JOINING THE FIGHT AGAINST METH

Family Protection Unit Becomes Part Of Task Force

When Attorney General Troy King announced formation of a Family
Protection Unit from within his office's staff, he detailed many of
the problems that plague families today, from abuse of children and
the elderly to identity theft.

Drugs have been known to be a serious threat to families and their
health and stability for decades. King addressed the threat from a
particular form of drug recently by appointing the director of his
Family Protection Unit as a member of the Alabama Methamphetamine Task
Force.

The task force was created by lawmakers to try to curb not only the
use, but the widespread manufacture of methamphetamine, a drug that
can be made from ingredients extracted from readily available
products. It can be produced in small labs and police are constantly
finding them, it seems, in the Northeast Alabama area. Labs have been
found in abandoned buildings, homes occupied by families, motel rooms
and even in vehicles.

Lawmakers continue to make efforts to improve the ability to prosecute
meth manufacturers, with laws making it a crime to own the precursor
ingredients needed to make the drug with the intent to
manufacture.

Law enforcement officers continue to battle the drug and are working
to educate merchants to help them detect would-be meth makers. Several
arrests have been made after store personnel alerted authorities when
someone bought large quantities of an item that could be used in the
making of meth.

The damage meth can do to families can be more serious than that of
other drugs. The manufacture of it involves toxic chemicals that can
endanger the makers and their children. King cited figures from the
Justice Department in a press release: There were about 14,260 meth
lab related incidents in 2003. In more than 10 percent of them, at
least one child was at risk.

That's more than 3,000 children who could have been affected,
including almost 1,300 incidents in which a child was exposed to toxic
chemicals.

There are other dangers - the exposure to crime and the potential for
neglect and abuse that always exists when people are using drugs.

Meth continues to demand priority from law enforcement and taxes the
supporting agencies that become involved when children are put at risk
by criminal activity.

Any assistance that may come as a result of the Family Protection
Unit's attention to the problem surely will be welcomed by those
involved in the battle against methamphetamine.