Pubdate: Sun, 23 Oct 2005 Source: Ottawa Sun (CN ON) Copyright: 2005 Canoe Limited Partnership Contact: http://www.ottawasun.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/329 Author: Lisa Lisle Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?241 (Methamphetamine - Canada) GENERATION METH Users describe it as a miracle drug. For hours you're full of energy, fearless and more in love with life, and yourself, than you've ever been. It's the miracle cure for time management, weight problems and depression. Methamphetamine truly is all things to all people, and when you're using, you can be too. Then you lose it all. Coming off a high, users will sometimes sleep for 24 hours, they're paranoid and depressed. And it seems the only cure is that same miracle drug. With more bang for your buck than cocaine, meth easily seduces its users. "At first it does everything you want it to and then after a very short period of time, you start doing everything it wants you to do," says Kenny Mervin, a recovering addict who cooked meth in a tiny rural community in Iowa. It seems to have seduced an entire nation into an epidemic. Meth has seeped out of the biker bars and infiltrated the PTA, corporate offices and high schools. With mom and pop labs sprouting up throughout the U.S. since the early '90s, law enforcement is struggling to keep up. While the numbers are exponentially greater, the battle the U.S. has been fighting for years mirrors the situation in Canada. Starting on the West Coast, meth has been creeping across this country for the past five years. But with still small amounts of meth in Canada, is there something we can learn from our neighbours to the south? Is there a way to get ahead of the problem? The Sun travelled to Iowa to learn how the situation there got so out of control and what's being done to try to reverse it. In the first day of a four-part series, we give you a tale of two cities -- one in the Midwest and the other in rural Ontario -- as they fight what often seems like a losing battle. Tomorrow, you'll meet Lee, whose life spiralled out of control with the second point of meth he used. We'll also take a look at treatment programs and studies that show how successful they can be. Just how easy is it to get your hands on meth? We head to the stores to see how easy it is to buy all the ingredients you need. Mervin will also tell us what needs to be done to make it a little harder and, along with other experts, what we should be doing to get the situation under control. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin