METH DEALS DEATH

Stupidity and undisciplined desires -- not methamphetamine
- -- killed two children, 2 and 5 years old, Thursday at Briggs.

Their lives and the lives of two men, George Leach and George Shell,
were wiped out in a mobile home fire, which authorities say resulted
from a "meth lab fire."

Methamphetamine has been a scourge nationwide and in eastern Oklahoma
since the early 1990s. Controlling illegal meth production has been
time consuming for law officers, prosecutors and courts and expensive
for taxpayers. The state has spent millions on cleanup costs of toxic
chemicals, and firefighters and innocent children have been put at
risk because of illegal meth cooks who start fires.

Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs, said officials estimate 5 to 10 percent of fires in
Oklahoma begin with the ignition of flammable chemicals used in
illegal meth production. The latest nationwide statistics also show
methamphetamine was involved in about 13,500 emergency calls in the
United States in 2000, and that increased to more than 17,000 calls in
2002, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center.

Those calls represent, as does the emergency call Thursday in Briggs,
wasted lives -- lives in danger because of the desire for a drug that
can't offer healing from disease or escape from troubles.

All that meth can offer is addiction, paranoia, anxiety and a host of
physical ailments. And in its production, meth offers dangerous fumes,
fire and death.

But meth isn't the root cause. It's people unwilling to confront their
problems, seeking answers in something that can't satisfy, and so
desperate they hurt themselves and those who are most vulnerable --
children.