Smoke Signals
Meth Watch: R Conversation Draws Many
Community is torn by the meth trade in area but there is little agreement about approaches to solving it.
6 APRIL 1, 2005
By Ron Karten
In California, police spotted a guy
on fire running down the street, ac
cording to Polk County Sheriffs Of
fice Detective Michael S. Holsapple. It
was a pretty sure sign that another
meth lab had gone up in flames. "They
didn't catch the guy," said Holsapple,
"but they found the lab nearby."
This was one of the highlights at a
recent public meeting on the subject
of methamphetamines (otherwise
know as "meth" or "crank") in the com
munity, hosted by the Tribal Social
Services Department.
With 80 percent of the Tribe's foster
care cases believed to be a side effect of
meth production and use, the meeting
the first of many planned came
amid a national outcry about a prob
lem that has now crossed the country.
This first in a series of town meet
ings on the subject was joined later in
the month by a Tribal Council resolu
tion establishing a Grand Ronde Com
munity Methamphetamine Awareness
Team and another approving develop
ment of a grant to focus on the local
meth problem.
"A group of our staff have been meet
ing to formalize a community aware
ness team to deal with this," said Dave
Fullerton, Manager of the Social Ser
vices Department. "We have been and
Gary, (Cherokee), shown here in shadow, was a meth user for 15 years before
entering the local Narcotics Anonomous group in Grand Ronde four months
ago.
"I go to every single meeting," he said. "I love that they help me stay clean."
His father was nicknamed, 'Speedy,' and also spent a lot of his adult life
under the sway of meth, but about 10 years ago, kicked it and no longer even
has a glass of beer. Five years ago, Gary, still doing meth, visited his dad in
San Diego, and while his dad never said anything, Gary said, "I could tell he
was concerned and that weighed on me."
Soon after, Gary quit for the first time, and in the year and a half that he was
clean, he built up a successful painting I contracting business. But the pressure
drove him back to meth. "I started doing more dope so I could do more work
so I could do more dope," he said. "I bought my wife all kinds of things but I
didn't realize that all she wanted was me, time with me."
He lost it all to meth the business, the woman of his life, his children
and now he is starting over. Four months clean. And he believes in it. "The
only reason I'm doing this (photograph)," he said, "is to bring more people into
NA."
And he is ready to work again.
are seeing a huge increase in the use
and addiction rates and the family
problems that result."
News reports from The Oregonian
in Portland and the Salem Statesman
Journal also have remarked the
growth of this epidemic that started
here on the west coast more than a
decade ago, but now has moved all the
way across the country, taking with
it the trademark waste in lives and
families, the poisoning of buildings
where meth is manufactured and a
disregard for the environment where
wastes often are dumped.
The attendant crime includes addicts
stealing to raise money for the drug.
Most identity thefts are attributed to
meth manufacturers or users, as are
many forgeries and burglaries.
Meth is often manufactured in apart
ments or motel rooms, and the chemi
cals used in the process are deadly.
The buildings or forests or wherever
the wastes are left behind become haz
ardous waste sites. Because identified
sites cost building owners upwards of
$5,000 to clean, many do not report
apartments abandoned by meth manu
facturers; instead they hire individu
als not trained in hazardous waste
cleanup to get the place ready for the
next tenant. Such decisions put both
the cleaners and the next tenants at
risk.
Damage also is done to family mem
bers both through the violence coming
from a meth-addled psyche and the
dangers posed to children when forced
to live in a meth lab. Children can be
left to their own devices for days at a
time in these dangerous environments
when those in charge are getting high.
"This has a high impact for chil
dren," said Larry Hellie, a Human
Resources Consultant leading the
meeting. He called drug abuse pre
vention his "avocation."
"The only way to find these labs is
community help," said Detective
Holsapple, who noted that budget cuts
have eliminated the drug team in Polk
County.
He and Hellie with the help of a
couple videos described the attributes
of both meth addicts and meth manu
facturers, the kinds of materials that
will be around when meth is being
cooked and the kind of activities that
will mark a residence being used as a
meth manufacturing facility.
"I really think that by pulling com
munities together, you can solve prob
lems like this," said Jennifer J. Mar
tin. Martin is an Assistant U.S. At
torney who prosecutes principally drug
offenses.
Still, the experience expressed by
drug cases are investigated.
Police described budget cutbacks
that have left them with too few offic
ers to respond to too many calls in a
timely way, a judicial system that may
send users home the next morning and
a special fund to clean up meth labs
"that is usually empty," according to
Detective Holsapple.
"There is a public perception that
nothing is happening," he said.
Tribal member Joyce Kirk, formerly
an Administrative Assistant with the
Tribal Social Services Department,
knows the problem first hand on a
number of levels. In Klamath Falls,
she and her husband, Joe Kirk (Kla
math), who still works in the Social
Services Department, lived next door
to an apartment in Klamath Falls that
was used to manufacture meth.
She described the dealing activity as
constant from the time the sun went
down until it came up again in the
morning. She described a police de
partment that declined to act on nu
merous calls by Kirk and other neigh
bors. She described an apartment, that
when finally abandoned, held all the
deadly remnants of the manufactur
ing process, and a landlord that sent a
regular cleaning lady in to clean what
is legally defined as a hazardous waste
site, so that the apartment's next ten
ants were surely affected by contami-
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some in the Grand Ronde community
did not reflect confidence in the official
effort.
"I have a daughter who was totally
clean for 15 years," said one mother in
attendance. (Neither she nor her
daughter are named for their safety.)
The daughter, a meth addict clean for
15 years, fell off the wagon for a year,
but then burned all her bridges to get
off the stuff again. "She was very seri
ous about staying clean," said her
mom. "She stopped using and gave the
names and addresses of all the dealers
she knew to the police "to get it out of
Willamina."
Understanding the risks of turning
names into the police, U.S. Assistant
Attorney Martin called the daughter's
actions, "a very courageous and impor
tant thing to do."
"Not one thing was done," the mother
concluded. "Today, they snub her be
cause she could give them dealers but
she didn't know where they cooked the
stuff."
"Not here," said Polk County Ser
geant Nathan Goldberg.
"Yes, here," said the mom.
Goldberg added later that while in
formants may feel slighted after giv
ing information, there may be a lot of
reasons why nobody was immediately
arrested, not least of which is the way
nants that remained.
But from her time in Social Services,
Kirk also sees the failure of the com
munity to help addicts, even when they
ask for it.
"I see no health treatment, no after
care, no assistance, no help. There's
nowhere for them to go. They go back
with the same people and they go right
back to using, and we don't do any
thing about it."
She described addicts coming to the
Tribe's Social Services Department for
help and having to face endless waits
for a bed at a rehab facility. "We send
our clients to NARA (Native Ameri
can Rehabilitation Association) but
they're not getting what they need.
There's a lack of bed space. Six weeks
later, they haven't found a bed for
them."
The crisis we see today has been a
century in coming, according to Hellie.
Amphetamines were first synthesized
in 1893. Soldiers have used a form of
it in most wars to stay alert for long
periods of time, and they continue to
use it in Iraq today. In the 1950s, it
gained fame as the housewife's miracle
drug, and one form or another has long
been used for weight loss.
See METH
on page 7