Pubdate: Thu, 23 Feb 2006
Source: Gloucester Daily Times (MA)
Copyright: 2006 Essex County Newspapers, Incorporated.
Contact: http://www.salemnews.com/email/#Editor-g
Website: http://www.gloucestertimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/169
Author:  Patricia Cronin
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

OFFICIALS: METH IS THE NEXT DRUG TO FIGHT

As city officials and health care advocates increase their efforts to 
prevent OxyContin and heroin abuse in Gloucester, they are also wary 
of a drug  that has slowly moved toward the East Coast: 
methamphetamine. "It really is coming, and we are not going to be 
exempt from this at all," Jack Vondras, the city's director of public 
health, said of the drug, commonly known as meth. During a discussion 
Tuesday of an opiate-use report completed by the Healthy Gloucester 
Collaborative, questions from city health officials turned toward 
meth, which has devastated parts of the Midwest. Getting prepared 
Meth, or ice, is a highly addictive stimulant that can be either 
snorted, injected, orally ingested or smoked.

It can be manufactured in labs using cold medicine containing the 
drug pseudoephedrine and products available at any hardware or 
convenience store. In a response to the growing problem, cold pills 
containing pseudoephedrine have been pulled from store shelves in 
pharmacies across the country and are now  only available from a 
pharmacist. "We went around to every drug store and every supermarket 
with a list of articles (used to make meth)," said Kenneth Sucharski, 
a Manchester police detective and head of the Cape Ann Drug Task 
Force. "We went into one hardware store and the owner said, 'I sell 
every one of those.'" Sucharski said within one to two years police 
are expecting meth to become just as big of a problem as heroin or 
OxyContin present on Cape Ann. "It makes heroin look like Christmas 
candy," Sucharski said. "It's the ultimate destroyer." With 
Gloucester detective Sean Connors, Sucharski said he attended special 
training conducted by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency designed to 
alert local police forces to the dangers of meth and its hazardous 
manufacturing process. The materials cooked up to produce the drug 
are highly toxic and will contaminate the ground the lab sits on. The 
last major arrests on Cape Ann occured on Taylor Street in Gloucester 
two years ago, when police and Drug Enforcement Administration agents 
found an operational meth lab inside a married couple's locked duplex.

It was estimated that it would take $30,000 to clean up the waste 
left behind. When a lab is located, a special DEA task force - 
Clandestine Lab Enforcement Team - is brought in because local and 
state police do not have the safety equipment needed to pull off a 
raid. The agents don special suits with portable  oxygen tanks to 
protect them from the deadly gases produced by the chemicals. "It's 
so volatile and so explosive that the automatic weapons have a flash 
suppressor on the end of the weapons," Sucharski said. "I can't tell 
you what it  smells like because there's nothing else that it smells 
like." Prevalent in Midwest In rural communities across the Midwest 
and West Coast, meth labs have sapped local resources.

Harsher laws have done little to prevent mothers - more than 50 
percent of meth users are believed to be women - from cooking 
chemicals and  exposing their children to the harmful vapors. 
According to the state of Illinois Web site, from May 16, 2005 to 
Oct. 31, 2005, police found more than 109 children lived in meth lab 
environments. "When it hits, it hits so hard and so fast that no 
matter how well you're prepared, you're playing catch-up," said 
Master Sgt. Bruce Liebe of the Illinois State Police. "It's like 
trying to jump onto a moving train." He said troopers assigned to a 
special meth response team have seized about 1,000 labs per year for 
the last three years and are now required to undergo hazardous waste 
operative training during their time in the academy. But in 1997, 
when he said the drug first began to trickle into cities and towns 
across the state, no one knew the effects of the chemicals found in 
the labs. One trooper in southern Illinois had to retire after only 
five years of service because the chemicals had so severely impacted 
his lung capacity, he said. But for now on Cape Ann, heroin and other 
opiates are causing the most damage. Carol Yenawine, site director of 
Health Education Services on Washington Street, said that at a 
state-wide meeting of methadone clinic directors last month, nearly 
all reported an increase in the number of young people in their early 
20s coming in for treatment for heroin and other opiate addictions. 
HES is serving 150 clients with a waiting list of more than 30, she  said.
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