Pubdate: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 Source: Cleveland Daily Banner (TN) Copyright: 2001 Cleveland Daily Banner Contact: http://www.clevelandbanner.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/947 Author: Daniel F James, Banner Staff Writer Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) METHAMPHETAMINE CHALLENGING RURAL COMMUNITIES KNOXVILLE -- Police chiefs and county sheriffs from across Tennessee met in Knoxville Wednesday with representatives from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Attorney's Office, and the Tennessee National Guard, to discuss ways to combat the growing epidemic of methamphetamine use in the state. A report from the National Drug Intelligence Center stated Tennessee leads the Southeast in the number of methamphetamine labs found by authorities in the past three years. "The top three challenges that rural America faces today is first, health care; second, availability of safe drinking water; and third, security from proliferation of drugs -- primarily methamphetamine -- in rural parts of the Tennessee valley," said U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn. Meth is easy and cheap to produce, and unlike drugs such as marijuana and cocaine, much of which must be imported, meth is easily manufactured domestically with common household items such as batteries and cold medicine. "This meth problem has been called the moonshine of our generation, but I would say times 100," said Wamp. "People lived through the moonshine problem. They're not living through the meth problem." According to the sponsors of Wednesday's conference, there are retail and wholesale operators. Small-time methamphetamine producers stash labs everywhere from mobile homes to car trunks, while Mexican-organized crime has streamlined the high end of the industry in the past few years, supplying both finished product and the raw materials required for production, called "cooking" in the drug trade. They claim that what was once a regional West Coast problem can now be found in big cities and small towns alike. Throughout the Southeast, there were 1,116 meth labs seized between January 1999 and July 2001. Tennessee led the region with 510 labs seized followed by Mississippi with 222; Alabama, 192; Georgia, 89; Florida, 53; Louisiana, 27; North Carolina, 13; and South Carolina, 10. Experts at Wednesday's confrence said that In 1999, more than a million Americans used meth in just one year, more than used crack and almost three times as many as used heroin. The allure of the drug, also called crystal, crank and dozens of other names, is energy, the sort of raw, unbridled, jumpy rush that comes from supercharging the brain with a dopamine high similar to a jolt of adrenaline; the same sort of energy received from doing cocaine. But unlike cocaine, or even crack which provides a high of a couple hours at best, meth users can stay up for eight to 12 hours or more, depending how they ingest the drug: smoking, snorting, swallowing or injecting it. "This is decimating families and destroying communities," said Wamp. "We need to put all the resources at our disposal in this fight." - --- MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager