THE UNION Articles on
Meth -- July
July Articles:
Drug war needs to target meth, Pat Butler, July 9, 2005
Meth, not pot, is Public Enemy No. 1, Jeff Ackerman, July 19,2005
Krause trial shows need for anti-meth strategy, Editorial Board, July 29, 2005
Six nabbed in Penn Valley meth bust, Dave Moller, July 30, 2005
Drug war needs to target meth
By Pat Butler,
patb@theunion.com
July 9, 2005While the feds are busy rousting cannabis co-ops in Northern California, county leaders from across the nation are busy trying to keep up with mounting fiscal and social costs associated with the methamphetamine crisis.
patb@theunion.com or by phone at 477-4235.
According to a National Association of Counties' survey of law enforcement officials, meth is the No. 1 drug problem in their communities, and it's plaguing their citizens in a vast array of ways.
Five hundred counties from 45 states participated in the survey that was released this week. Of that group, 58 percent said meth is the drug that's hurting their communities the most; 87 percent reported an increase in meth arrests in the last five years; 70 percent cited meth as the reason for an increase in robberies and burglaries; 62 percent said it has led to an increase in domestic violence; and 17 percent said more than half of their inmates are in jail because of meth. In the last five years, California counties reported a 71 percent increase in out-of-home placements, which is when children are taken from their parents or guardians.
The survey results reflect what we're seeing in Nevada County. A recent Grand Jury report said that 72 percent of the cases handled by the district attorney's office, which has an annual budget of $2.8 million, involve meth. It went on to say that 50 percent of the public defender's caseload involves meth cases. Their budget is $1.3 million. And, finally, 45 percent of those sitting in the Wayne Brown Correctional Facility are there because of meth.
The national survey ends with a call for more federal assistance and a national strategy to help fight the meth problem.
What makes meth the bile that is burning a growing hole in America's softening underbelly is its appetite for destruction. Meth's addictive qualities are legendary as is its ability to take over one's life and transform its victims into drags on society or worse. Once this most toxic drug gets its grip on your soul, you're likely on your way to a freefall that accelerates as a consequence of a series of increasingly poor decisions.
I've talked to people who said that while in the throes of the meth lifestyle, it wasn't unusual for them or their friends to be awake for days at a time. One man casually talked of injecting the drug into his neck. He also talked about how easy it is to make and sell meth. He went on to say he's been in and out of prison for the last 10 years. His future appeared somewhat cloudy, although he was in his late 30s.
Meth users lose their jobs, their families and their good sense. They steal or make and sell meth to support their habits, which makes our streets more dangerous while the legal system struggles with a crushing caseload that oftentimes includes repeat offenders. Social service agencies are trying to help broken and increasingly desperate people who at some point must realize the horrible consequences of always chasing that first high. The manufacturing process pollutes our land and water.
To further complicate matters, this problem is sweeping across an America that is struggling with its own transition from a mighty industrial economy that once nourished a flourishing middle class to a service and retail economy that requires more of us to work at less pay for companies that are no longer loyal to the working class.
That transition is pushing more people closer to a state of hopelessness, making them prime candidates for drug and alcohol abuse.
While Nevada County needs to marshall its resources to fight this scourge, it's going to have a difficult time succeeding unless it's in step with a national strategy. As the National Association of Counties' survey confirms, this problem needs to be addressed on a grand scale or else it will continue to bleed counties dry. It is a social problem of mammoth proportions.
So if we do indeed have an administration that likes to run government like a business, I suggest it re-evaluate its priorities in this so-called drug war. Now, marijuana is in the middle of the crosshairs of the federal government's enforcement efforts.
I, however, am not concerned about Dr. Marion Fry and her husband, Dale Schafer, who were recently arrested by federal agents for providing medical marijuana to patients in the Placer County community of Cool, which happens to be in a state that allows patients with prescriptions to get medical pot.
I'm far more concerned about some angry, jobless individual who believes he's being chased by demons or aliens as a result of sleep deprivation brought on by excessive use of meth, a drug we all agree has no redeeming medical qualities while threatening our public safety, families and environment.
It will, of course, take more than arrests to curtail the meth problem. As part of the search for solutions, we need to ask: Why is there a surge in meth use in the country? Why do so many people feel they need it to survive in our society? In essence, is the proliferation of meth use a symptom of an ailing society or is it just too tempting of a drug to pass up for a certain percentage of people who will inevitably become addicted to its immediate charms?
