VERMONT EMERGENCY WORKERS TO LEARN METH DANGERS

RUTLAND, VT - Vermont State Police and a number of other state
agencies are helping to put together a program to train emergency
workers about the dangers of methamphetamine.

The drug is cheap, addictive and easy to make from legal
ingredients.

It also carries with it the dangers of lab explosions, poisonous gas
or chemical contamination from the production process.

That's why the liquor control commission, the health department and
the police academy are working with state police to recognize the
signs and dangers of methamphetamine labs.

"It's an untraditional type program," said John D'Esposito, an
investigator with the Vermont Department of Liquor Control, Education,
Licensing and Enforcement, at the first training, held last month in
Rutland.

"This is a first-responders safety piece for college security
personnel, firefighters, rescue personnel. We should call it "Be
Safe," he said.

The timing and location of the training were prompted by the June
arrest of two Arkansas men accused of setting up the first meth lab in
the state in years, according to Cynthia Taylor-Patch, training
coordinator for the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council.

"A lot of the time these labs are discovered because they explode,"
Taylor-Patch said. "We haven't had any meth labs discovered in years
and now there's been two discovered in Rutland County in the last year."

Taylor-Patch said the state hoped to prevent problems that have
plagued Western states.

"It's a huge problem nationally and we've been sort of sheltered here,
but we're perfect territory, unfortunately, because we're a rural
state," she said.

Regardless of where training programs go, Detective Michael Smith of
the Vermont State Police said, methamphetamine production uses easily
available, and potentially dangerous, chemicals.

Smith hammered home the dangers inherent in methamphetamine labs with
photos of chemical contaminants and exploded buildings at the
training, counseling the first responders to resist instincts to go in
and help.

"All it takes to make meth is a bowl, a grinder and a heat source," he
said, recalling a training class he took where two boxes of Sudafed
were transformed into $300 worth of methamphetamine, "It's very east
to make. Anything you need to make meth is legally available.