Pubdate: Wed, 05 Oct 2005
Source: Craig Daily Press, The (CO)
Page: Front Page
Copyright: 2005 The Craig Daily Press
Contact: http://www.craigdailypress.com/site/feedback
Website: http://www.craigdailypress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2334
Author: Patrick Farrell, High Country News
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Test)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

METH FUELS OIL AND GAS BOOM

Drug Use Among Drill-Rig Roughnecks Worries Authorities

Sheriff Buddy Grinstead, a solidly built cop's cop who benches 300 
pounds, is only beginning to wrap his ham-hock-sized arms around the 
drug problem that he says is swallowing his county.

As he drives his unmarked white SUV down Craig's main drag, Grinstead 
points out a low-slung motel, where Craig police recently busted 
dealers with methamphetamine, the cheap, synthetically produced 
stimulant known for its long-lasting high. Not a block farther, he 
nods at a run-down apartment, a well-known crash pad for addicts. Up 
the hill, behind the main street, he pauses at a well-kept 
ranch-style home, where, a few years ago, a local developer was 
busted for cooking and selling the highly addictive drug, which 
traces its chemical lineage back to the stamina or "pep" pills given 
to Allied and Axis soldiers during World War II.

Throughout the years, methamphetamine has claimed victims from across 
the socio-economic spectrum, but Grinstead and energy industry 
insiders say it has recently become epidemic on the oil and gas rigs 
sprouting in the dusty expanses around Craig.

Grinstead busted his first meth lab in 1987, but said he didn't think 
much about it; the "cook" was from California, and the whole 
operation seemed out of place in his area. Then, around 2000 -- at 
about the same time as the natural gas boom took off -- he noticed an 
increase in meth use and related crimes. It was like a "light switch 
went on," said one of Grinstead's deputies, a drug investigator who 
asked to remain anonymous. "It was like a disease; everyone had it."

Grinstead said he's spoken with law enforcement officers from across 
the West who say the drug has engulfed their small communities. Meth 
recipes abound on the Internet, and most of the ingredients -- 
over-the-counter cold pills, propane, drain cleaner, iodine and 
ammonia -- are easily procured in rural areas.

A survey from the National Association of Counties, released in July, 
found that methamphetamine is the No. 1 drug problem for 57 percent 
of suburban and rural counties. Half of the counties estimated that 
one-fifth of their inmates were in jail for meth-related crimes.

Of the 82 inmates in Grin-stead's jail in early August, seven were 
there for meth possession. But dig a little deeper, Grinstead said, 
and most of the check forgeries, domestic violence cases and 
burglaries trace back to crank.

Moffat County District At--torney Bonnie Roesink just hired another 
attorney to help her work through a felony caseload that nearly 
doubled from 2002 to 2004 with meth-related crimes.

Every year for the past three years, law enforcement officers have 
discovered a meth lab somewhere in Moffat County's 4,700 square 
miles, and Grinstead is certain that more lurk in the area. He said 
the drug is already overwhelming his small staff of 11 deputies, and 
he fears the problem only will grow as more energy workers move to 
Craig, to nearby Vernal, Utah, and to the oil and gas fields of 
southern Wyoming.

So early this year, Grinstead, a solid Republican with friends and 
family in the energy business, made a radical suggestion. At a 
February county commissioners' meeting, he called for random drug 
testing of all oil and gas workers. With that request, he publicly 
declared that the county's oil and gas industry -- one of its main 
economic engines -- has a drug problem that it can't or won't control.

"I'm not saying everyone in oil and gas is a druggie," said 
Grinstead, "but these traveling drill crews seem to have a problem."

Wired or Fired

To confirm that meth use is widespread in the oil and gas fields, go 
no further than Grinstead's jail, and ask Tony Peck, a wiry, 
shaggy-haired inmate currently doing six months for violating 
probation for meth possession. In recent years, Peck has found steady 
work as a roughneck. It's a tough job, and to get him through the 
12-hour days of drilling, he has often turned to meth. Known as "poor 
man's cocaine," the drug delivers a similar euphoric high. A hit of 
meth can keep a user awake for hours, even days, at least at first.

"You work long hours, you thought the meth was keeping you awake, but 
after a while, it didn't do much, you have to keep taking more," said 
the 37-year-old Peck. At the height of his use, he said, he was 
eating or smoking more than a gram of methamphetamine in a day, at a 
cost of $200 to $300.

Peck has been in and out of jail for driving under the influence, 
possession of marijuana and methamphetamine, and grand theft auto. 
But once released, he said, he finds it easy to get work again. 
Toward the end of one of his most recent prison stints, he sent a 
note to the head jailer asking whether he could be let out first 
thing on his release day, so he could get his work clothes ready. The 
lieutenant agreed, and Peck was out at 12:01 a.m. Not six hours out 
of the clink, Peck was back pushing pipe. And for him, going back to 
work meant going back to meth.

Peck said he often took meth on the job with fellow rig-hands. Having 
worked construction and various other jobs, Peck knows how prevalent 
the drug's use is. However, he said it seems to be especially 
widespread in the oil and gas fields, where the long, hard hours mean 
a lot of money, and a little extra pick-me-up can get a working stiff 
through his shift.

One former roughneck said the problem is so ingrained that there's a 
saying around the rigs, "Either you're wired or you're fired." But a 
wired worker is often a dangerous worker. Although he was often high 
on the job, it scared Peck to work with other meth users, especially 
the ones who were "spinning out" -- in the throes of the drug's 
intense chemical high.