While we're examining those issues, though, we need to focus on the present, which is where law enforcement now finds itself. The federal government should listen to these concerns and work with counties to take care of what they consider to be their top drug problem.
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Pat Butler is the editor of The Union. He can be reached by e-mail at
Meth, not pot, is Public Enemy No. 1
By Jeff Ackerman,
jeffa@theunion.com
July 19, 2005
A friend of a friend of a friend smoked marijuana once. Maybe even twice. He said it made the music sound better and that it gave him a bad case of cotton mouth. He said it made him laugh until he cried and that he could eat an entire pack of Fig Newtons in one seating.
And in spite of what federal government officials say, my friend's friend's friend said he never once thought about robbing someone to buy more pot. Never saw a single alien or imaginary person. His teeth didn't fall out of his head, and he didn't have to cook a single explosive chemical in order to prepare his pot for the pipe. In fact, he had a note from a doctor.
Now let's take a look at a classic methamphetamine user. You know ... such as the ones who are running all over our American towns killing people as the federal government chases pot smokers. Commonly known as speed, or ice or glass, meth can be smoked or injected straight into the veins. Unlike marijuana, which is pretty much natural and grown in gardens, meth is cooked in a dirty bathtub, or inside a used Slurpy cup. It's highly addictive and can be easily produced from readily available products that include over-the-counter cold pills, diet pills and household products such as lithium batteries, matches, tincture of iodine and hydrogen peroxide. Yummy, isn't it? For added flavor, you can also mix in some lighter fluid, gasoline, kerosene, paint thinner, rubbing alcohol and mineral spirits. If you have a swimming pool, you can even use some of your pool cleaning supplies, such as muriatic acid.
Outside of an enhanced ability to see aliens and hear voices inside your head, meth pretty much rips your body apart. Long-term effects may include repetitive motor activity, intense paranoia, mood disturbances and out-of-control rages. Visual and auditory hallucinations are also common, usually in the form of what experts call "formification," where, for example, you might think there are millions of insects creeping up your arms.
Scott Krause has been there and back. At the moment, he is in Nevada County jail as his lawyer tries to prove that he was pretty much out of his mind on meth when he crashed a stolen truck into a UPS van, killing a young father and husband. The 39-year-old meth addict said in court last week that he heard voices in his head describing an alien invasion. "I thought they were slaughtering my family, my ex-wife and children. I didn't think there was much of the world left, except where we were at."
A jury will decide if Krause gets treatment or prison, just as our local courts do every day when it comes to methamphetamine users. And it's happening in rural towns all over the country, where governors and mayors have declared meth Public Enemy No. 1.
The federal government has been a lot slower to respond to the meth problem. Mostly because it still thinks marijuana is the root of all evil. But our young people are simply not buying into the federal government's national Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. "There is no pattern of significant association between exposure and target outcomes for youth" read a recent evaluation of the campaign. "Neither the overall results nor the subgroup analysis show consistent evidence supportive of a direct campaign effect."
The report defined the primary objective of the government's ad campaign as "reducing the number of young people who try marijuana." The notion is that if you never smoke pot, you'll never smoke meth.
Now before any of you start rushing for your pen and paper, accusing me of advocating marijuana, hold on just a cotton-mouthed minute. Inhale. Pour yourself a gin and tonic and have a seat. You should never smoke pot and operate heavy machinery, including an automobile and washing machine. Many of you who attended high school in the 1960s ... yes ... I'm referring to you ... can attest to that. I'm sure you also had a friend of a friend of a friend who inhaled marijuana once or twice. I frankly believe that marijuana ought to be decriminalized and that a joint is no worse for you than a Long Island Ice Tea. And I think the federal government ought to start throwing all of its anti-drug resources at this methamphetamine problem and quit sending its agents to crash California's medical marijuana policies.
The thing I've learned about young people (having been one and having known a few) is that they know when they are being lied to. In a recent article in "The Economist" on the staggering toll from methamphetamine use, one psychology professor said he believes the federal government's anti-drug campaign will backfire once teenagers see little evidence that marijuana causes - as the campaign claims - depression, suicidal tendencies and schizophrenia. "We lose credibility," said the professor. "Then we tell them that meth causes your brain to shrink - which it really does - and they don't believe that, either."
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Jeff Ackerman is the publisher of The Union. His column appears on Tuesdays. Contact him at 477-4299, jeffa@theunion.com, or 464 Sutton Way, Grass Valley 95945.
Krause trial shows need for anti-meth strategy
By The Union Editorial Board
July 29, 2005
Wednesday's jury verdict on the sanity of Scott Krause was more about personal responsibility than whether methamphetamines can make a person too crazy to know right from wrong.
