OFFICIALS TARGETING METHAMPHETAMINE MENACE

Catoosa Forming Task Force; Legislation Proposed To Limit
Over-The-Counter Medications Used For Meth

Controlling drugs containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine would give
law enforcement a shot-in-the-arm to fight the methamphetamine
epidemic, law officials said.

Officers, politicians and area residents met June 30, at the Chattooga
County Civic Center in Summerville for a state House study committee
meeting to discuss the problem.

"I hope everyone understands we have a paramount problem," said Pat
Cook, an agent on the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit Drug Task
Force. "We're dealing not with a drug problem, but with an epidemic."

State Rep. Barbara Massey Reece, D-Menlo, is spearheading the
campaign. Other committee members attending the meeting included Mike
Snow, D-Chickamauga, and Howard Mosby, D-Atlanta. State House Reps.
David Graves, R-Macon, and Curtis Jenkins, D-Forsyth, are also on the
five-member committee, but could not attend the meeting.

Ephedrine is the key ingredient in all variants of methamphetamine,
also known as meth or crank, Cook said. The task f Vanita Hullander

orce operates in Catoosa, Walker and Chattooga counties.

Many decongestants and cold medicines, such as Sudafed and Contac,
contain ephedrine, he said.

LaFayette Mayor Neal Florence, also a pharmacist at Medi-Thrift
Pharmacy, suggested classifying drugs containing ephedrine as Schedule
V drugs. He said medicine containing meth's key ingredients could
still be sold over the counter, but health care professionals would
provide the medicine to customers, who would be required to sign for
the medicine.

According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, Schedule V drugs have a low
potential for abuse, but must be regulated. An example of a Schedule V
drug is cough suppressants containing small amounts of codeine.

"I think all the members of the task force will introduce this in the
House," Snow said. "I think it's something we've got to do. If you go
buy four or five boxes of stuff like that, it's obvious what you're
going to do with it."

Phil Price, special agent in charge of the Georgia Bureau of
Investigation Regional Drug Enforcement Office, said the Oklahoma
Legislature recently passed a similar law. The number of reported meth
labs dropped 70 percent in four months.

Price also noted the number of meth labs increased in neighboring
Texas and Arkansas during the same period.

"We've got a bigger problem (in Northwest Georgia) than Oklahoma has
got," Snow said.

A working meth lab can be small enough to fit in a small cooler, and
cleanup costs for a lab that small can range from $3,000 to $5,000,
Cook said. During fiscal 2004, the task force has worked 130 labs.

Multiplying the number of cases by those conservative cleanup costs
equals about $500,000 spent annually to clean up labs, Cook said.

In addition to the costs associated with the labs, meth abusers find
themselves with failing health, Cook said.

Meth addicts typically do not resemble the rich cocaine users of the
past; rather, many of them are poor folks who seek indigent medical
assistance and further tax an overloaded healthcare system.

Curing A Social Ill

Catoosa County Coroner Vanita Hullander, who is in the process of
forming a county methamphetamine task force, said that meth is a
problem that threatens everyone's quality of life.

"The methamphetamine epidemic, in my opinion, is a hundred times worse
than the HIV epidemic for the plain and simple reason that there's
more accessibility to meth; there's more areas and opportunity for
exposure," she said. "We can't put blinders on like we did for years
and years with HIV."

The coroner said she fears that dysfunctional families, opposition to
the war in Iraq, economy-related depression and other social factors
are fueling record numbers of meth users searching for escapism
through the drug's "false euphoria that everything in the world is
just fine."

"We're worried about the devastation that the war on terrorism is
going to cause. Well, right now we have got a war on methamphetamine,"
she said. "If we don't control and try to get ahead of what's going on
with this meth epidemic, we're going to doom ourselves as a nation."

Hullander said the meth task force will bring together rehabilitative
agencies, members of the community and law enforcement for a
multi-faceted approach to tackle the problem.

"The task force is not just about trying to put everyone in jail," she
said. "We've got to have resources because there are a lot of people
out there I'm sure who want to get help to get away from
methamphetamine. Right now we're extremely short on resources."

Education efforts, particularly mentoring impressionable middle
school-age children, will be especially important, Hullander said.

"You can get through to high school students on an adult level,
whereas with middle school children you can't talk to them on an adult
level," she said. "Anytime an adult will show them attention that
they're not getting from other adults who need to be their role
models, they're going to fall into these things.

"Prevention and education is the key to everything," Hullander said.
"If you're not willing to educate and use preventive methods it's not
going to help. At the same time, the people who have already become
involved -- if they don't have resources to fall back on we'll defeat
our own purpose."

News editor Chris Zelk contributed to this story.