RURAL AREAS UNDER SHADOW CAST BY METH PRODUTION

[New York Times]

LOVELL, Wyo. a " Tucked under the snowcapped wall of the Big Horn
Mountains, with its cattle and horse ranches and large Mormon church,
this could be "that sleepy little town everyone wants," said Nick
Lewis, the police chief.

Except for one thing. Lovell, population 2,264, and two nearby towns
have become infested by methamphetamine.

In the past two years, about 70 people from this small slice of
northwestern Wyoming have been convicted of buying or selling
methamphetamine, with more arrests and convictions expected soon, the
authorities say.

Burglaries have mushroomed, one suspected witness's house was
firebombed and the State Department of Family Services has taken
children away from parents so incapacitated by methamphetamine that
they forgot to feed them. Many people have simply quit work and ended
up selling drugs to pay for methamphetamine, a powerful manufactured
stimulant that produces bursts of energy and euphoria but can lead to
depression, violent paranoia and brain damage.

Methamphetamine is also draining precious money out of Lovell, which
has already lost three of its four groceries, its Sears, its movie
theater and two of its few factories.

What is happening in Lovell is happening across much of Wyoming, the
least populated state in the country, where methamphetamine use is now
more than twice the national average, according to the federal
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Methamphetamine use and crime are also overrunning rural counties in
Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, North Dakota and the Texas
Panhandle, law enforcement officials say.

In Iowa, rapidly growing methamphetamine use is behind a surge in
thefts of tractors and other heavy farm equipment, as well as
burglaries in vacant farmsteads, said Todd Johnson, the Audubon County
sheriff. Home-cooked methamphetamine is now so common in Iowa, and so
toxic, that the Legislature has made manufacturing it around children
a form of child abuse. In its first count, the Iowa Department of
Human Services found almost 500 children who were exposed to cooking
methamphetamine in 2002.

In Nebraska, crime has increased fourfold since methamphetamine became
a serious problem in the mid-1990's

But on Main Street in Lovell, people do not talk about the ravages of
methamphetamine.

"We lie to ourselves," said Pat Crank, Wyoming's attorney general. "We
say Wyoming is God's country. We have that big sky, and those
mountains. We can't have meth."