Because it can.
That jury found that Krause was sane when he drove a stolen truck into a UPS van, killing its driver Drew Reynolds. Krause has admitted what he did, but said he was not aware of what he was doing because ongoing mental health problems and his longtime use of meth had rendered him incapable of rational thought.
There's no question the jury understood the ravaging effects of meth use. We assume, however, that the jury's deliberations always came back to choice and consequences. Krause chose to take meth. At least initially. And now he must pay for the result of that choice, which in this case took the life of Drew Reynolds, a good and decent man as well as a father and husband.
Krause will be sentenced in a couple of months and will likely spend a good portion of the rest of his life behind bars.
Unfortunately, the story will not end there. While Krause will be off the streets, several hundred others are waiting to take his place. Meth use is rampant in our community and it shows no signs of slowing down.
Why? Because our drug rehabilitation system is not equipped to handle meth addictions that are vastly different than any other drug. You can't treat a meth addiction in 90 days, which is fairly typical in most rehab programs. It's a synthetic drug that has toxic effects on the central nervous system. It literally can shrink a human brain.
Following Wednesday's verdict, District Attorney Mike Ferguson called meth, "a killer, literally and figuratively," and said, "we want to reduce the demand for this poison."
That's easier said than done. The first thing we need to do is to go after the manufacturers and distributors of this deadly poison. That means Ferguson and his department of prosecutors must resist the plea bargaining that is often offered by public defenders whenever police and sheriff's deputies arrest someone on suspicion of making or selling meth. The court summaries are filled with cases where manufacturing has been pleaded down to a simple possession, which really handcuffs our judges under California's Prop. 36 mandates. Californians decided it was better to rehabilitate, not jail, drug addicts and they voted to limit what a judge can and cannot do in sentencing. But that was before meth started spreading throughout rural America like a locust through a field. A recent study estimated that as many as 12 million Americans have tried meth at least once.
And in most cases once is all it takes to develop an addiction. Meth stimulates release of excess dopamine, which regulates pleasure in the brain and is manufactured in nerve cells. It creates a rush of pleasure that the addict may spend the rest of his life trying to emulate. A single dose of meth can last as long as six to eight hours, versus the eight- to 20-minute high that cocaine might provide. And it's much cheaper than cocaine.
Once we have developed a zero tolerance for the meth maker and seller, we have to do whatever we can to treat the addictions. That will take a lot more money than we are spending today. The federal government's so-called War On Drugs needs to recognize that the greatest enemy is meth, not pot, and start shifting some of its billions of dollars toward an anti-meth program. At the same time, our cities and county officials must do all that they can to find the resources it will take to go after the manufacturers until they understand that we will not allow them to exist with relative immunity in our community. And our citizens must be vigilant in an effort to identify and report known meth activity in their neighborhoods. A Meth Hotline might be a good place to start.
We commend the jury for what must have been a grueling deliberation and hope that the spotlight this high-profile trial garnered will remain until we rescue our community from the depths of meth despair.
Six nabbed in Penn Valley meth bust
Two children taken from home
By Dave Moller,
davem@theunion.com
July 30, 2005
Six people were arrested - and two children discovered - this week in a Penn Valley home believed to be a methamphetamine sales site.
Detective Bill Smethers Jr. of the Nevada County Narcotics Task Force said the children were taken after the Thursday night bust to Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital for tests to see if the suspected drug use in the home had harmed them. Those test results were pending Friday evening.
"There was very little food in the residence, and it wasn't clean," Smethers said. Officers found syringes, smoking pipes and methamphetamine in the residence "and most of the items were in reach of the two children," he said.
Smethers said officers had been watching an apartment in the 10000 block of Broken Oak Court for more than a month and executed a search warrant there at 9:55 p.m. Arrested at the scene were:
• Greg Liddle, 20, of Grass Valley for numerous drug charges including possession of drugs for sale.
• Bradley T. Stewart, 25, address unknown, for several drug charges including possession for sale.
• Leslie E. Schofield, 25, address unknown, for numerous drug charges, including possession for sales and child endangerment. One of the children is the son of Schofield and Shilo Wells, 24, of Penn Valley. Wells was also arrested on various charges including possession for sale and child endangerment.
Two other women, 18 and 22, were arrested at the scene for being under the influence of drugs. The 22-year-old was also arrested for child endangerment.
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To contact senior staff writer Dave Moller, e-mail davem@theunion.com or call 477-4237.