Rig work -- amid a spider's web of chains, cranes and thousands of 
pounds of swinging steel pipe -- is dangerous and demanding, even for 
a crew of sober workers. Although the U.S. Department of Labor 
doesn't keep statistics on drug-related accidents, the everyday peril 
of oil and gas work is well-documented. During a two-week period last 
August, two workers on separate rigs in the Pinedale, Wyo., region 
were killed on the job.

Peck, who has dreams of starting his own drilling business when he 
gets out of jail next year, said he's tried to kick his habit. But 
hooked on a drug that has one of the highest relapse rates of any 
illegal drug, and lacking a real treatment plan, his future looks 
grim. "I'd like to get off the meth," he said. "But I haven't been 
offered any (treatment)."

Bosses in Denial

Sheriff Grinstead isn't the only public official to make the 
connection between the meth problem and the oil and gas industry. At 
a coalbed methane industry conference in May, Wyoming Gov. Dave 
Freud-enthal called on industry leaders to consider the effects of 
meth on their workforce, and to pressure the Legislature for 
meth-treatment programs. But industry management has only recently 
begun to wrestle with the problem.

"There's a lot of meth out there," said Dyan Piscopo, a human 
resources employee with EnCana, a Canadian energy company that is 
drilling in Colorado's Piceance Basin and Wyoming's Jonah Field. Two 
years ago, she said, after finding hypodermic needles, crank pipes 
and other drug paraphernalia at one of its worksites, EnCana began 
working with Shell and Stone Energy to collect and share drug tests 
from every employee seeking work with the hundreds of sub-contractors 
that do the digging, drilling and maintenance.

The results are somewhat heartening, according to Colin Woods, 
director of sales for Houston-based Data, Integrity, Security, 
Administration, Inc. In 2003, Woods helped set up the test database 
for Shell and EnCana. Back then, he said, drug positives among oil 
and gas workers in the Rockies were hovering around 8 to 10 percent. 
Today, positives have dropped to about 4 percent. In contrast, about 
8 percent of the nation's full-time workers tested positive for 
illegal drugs in 2004, according to the U. S. Department of Health 
and Human Services.

But some local drug testers say the industry's drug problem is much 
bigger than the numbers suggest. Many oil and gas workers refuse to 
give urine samples for drug tests because they know they'll fail, 
said Rick Schneider, treasurer of Sideline Collections, a company 
based in Rock Springs, Wyo. Factor in the refusals, he said, and as 
many as one in six of the more than 15,000 tests his company collects 
each year are failures. Many more may be slipping through the cracks; 
Peck claims to have cheated five or six random urine analysis tests 
by chugging an herbal detox drink beforehand.

Schneider said he has found entire rig crews unable to pass a drug 
test. Some energy companies, he said, have asked him to test only on 
certain days, so workers have plenty of time to back off the drug, 
which stays in the system for only one to three days. Firing a crew 
can be costly to an operator facing stiff penalties for straying from 
a drilling schedule, Schneider explains: "It is an incentive for a 
company to look the other way."

Locals Left Holding Bag

The recent survey from the National Association of Counties shed 
stark light on the meth problem. Shortly after it was released, U.S. 
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urged a national drug policy shift 
from marijuana to methamphetamine. A number of bills aimed at 
stemming the problem are floating around Congress, including the 
"Combat Meth Act" sponsored by Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo. The bill 
could provide as much as $16 million for law enforcement and 
rehabilitation, especially in rural areas, but it is languishing on 
the congressional calendar.

In the meantime, Moffat County residents have formed a grassroots 
task force: Communities Overcoming Meth Addiction, or COMA. About a 
year old, COMA offers classes and support groups. The all-volunteer 
group is pushing for an inpatient rehabilitation center at Craig's 
Memorial Hospital; patients currently travel 200 miles to Grand 
Junction to reach the nearest facility. The group, with support from 
District Attorney Roesink, Sheriff Grinstead and District Judge 
Michael O'Hara, also wants to open a drug court. Used with some 
success across the country since the mid-1990s, drug courts sentence 
offenders to lengthy rehab and drug treatment, with the threat of a 
return to jail or prison for drug-use relapses.

"I've seen our community and other communities deal with this in a 
traditional way, and it's gotten us nowhere," said Grinstead. "We 
want to put these people in jail, but we've got to deal with the 
abuse, too." But with limited resources, it is hard to battle the 
drug head-on. COMA's bank balance barely topped $3,000 in August. 
Moffat County has a $45 million annual budget, and puts some money 
into drug enforcement, including the jail and the sheriff's division. 
But there is no rehab program, nor money to pay for it, despite the 
steady increase in energy business in the area.

County Commissioner Darryl Steele said oil and gas money will start 
to trickle in during the next two years, but the federal and state 
governments will have to pay for any additional rehab programs.

As for Sheriff Grinstead's original request that oil and gas 
companies be required to randomly test their workers, it's unlikely 
to come to fruition. But companies such as Entraga and El Paso, which 
are building pipelines through Craig this fall, are listening. Both 
require drug tests before they will hand out applications for the 600 
temporary positions they need to fill.

That's music to Grinstead's ears. He just wants "everybody to get 
involved with testing so that there is no place for these guys (doing 
meth) to work." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake