METH LABS DEFYING NEW LAWS

For over a decade, Oklahoma lawmakers have tried to fight meth
manufacturing, only to see a surge in makeshift labs jam the radar of law
enforcement and fill up prisons. Many of the laws passed have tried to
limit products used to make methamphetamine.

Still, the problem has mushroomed, with 1,254 labs seized in 2002 compared
with none a decade earlier.

Now, policy makers and even veteran law enforcement officials are beginning
to realize, "we can't arrest our way out of this problem," said Scott
Rowland, general counsel of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous
Drugs Control.

New strategies stressing treatment are needed because most meth is made to
feed an addiction, not make a profit, he said.

Many involved in making the drug, using recipes on the Internet, are
supplying the habits of themselves and a few friends.

One possible law Rowland is researching -- "at the risk of sounding like a
Nazi" -- would set up a civil commitment system for addicts and small-time
meth makers.

The idea is to isolate users for weeks or months before trial so they can
be detoxified.

The way it is now, Rowland said, "it's 100 percent certain" that meth
makers who are addicts will go back to cooking the drug when they get out
on bail.

There is legislative support for expanding drug courts, community
corrections and other programs that offer treatment. But some lawmakers
oppose allowing meth manufacturers of any stripe to avoid jail time.

Alarmed by the rising prison population of drug addicts, Sen. Dick
Wilkerson, D-Atwood, has advocated more treatment programs.

Like alcoholism, "no one ever said there is a cure," said the one-time
Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation official and undercover narcotics
officer.

"But if treatment works to any measurable percentage, let's say 50 percent
- -- and I think that is conservative -- that would mean 50 percent of these
people you would never have to handle again," Wilkerson said.

Without treatment, he said, perhaps 80 percent will return to meth use "so
you're going to save substantial dollars."

Wilkerson and Sen. Sam Helton, D-Lawton, have authored most of the
legislation aimed at giving law enforcement new tools to fight meth.

"When I first got elected, the main thing was to put them in jail," Helton
said. "Now I'm beginning to see that when we lock them up and they've still
got a problem, they'll go back to doing the same thing and it's costing
society."

The state's revenue shortfall the past two years has stymied efforts to
expand drug courts and other programs offering treatment.

A law enacted this year licenses wholesalers, manufacturers and
distributors of pseudoephedrine, a common ingredient in cold medicines and
key ingredient in meth making. It will help officers track where
pseudoephedrine winds up for sale, Rowland said.

Oklahoma scored a success in the meth war back in 1990 when it became the
first state to ban the sale without a license of precursor chemicals then
used in meth making.

"We had kind of a lab epidemic, with 91 labs seized in 1989. We thought the
sky was falling," Rowland said. "We didn't know what was coming."