LEGISLATURE DELAYS ACTING AGAINST METH

CHATTANOOGA - With methamphetamine taking rural children from their parents
at a rate of more than one a day and Tennessee ranking No. 1 nationally in
cleanups of drug-making labs, what should state lawmakers do?

Their decision: Study it until next year.

Unable to agree on a plan to fight the addictive stimulant's growing
popularity, a legislative panel asked Gov. Phil Bredesen to appoint a study
group that would report next year.

But while lawmakers study, the meth problem gets worse, say
child-protection caseworkers and law-enforcement officers.

"They don't have a clue what they are doing," said Cumberland County
Sheriff Butch Burgess, who has organized a safe house for children removed
from parents making the drug.

A panel of senators and representatives voted Monday to delay bills aimed
at cracking down on people making meth.

"The idea of just putting people in jail is not a very effective way to
deal with the problem," said the panel chairman, Sen. Steve Cohen,
D-Memphis. "There are so many of them, and they are making it at home."

The panel considered longer jail terms or starting a registry of people who
buy cold tablets that contain products used to make meth. A similar
registry exists in Missouri and other states.

But panel members said the state's tight budget would not allow new spending.

A sponsor of a bill to increase penalties for making meth, Rep. Judd
Metheny, R-Tullahoma, said he "could have expected anything else other than
they throw their hands up like they did."

"It is different from anything we have ever faced before," Metheny said.
"We are looking down the barrel of another 2,000 children having to be
removed from their homes."

The Tennessee Department of Children's Services took custody of about 700
children from meth-making parents in the 18 months before July, the
department's most recent count shows.

Federal Drug Enforcement Administration records show there were 1,253 meth
labs cleaned up in Tennessee in 2003, topping all states for the
third-straight year.

Metheny accused Bredesen of ignoring the meth problem, which DEA spokesman
Rusty Payne described as the "No. 1 drug threat to rural America."

"I don't feel the governor has a good grasp of this problem," Metheny said.

The Democratic governor is a former mayor of Nashville, and Metheny said
urban areas have not been affected by the drug's continuing eastward
migration from California.

"With his background, being from a large urban area, it is not part of his
subculture," Metheny said.

Bredesen spokeswoman Lydia Lenker disagreed.

"There is not a simple political solution to this issue," Lenker said.
"It's a complex problem that's taken a generation to create, and it won't
be solved overnight."

Lenker said Bredesen was already organizing the study panel and previously
had been monitoring actions by other states.

"We can't wait a year, and we aren't going to wait a year," Lenker said. In
January, several state agencies started a Tennessee MethWatch program that
includes a 24-hour telephone hot line for tips on people making the drug.

Cohen said the bills reviewed by the panel would not have reduced meth
making or usage. He described the proposed registry of people buying cold
tablets that contain ephedrine and pseudoephedrine as a "waste."

"I would like to do something to help the problem," he said.

Cohen also said the state's other drug laws need to be reconsidered to help
reduce the prison population and costs.

"We don't have enough money in state government," he said.

Meth, which is cooked from chemicals in easily accessible products,
including matchbook striking pads, batteries and cleaners, is continuing
the migration that started decades ago in California. The labs, which
sometimes explode, are set up in sparsely populated areas because they
produce a sulphurous smell.

Burgess, a foster parent, said his county has developed its own plan for
drug-endangered children.

"I've told my bunch we are just going to do what we think is right, and if
they (state officials) don't like it, they can make it stop," Burgess said.