METHAMPHETAMINE -- OUR OWN MAKING

You've probably crossed paths with the illegal drug meth lately, even if
you don't know it. It's a scourge, and it's one of our own making.

The illegal drug problem is often shrugged off as being foreign in origin.
Yet, the methamphetamine scourge reveals the truth.

Our problem is chiefly home grown. We have met the enemy, and it is us.
Many of the seeds of our destruction are imported, but we are, sadly, quite
capable of our own demise.

Indeed, it is Kansas -- not the border states -- that is consistently near
the top in the number of meth labs nationwide.

Think it doesn't affect you? Think again. If your house or business has
been broken into, if you've passed by a homeless person, if you've detected
a foul odor from the mysterious couple's home across the street, if a
friend's daughter has suddenly lost weight and started acting peculiarly,
chances are you've crossed meth's path.

Even if, by some miracle, you didn't come in direct contact with an addict,
the people paid to protect you certainly do: Law enforcement officers risk
their health and their lives busting meth labs and arresting manufacturers
all over.

This is one area of the manufacturing sector that isn't hurt by the
economic downturn.

One woman interviewed for a recent Capital-Journal/KSNT-27 investigative
series on the meth problem acknowledged she had lost her home because of
the drug's powerful siren song. When it came to choosing between a home and
a hit, security lost out to addiction.

"I lived, breathed, did everything for meth," she says. "That was the love
of my life."

Poor choices? Partly, of course. But biology, too. Meth, which can be
smoked, snorted, injected into the veins, eaten or swallowed with a drink,
serves up a "high" so seductive that the brain's pleasure center overrides
every other urge and instinct, including basic survival: In a laboratory
test in which animals pressed levers to satisfy wants and needs, they died
of starvation while giving themselves meth, passing up food even as they
hungered.

This isn't an academic exercise: This problem is happening in our
neighborhoods and in rural locations throughout the Midwest. Fact is,
Shawnee County led the state last year in seizures of clandestine labs used
to make the illegal drug: With a record 702 meth lab seizures last year in
Kansas, a 37 percent increase from the 511 seized in 1999, the KBI reported
earlier this year that Shawnee County led the state last year in meth lab
seizures with 59 -- up from 23 in 1999.

Methamphetamine is produced in clandestine labs by "cooks" who usually have
no chemistry training. Meth labs range from the sophisticated to the crude
and can be set up in a car trunk, bathtub, closet or anywhere else there is
space to mix chemicals.

The result: Government agencies say they have been pushed "close to
exhaustion" in the fight against meth.

Earlier this year, they enlisted the help of retailers in the battle, and
for good reason: Ingredients found in common, over-the-counter cold
remedies can be used to produce meth. Retailers who have enlisted in the
"Kansas Retailer Meth Watch Program" try to make it more difficult for
criminals to purchase the materials needed to make meth. Retailers in the
program pledge to monitor and limit sales of the key ingredients. Thus,
they may choose to put a limited amount of products with those ingredients
on shelves and keep the rest out of easy reach.

And if anyone attempts to buy an armful of such products, the retailers
involved are expected to take notice and start asking questions.

Of course, all this drug activity isn't even the problem -- it is merely
the most raging symptom. The problem is lack of self-esteem, lack of hope,
lack of parenting, lack of spirituality and more.

As long as we have drugs such as meth, we'll never lack for problems.