CHILD'S ART GOES RIGHT TO HEART OF METH BILL

A drawing by a 4-year-old Adams County boy was the only thing members of
the Colorado Senate needed to see Friday.

It wasn't a picture of a stick family, flowers, animals or any of the usual
things a youngster might draw. It was a drawing of a meth lab his mother
had set up in their home.

Sen. Ken Arnold, R-Westminster, showed it to his colleagues to urge their
support for House Bill 1169, which expands the definition of child abuse or
neglect to include setting up a lab for creating illegal drugs in a home
where children are present.

A voice vote for the bill, which already had been approved in the House,
was unanimous. It will be up for a final vote next week.

It's a companion bill to another measure, HB 1004, that imposes stiffer
penalties on manufacturing methamphetamine or other drugs in a home with
children.

That bill, making it a crime that carries a maximum 12-year prison
sentence, awaits action in the House Appropriations Committee. But it
carries a hefty price tag - more than a half-million dollars by 2007-08
because of the cost of carrying out the longer sentences.

Arnold's bill will make it easier to prove abuse or neglect and get a child
out of a dangerous environment.

The danger, proponents argue, stems not just from a potential explosion or
fire, but from the impact that chemicals can have on meth-exposed children,
including chemical burns, respiratory problems, lung and tissue damage,
developmental delay and brain damage.

Colorado shut down 468 meth labs in 2002.

The drawing that Arnold displayed came from a child in a home that was
raided by the North Metro Task Force.

The task force's Lt. Lori Moriarty said the child was at the front door of
the home that had been targeted for an early morning raid. He was in his
Halloween costume - a skeleton.

He told police that his school was having a Halloween party. "Since I can't
wake up mommy, I'm just looking for the bus so I can run out and catch it,"
Moriarty said the boy told them.

Moriarty said the youngster also knew what mommy was doing: "She's making
drugs." And the youngster drew the lab, complete with cooker, distiller and
distilling pipes.