DELEGATE: PARKERSBURG NEEDS FBI OFFICE

A Wood County delegate is asking President Bush for a full-time Federal
Bureau of Investigation field office in Parkersburg to better fight
drug-dealing criminals.

Methamphetamine dealers like Wood County for its location and proximity to
other states and because of West Virginia's lax laws against the
manufacture and sale of the dangerous and addictive drug, Del. John Ellem,
R-Wood, said. "Because we are a border county, we are attractive to
methamphetamine dealers, who can manufacture their product in West Virginia
and then market it to customers in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio," Ellem
said. "Regrettably, the meth dealers find our state particularly appealing
because we have the least punitive methamphetamine laws of the three
states. I have proposed legislation to correct this problem at the state
level."

The FBI has an unstaffed office in the federal building in Parkersburg,
said Joe Ciccarelli, supervising senior resident agent in Charleston for
the Southern District of West Virginia. West Virginia is part of the
Pittsburgh regional field office.

Manpower from time to time is shifted from office to office or new offices
- - called resident agencies - are opened depending on where they are needed,
he said. An agent was once assigned to the Parkersburg office.

The FBI has seven offices in West Virginia, of which six are staffed. These
are in Wheeling, Clarksburg and Martinsburg in the Northern District and
Charleston, Huntington and Beckley in the Southern District.

Ellem has written a letter of request to Bush. Petitions signed by hundreds
of area residents are being sent to the president, too, Ellem said.

Methamphetamine labs are dangerous facilities because of the toxic and
volatile chemicals used in the production of the drug.

More than 50 methamphetamine busts have occurred in the area in the last
several years, most of those being in Wood County. The most recent two were
in the last two weeks in Parkersburg.

The arrests are the result of the Parkersburg-Wood County Narcotics Task
Force, which works closely with the FBI and other federal enforcement
agencies, Wood County Prosecutor Ginny Conley said.

"The cooperation with the federal agencies is outstanding," she said.

The task force has been nationally recognized by the U.S. Attorney's Office
for its accomplishments, Conley said. Task force agents here train other
agents.

Federal drug laws against the manufacture and delivery of methamphetamine
are stiffer than West Virginia's.

In the 2001 session of the Legislature, Ellem introduced a bill stiffening
the penalties for methamphetamine possession, production and delivery. It
reached the House Judiciary Committee, where it was not put on the agenda.

The anti-methamphetamine bill was one of many overshadowed by the video
poker legislation during the last term of the Legislature, Ellem said. The
bill made its way to the House Judiciary Committee, where it was not placed
on the committee's agenda.

Ellem said he will again introduce the bill this session.

"I am optimistic we can see progress on this bill, but in the meantime, we
need the help of the FBI to help our law enforcement officers prosecute our
drug laws so that our communities can be free of dangerous and illicit drug
activity," he said.