ANNA - Administrators at Anna-Jonesboro Community High School plan to closed-campus lunch hour policy for freshmen next year policy for students who participate in extracurricular activities or those who use the campus parking lot.

The two policies are meant to pull the reins on some problems the school district currently faces among its students - students loitering on private property near campus, freshmen failure rates and drug use.

The closed-campus policy will be enacted upon incoming freshmen for the 2005 fall semester. A-J Principal Jim Woodward said the procedure creates open campus as a reward for freshmen who do well in school and stay out of trouble.

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SOUTHERN ILLINOIS - The methamphetamine epidemic will be reaching ears in Springfield this year, as a legislative task force plans to propose more encompassing laws to stop and help meth abusers.

The GOP Meth Taskforce, after touring parts of the state, but excluding Southern Illinois, has put together a proposal that calls for a pilot drug court program, specially designed to deal with meth users, as well as a harsher punishment on anyone found with any amount of meth on them. The task force will be pushing for prosecutors to lay an automatic Class X felony charge for any meth offense.

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SOUTHERN ILLINOIS -- Ten years ago methamphetamine was a drug unknown to many people. Now, the number of users and makers have spread through Southern Illinois and much of the heartland, driven by a near religious-like addiction that law enforcement is scrambling to squelch.

Methamph-etamine is the number one concern of all Southern Illinois law enforcers.

Union County Sheriff Jim Nash said 10 of the 12 arrests he made in a 13-day period in July were related to the use, production or selling of methamph- etamine. And that track record is only a taste of the larger meth problem plaguing Union County and the rest of Southern Illinois.

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