Pubdate: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 Source: Charleston Daily Mail (WV) Copyright: 2005 Charleston Daily Mail Contact: http://www.dailymail.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/76 Series: http://www.mapinc.org/source/Charleston+Daily+Mail+%28WV%29 (More from CDM) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) METH THE DRUG OF CHOICE FOR TEENS IN PARTS OF U.S. EDITOR'S NOTE -- Once a scourge only in scattered pockets of America, methamphetamine is now fueling an epidemic that has branched out from the West through the heartland states, into cities, suburbs and hamlets nationwide. At least 12 million Americans have tried meth, one of the most addictive of all illegal drugs. This story is another in a series examining meth's toll. LAKE ELMO, Minn. (AP) -- They sit at a cafeteria table, gossiping and snacking during a school field trip. "Have you seen him? Has he gained the weight back?" one girl asks. "Yeah, he looked so good," replies another from across the table. "His cheeks filled in." It's no casual lunchtime conversation. The teen they're talking about is a recovering methamphetamine addict -- and so are several of the teens at the table, all of them students who attend alternative high schools in the St. Paul area and who are trying to get their lives back on track. While the methamphetamine epidemic has often been associated with drug labs hidden away in the countryside, today's users frequently defy that image, whether they are urban professionals or suburban homemakers. Minnesota has been dealing with all of the above and is home to another scary trend: Here, many young people and experts who monitor drug use agree that meth is steadily replacing marijuana as the teenage drug of choice. "Meth is THE thing -- it's what everybody wants to do," says Anthony, a 17-year-old student at Sobriety High School in St. Paul who first tried meth at age 13 and has been in recovery since he overdosed last summer. He and other students from alternative learning programs were allowed to speak on the condition that their last names not be used. While statistics show that meth use among teens and middle-school students has been level for the past few years, experts caution that those numbers can be deceiving, since meth seems to spread in pockets, leaving some regions or populations relatively untouched while others are devastated. "Meth is an oddball in that way," says Caleb Banta-Green, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington's Alcohol & Drug Abuse Institute. "You never know where it's going to hit." But when it does, it often hits hard -- with few states evading meth's reach in one population or another, including young people. In Nebraska, for instance, two 20-year-olds who were high on meth froze to death after getting lost in a snowstorm in January. And in Oregon, officials recently reported that meth is now second only to marijuana -- surpassing alcohol -- as the drug that sends the most teens to treatment in that state. Nebraska and Oregon are among the nearly two dozen states that have entrenched meth problems, most of them in the West and Midwest, according to state-by-state advisories the Drug Enforcement Administration released this year. And the DEA says meth is a growing concern in sections of nearly every other state. West Virginia's meth problem is growing. There were 222 meth lab drug busts in West Virginia in 2004 and there have been more than 140 already this year, Public Safety Secretary Jim Spears said March 31. Kanawha County Sheriff Mike Rutherford said his department alone has found 44 meth labs since Jan. 1, including one in the home of a woman that also was an in-home daycare provider. Last month U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller urged West Virginia law enforcement officials to network with police and local leaders in other states to lobby Congress against President Bush's budget cuts that police say will devastate their anti-drug efforts. The cuts would eliminate about $6.5 million in federal grants to West Virginia law enforcement agencies. "It's here and it's ravaging our kids," says Dave Ettesvold, a drug counselor at two high schools in the St. Paul area, including Harmony Alternative Learning Center in Maplewood. Already in Minnesota, a fifth of addicts who entered drug treatment for meth use last year were younger than 18, according to Carol Falkowski, a researcher at the nonprofit Hazelden Foundation, who tracks the state's drug trends for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Another recent state survey found that about a quarter of girls and a fifth of boys in Minnesota's alternative learning schools had used meth at least once in the last year. Ten percent had used it 10 times or more. How teens get methamphetamine varies. Sometimes, they say friends or relatives -- even a parent -- get them into it. Some have sold meth to pay for their own habit. And a few say they eventually learned how to make the drug themselves. Kristin, a 17-year-old student at Harmony, tried meth a little more than a year ago while smoking pot in a friend's basement, as the friend's parents slept upstairs. "Have you ever tried 'crystal'?" he asked, bringing out crystal methamphetamine and a small glass pipe that some refer to as a "bubble." She hadn't tried it, but told her friends otherwise: "I said, 'Yeah' and just went along with it." She says the reasons teens are attracted to meth are many, from a wish to lose weight, especially for girls, to the euphoric feeling users get when they first take the drug -- a feeling that ends up causing them more trouble than its worth, she adds. Many other teens say they also like the long-lasting effects, including an "in control" feeling and the ability to focus and stay up for hours. "I just felt invincible," says Summers, a 15-year-old student at Harmony, who got her first hit of meth at age 13 from a friend's drug-dealing older brother. "You feel like you're better or stronger than everybody." Like Kristin, she smoked the drug, which also can be injected, snorted or taken orally. But she quickly became so hooked that "if it fell on the chair, I'd lick it off the chair." It didn't take long for the effects -- emotional and physical -- to turn ugly. "I'd look in the mirror and my face would look yellow. I'd say, 'I gotta stop for a while or my mom will find out,' " Summers says, recalling how her mom cried when she finally figured out what was going on. Her mother had asked if she was doing meth but, until she was in rehab, Summers never admitted it. Indeed, the physical effects of methamphetamine use are often jarring -- from sunken eyes and bone-thin frames to teeth that turn gray and deteriorate. One juvenile court counselor still carries teeth that a young meth user gave to her to show other teens who might be considering taking the drug. "Her teeth literally fell out on my desk when she was talking to me one day," says Beverly Roche, who was working with the juvenile drug court in Minnesota's Dodge County, southeast of the Twin Cities, at the time. She's now helping establish a juvenile drug court with programs aimed at rehabilitating young people who use meth and other drugs in Chisago County, north of St. Paul. Changes in behavior also are very common, with many meth users becoming edgy, aggressive and paranoid. Anthony, the 17-year-old from Sobriety High, spent so much time high on meth and sitting by his bedroom window -- afraid the police or someone else was out to get him -- that friends started calling him "Garfield," a reference to the stuffed toy version of the cartoon cat that people stick on windows with suction cups. Meanwhile, many Minnesotans are pinning their hopes on a proposed law that would make it difficult for anyone to buy large quantities of cold medicine that contains pseudoephedrine, a main ingredient in meth. A few states, including Oklahoma and Illinois, have already passed such laws. West Virginia's Legislature last week passed a bill that aims to control over-the-counter medicines and other items needed to manufacture methamphetamine. The bill also levels a felony charge against meth makers when their makeshift, toxic drug labs injure police, firefighters or paramedics. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom