DRAWING A LINE IN THE SAND

Anti-Meth Community Meeting Draws a Crowd

In his introductory remarks, Boone Area Chamber of Commerce Chair
Joedy Eller set the tone of the meeting within the first seconds:
"We're not going to tolerate meth in Watauga County," Eller said at
Tuesday's Chamber-sponsored anti-methamphetamine community forum.
"This afternoon we're going to draw a line in the sand and say no to
drugs."

Eller urged the gathering of elected officials, government
administrators, civic and nonprofit leaders, business representatives
and interested citizens to draw that line by disseminating
information, raising awareness of the many facets - social and
environmental - of the methamphetamine problem and enlisting community
support in saying no to the drug that has been dubbed "Watauga County
Public Enemy No. 1."

Sheriff Mark Shook, who since taking office has made meth lab
interdiction a priority, spoke directly to the wider social
implications arising from the personal devastation of methamphetamine
addiction: "This is a problem that can take the county and state to
its knees," Shook said. "It has taken communities like ours and
destroyed them.

"This drug is so addictive that people will give up what they've
worked their entire lives for," Shook continued, and he told a story,
one he has told in other venues, of a mother in Kentucky who
voluntarily relinquished her child to social services case workers
rather than report for addiction counseling. "She would rather do the
meth," Shook said, and "she chose the drug over her child.

"This is not a law enforcement problem," Shook told the group, "it is
a community problem and we must work together."

Shook introduced North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper who
continued the social threat theme by talking about the potential
health, abuse and neglect dangers to children living in homes where
methamphetamine is produced; the risks to law enforcement personnel
and first responders who can be injured by explosions and toxic fumes;
and the dangers to the environment when poisonous byproducts are
dumped onto the ground, poured into creeks or abandoned by the side of
the road. Cooper told of children in other states who had been
diagnosed with meth-related neurological damage and infected with
hepatitis C from being pricked by unclean needles left lying within a
toddler's reach.

Cooper pointed to the statewide increase in meth labs since 1999 when
just six labs were busted across North Carolina, compared to the 118
that have been taken out so far in 2003. Of those 118 labs, 24 of them
have been in Watauga County, 20 percent of the state total.

What Cooper didn't say is that the state has been slow to respond to
the growing problem, failing to supply guidelines, standards and help
other than law-enforcement assistance from the State Bureau of
Investigation.

However, a number of local front-line personnel have filled that
vacuum by forming the multiagency Watauga County Methamphetamine Task
Force. Established earlier this year, the group meets monthly to
discuss the spectrum of meth-related issues and develop county
solutions to problems that the state has so far all but ignored. The
task force has developed procedures and protocols for emergency
management and personnel decontamination, for protecting children and
taking them into custody and for training in-home workers.

The task force has been hampered, however, by the absence of state
standards for measuring toxicity in a home where meth has been
produced and for determining when the surroundings are safe enough for
children to return. Some answers could come from a state summit -
scheduled for October 2 in Winston-Salem - that Cooper announced, but
he said the purpose of the statewide meeting was to develop a package
of "tough laws" for detection, intervention and punishment; he did not
address the lack of toxicity standards and follow-up family issues
related to the drug.

Following Cooper's remarks, three SBI speakers addressed the group,
including Robin Pendergraft, SBI director, who discussed the steady
increase in the problem since the 1980s, the bureau's response, the
SBI's increased focus on training and the expansion of its training
programs to local law enforcement, rescue and firefighting personnel.
Pendergraft told the group that the SBI is also working to secure
grant money to institute a Drug-Endangered Children's Program, modeled
after a program that began in California, to coordinate the efforts of
social workers, law enforcement agencies, prosecutors and doctors to
help children exposed to drugs and drug-related crimes. Such funds
would be a boon to the local meth task force that is struggling
financially to replace children's clothes, toys and other belongings
when children are removed from a home. Members of the task force
decided early in their protocol development efforts that the best way
to safeguard children who had been exposed to the methamphetamine
production process was to leave all potentially contaminated items
behind.

Next on the program were SBI agent Van Shaw and forensic chemist Ann
Hamlin who handled the educational and awareness portions of the
program. They discussed the common, household products and the
apparatus used to synthesize methamphetamine from over-the-counter
cold medications, the toxic byproducts created during the "cooking"
process, the medical and environmental dangers posed by those
byproducts and the 5 to 7 pounds of toxic waste left behind for every
pound of methamphetamine produced.

The two agents also discussed methamphetamine addiction,
characteristic behaviors and the low treatment success rate - less
than 5 percent.

SBI agents and local law enforcement personnel expect the meth problem
to continue to grow, but Sheriff Shook said that business owners can
help his office by reporting quantity purchases of precursor chemicals
and community members can help by raising awareness and spreading the
word about the dangers of methamphetamine. Statistics indicate, Shook
said, that every meth cook teaches five others how to synthesize the
drug. One of Tuesday's meeting participants suggested that everyone
there adopt the same strategy - passing on the information they gained
at the meeting to five people who weren't able to attend and helping,
as Shook requested, "to get the word out."