Pubdate: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 Source: Daily Camera (CO) Copyright: 2003 The Daily Camera. Contact: http://www.thedailycamera.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/103 Author: Amy Hebert, Camera Staff Writer Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) AUTHORITIES SAY METH CAN MAKE MONSTERS Drug a Factor in Half of Longmont-Area Child-Welfare Cases In two decades of handling methamphetamine-related cases, Longmont police Sgt. Tim Lewis has seen children left home alone for days, living in cars and playing around hypodermic needles. He's even worked on a triple homicide, in which a meth-addled Wyoming woman killed her three children because she was convinced they were clones. So when police responded Sunday to the stabbing of two Longmont boys, allegedly at the hands of their mother's boyfriend while he was high on meth, Lewis said the case unfortunately seemed perfectly in line with the culture of meth. "It's not just a recreational drug. It's not just a feel-good drug. People do weird things on it," he said. "Watching the behavior of these people and seeing how it changes them and what they do and what they're willing to do, you see that this is not going to be the last tragic thing that happens." Although the cases aren't usually so extreme, the Boulder County Department of Social Services deals with hundreds of methamphetamine-related cases every year, child welfare manager Allen Pollack said. In fact, the drug is involved in as many as 50 percent of the Longmont area's child-welfare cases, he said. "Certainly methamphetamine is probably one of the worst challenges that has hit the child-welfare system in years," Pollack said. "Especially in our Longmont area, it seems to be at an epidemic proportion." Usually, the parents are charged with negligence or child endangerment because they aren't properly feeding or caring for they're children, or they're exposing the kids to drugs, needles or meth labs, Pollack said. "The drug becomes more important to them than their kids, basically," he said. What makes the meth cases particularly insidious though, is that parents tend to relapse after treatment and children can rarely be returned, he said. Ann Noonan, clinical coordinator for Boulder County Public Health's substance abuse programs, said meth seems to have more of an impact on families than other drugs because it's highly addictive, cheap and popular among women. It's also particularly long lasting and poisons parts of the brain, destroying cognitive functioning and causing "methamphetamine psychosis," Noonan said. "It literally deranges people," she said. "People are just not in their right minds when they're using it." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake