DRUG TASK FORCE STEPS UP ACTIVITY

New Wave Of Drugs Will Create More Work

A recent report by Beaufort County's Drug Task Force indicates an increase
in charges for illegal drug possession, use and sale. The increase may be
just the tip of a wildfire that is spreading rapidly east from the U.S.
West Coast. The phenomena is one that the United Nations calls the largest
narcotics problem most nations will face. The local drug task force's 324
drug-related charges during the first six months of 2003 were for pretty
mild drugs in contrast to this world scourge of amphetamine-type stimulants
that the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime warns about. According to news
reports, 161 of the arrests were for simple possession of marijuana, a
misdemeanor offense. The next largest offense involved about one half the
arrests for marijuana, but it involved a much more dangerous drug: crack
cocaine.

The numbers might indicate a lot of recreational use, but they show a
growing problem. It will only get worse as the county's population
increases, and it is expected to double in the next quarter century.

That Beaufort County has a task force dealing with the problem is
commendable, but it will take a greater effort to curtail the activity
surrounding ATS and Ecstasy.

It has taken nearly two decades for heroine and cocaine to gain deep roots
in the rural South, but the new wave will come much faster, according to
health officials.

The news agency Reuters reported Aug. 1 that Antonio Maria Costa, head of
the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told reporters the
synthetic drug problem is a difficult one to combat because it creates more
of a "crazing" of the user and what he called an "addiction by stealth."

In a report to be issued Sept. 15, the agency will tell of the increasing
concern about the growth of synthetic drug use -- which include
amphetamine, methamphetamine, as well as Ecstasy.

Howard LaFranchi, a Christian Science Monitor reporter, writes on the
Commentary page today that Costa said the world is not ready for an
"epidemic" that breaks familiar drug-trafficking patterns and is dependent
on weak states in much the way international terrorism is.

"We are facing a structural change in the drug market," Costa said.

In news reports Costa said synthetic drugs severely damage the body,
primarily the brain. The damage is irreversible. The body may repair itself
after use of organic drugs, but not with synthetic drugs. The damage is
permanent. Reuters reports that "ATS drills holes in the brain .. (it)
gives Alzheimer-type symptoms and therefore threatens to create a
generation of vegetables," Costa said. "There is no specific treatment. Our
society is not ready for this."

This drug that is made from readily available chemicals that can be bought
at any chain store or drug store is worrisome to drug enforcement
officials. Not only are they easy to make, they are easy to conceal.

Take a look at the statistics released by the county's Drug Task Force for
the first six months of 2003:

76 charges on Hilton Head Island;

79 charges on St. Helena and Lady's islands;

57 charges in Beaufort;

50 charges in unincorporated Bluffton; and

7 charges in Bluffton. This may be the last time the numbers reflect a
widespread use of organic drugs or derivatives of organic drugs. A wildfire
is heading this way. If world health officials are concerned, local health
and law enforcement officials also should be concerned. The price of drug
interdiction has just gone up.