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."
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