A GOOD FIRST STEP

Law enforcement and judicial leaders from three states met Wednesday in
Jefferson to begin working together to fight the meth lab epidemic.

That is a good first step on the way to battling this menace. Our first
column on meth labs brought reaction from across the continent, with some
of it questioning the idea of even attempting to regulate the use of
presently illegal drugs such as methamphetamine. The question of drug
"prohibition" is one separate from that of meth labs. There is no right to
pollute a community, or endanger the lives of firefighters and law
enforcement personnel, or contaminate buildings, or put children and adults
in danger.

And that is exactly what meth labs are doing today in our community. No
single law enforcement agency has the resources to stop this epidemic.

Local departments in hard-hit counties like Watauga and Ashe are
hard-pressed to handle all the cases.

If it were not for federal funding, counties would face staggering cleanup
costs-with little or no hope of recovering the money from the guilty
parties. Wednesday was a start for sharing resources, ideas and strategies
among these agencies.

Together, hopefully, they can build strategies that will prevent meth labs
before they happen. The stakes are enormous.

Tom Keith, district attorney for Forsyth County, who moderated the meeting,
told of meeting people from Hawaii who reported a hospital where one in
three babies had methamphetamine in their bloodstreams at birth.

He also told of the situation in Missouri, where last year authorities
uncovered over 2,000 meth labs-almost 20 times the number in North Carolina
this past year. It can happen here was the message Keith and other speakers
shared.

It is a message that everyone in this county needs to hear. Methamphetamine
is not moonshine and it is not marijuana.

Making it and using it are not the proverbial "victimless" crimes.

For the user, Sheriff Mark Shook of Watauga County pointed out, there is
just a 6 percent chance of recovery from the hell of addiction.

For children of meth makers, there is a real possibility of death,
permanent disability and health damage that may only appear in adulthood.

Meth is new-no one knows what exposure today will mean 20 years from now.
For the community, meth means fear. There is good reason to have fear of
toxic chemicals unleashed, of polluted ground and water, of explosions and
fires. Law enforcement needs tools from the legislature, and soon, to
battle this epidemic.

As Tom Keith said Wednesday, this is a situation like none North Carolina
has seen before.

We must be proactive now, before the situation gets any worse.

Wednesday's meeting was hopefully a positive step in that direction.