STATE METH REPORT REFLECTS COUNTY INITIATIVES

Within days after North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper released a
report on the state's exploding methamphetamine problem, the Watauga County
Sheriff's Office reported the arrest of four more producers at two
residential labs in Todd, bumping to six the number of meth labs discovered
in January alone. Those arrests underscore the local emphasis and immediacy
of the findings and recommendations in Cooper's report.

Based on input and discussions from prosecutors, law enforcement officers,
public health and social services officials and others statewide who
participated in a methamphetamine summit last October, the recommendations
in Cooper's report are essentially a restatement of issues that members of
the multiagency Watauga County Drug-Endangered Children Response (DEC) Team
have been discussing, implementing and advocating for months.

The report credits the county's response team for its initiative, stating,
"In Watauga County, the social services department has taken the lead in
establishing their Drug-Endangered Children Response Team. The team members
include law enforcement officials, prosecutors, child welfare personnel,
medical and public health providers. The purpose of the response team is to
develop a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary response to children found
in meth labs." One of the recommendations in the report is for the attorney
general to convene a statewide conference to give other social service
departments in the state guidance on how to form their own response teams.
The Watauga County team, which has already provided a significant amount of
one-on-one guidance to other counties, would figure prominently at such a
conference.

Other recommendations in Cooper's report address what prosecutors and law
enforcement officers consider inadequacies in state law for dealing with
the social and environmental effects of methamphetamine production. The
report calls on the General Assembly to stiffen the penalties for the
manufacture of methamphetamine, for child endangerment (in 2003, children
were found residing in 25 percent of North Carolina homes with meth labs),
for possession of precursor chemicals and for providers of methamphetamine
when a fatal overdose occurs.

Locally, District Attorney Jerry Wilson attempted to prosecute meth
offenders under the state's chemical weapons law to achieve higher bails
and longer prison terms with conviction, but Superior Court Judge James
Baker ruled that the charge was unconstitutional.

Another recommendation in the report is to increase public awareness and
detection by educating the public, training targeted individuals (such as
farmers, garbage collectors, hotel workers and landlords) to recognize the
signs of a meth lab and educating prosecutors about the problem.

Locally, Sheriff Mark Shook and other officers, with the assistance of
forensic toxicologist Dr. Andrew Mason, have presented a number of public
awareness sessions at area libraries and other venues. In addition, a
community awareness meeting held in Boone last fall featured presentations
from Cooper and top State Bureau of Investigation officials. And while
local prosecutors do not need any education about the problem, members of
the DEC Response Team, including District Court Judge Bill Leavell, have
worked to educate judges about the precursor products used to make meth,
the dangers inherent in the manufacturing process and the environmental
damage caused by careless disposal of the byproducts.

Finally, the report recommends improving intervention by working with
retailers to monitor the sale of precursor products, training first
responders in the dangers associated with meth labs, increasing resources
for law enforcement, convening the statewide conference to disseminate
technical assistance to social service agencies, developing an appropriate
medical protocol and supporting the development of statewide guidelines for
the decontamination of meth lab sites.

Locally, the DEC Response Team has developed a medical protocol that will
be submitted to Watauga Medical Center emergency room physicians for their
review. The Sheriff's Office has been educating retailers about the
over-the-counter products used to manufacture the drug. Following the lung
injury to Deep Gap firefighter Darien South who was hurt when he responded
to a meth fire, danger awareness and training have been beefed up and the
county staged a disaster drill last year to simulate a meth lab fire with
multiple casualties. Among others, the drill involved first responder
teams, local law enforcement, the Boone Fire Department and Watauga Medical
Center. The Watauga County Board of Commissioners has allocated additional
funds to the Sheriff's Office to help combat the meth problem, and Lawrence
Caviness, environmental health supervisor with the Appalachian District
Health Department, has participated in efforts to develop a decontamination
protocol.

While much remains to be done at the state level to combat the problem and
cope with its effects, public and private agencies across the county have,
through their collaborative efforts, set the standard for statewide response.