever have," Kentucky State Police Major Mike Sapp said last week.
Sapp, a 32-year veteran of the drug wars, is commander of the special
enforcement troop that includes drug enforcement.

Like any destructive habit, meth use affects the people who use it and
those around them.

But beyond that, simply being exposed to the ingredients -- which can
include battery acid and the fertilizer anhydrous ammonia -- is dangerous.
Explosions, fires and burns from the caustic ingredients are common. Places
where meth is made or where waste products from production are dumped must
be cleaned up as hazardous sites.

Medical and social workers find children with lung and brain damage,
pneumonia and skin sores from exposure to meth. That's in addition to the
neglect.

"It's hard to make meth your No. 1 priority and not put your kids at the
bottom of the list," said Kate Finnearty, a child protective services
worker in Western Kentucky.

Yet meth is relatively new enough in Kentucky that many doctors, teachers,
social workers and others who deal with children have not learned to read
the signs of exposure to it. The initiative brings in national experts to
conduct crash courses on detecting and dealing with signs of exposure or use.

It's a laudable and necessary effort but, by no means, a solution to the
problems that the spread of meth presents.

Meth is relatively easy to make; production is portable and quick. The U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency notes that some marijuana growers have shifted to
meth "to realize the greater profit margin and diminished threat from law
enforcement." A portable lab is harder to detect than cannabis growing in
the field.

Sapp predicts that the full impact from meth is yet to come. Most users are
25 to 35, he said, but that will drop into the teens as meth becomes more
readily available.

Like meth itself, and the images of children hurt by it, that is something
to keep us all awake at night.