Pubdate: Tue, 26 Dec 2000
Source: Fresno Bee, The (CA)
Copyright: 2000 The Fresno Bee
Contact:  http://www.fresnobee.com/man/opinion/letters.html
Website: http://www.fresnobee.com/
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A START IN METH FIGHT

January Summit Is A Small But Important First Step.

An important summit meeting will take place early next year, as crucial as 
any gathering of world leaders: The subject is how to fight methamphetamine 
trafficking in the Central Valley, and the stakes are as high as any issues 
of war and peace.

The meeting is being co-sponsored by Reps. Cal Dooley, D-Hanford, and Gary 
Condit, D-Ceres, and by California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The 
meeting comes amid heightened awareness of the growing epidemic of meth 
manufacturing in the region, and the increasingly costly toll the insidious 
drug has on lives, public health and the economy.

The problem was spotlighted in an extensive special report by the Fresno, 
Modesto and Sacramento Bee newspapers earlier this year. That report 
painted a staggering picture of addiction, abuse, disease and environmental 
degradation caused by meth "cookers," who brew up the drug in makeshift 
laboratories from a recipe of easily obtained chemicals, leaving behind 
hideously toxic wastes and broken lives.

The problem is no longer limited to Central California: Labs are popping up 
in the Midwest and along the East Coast, and the January summit must focus 
at least in part on the need for Congress and the executive branch to begin 
top view meth suppression with the same urgency given to marijuana, heroin 
and cocaine.

Attending the summit will be more than 80 federal, state and local law 
enforcement and elected officials. Invitations are also going out to 
social-services representatives, farmers and environmentalists, all of whom 
have a serious stake in the battle. The general public also is invited. The 
meeting is scheduled for Jan. 9 at the Downtown Club.

The summit will have a direct impact on federal funding to fight the 
methamphetamine problem, which has been inadequate to this point. It is 
also important that state officials take away a better understanding of the 
scope of the problem, since state efforts have also lagged badly.

Dooley helped secure $1.5 million for the Central Valley High Intensity 
Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Program for the current fiscal year, is 
hoping to get approval for $2.5 million for the 2001 budget. Some of the 
money would help police agencies involved in the program cover some expenses.

But that's really only a drop in the bucket, considering that those entire 
sums could be consumed in the cleanup of just one medium-sized meth site, 
so bad is the toxic waste associated with the drug's production.

The January summit is a good start, and its organizers deserve praise for 
that. But it is only a start, and a modest one at that. This is a problem 
that will be years and years, and millions of dollars, in the solving.
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