Meth

[palmspringsbum]

Published: October 13, 2006 05:03 pm

Leaders bring behavioral doctor to Cleburne to speak on methamphetamine

By Philip Navarrette/Staff Writer
The Cleburne Times-Review

As methamphetamine use rises throughout the country, local educators, law officers and judicial workers are getting the word out about the drug to help protect the residents of Johnson County.

A public meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday at Cleburne Middle School to address the growing methamphetamine problem and how it affects people.

<table class=posttable align=right width=300><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg width=300 src=bin/meth_faces-of.jpg></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap>Methamphetamine use can take a serious toll on users, including this woman, seen in before, left, and after, right, photos taken 2 1/2 years apart. Local leaders hope to quell the rising popularity of the illegal drug.</td></tr></table>The presentation will focus on how drug users are affected by meth and how it affects everyone who has to deal with the drug — from police to judges, counselors to nurses, principals to students, Cleburne ISD Assistant Superintendent Joe Ripple said.

“We’re trying to be proactive, so the public can be better informed,” Ripple said.

Dr. Nicolas Taylor with Taylor Behavioral Health in Montrose, Colo., is the event’s keynote speaker. As a doctor and specialist, Taylor will give a detailed report about methamphetamine use and educate people how it effects people biologically, psychologically and socially.

In addition to the evening event, two other meth presentations are planned at Cleburne High School and at TEAM School during the day to address students about the dangers of meth. A noon luncheon is also planned at CISD headquarters for educators, judicial and law enforcement personnel.

The presentations, which have been in the works for about a year, emerged after Ripple and Johnson County’s 413th District Court judge, Bill Bosworth, got together and began discussing meth and the effects it has on everyone involved.

“It was initiated by Judge Bosworth because of the large number of meth-related cases he sees,” Ripple said.

Indeed, Bosworth said most of the cases he oversees are meth cases.

“About 80 percent of the criminal cases that come through here involve methamphetamine in some way or another,” he said.

The large number of cases reinforces exactly how dangerous methamphetamine really is, Bosworth said.

“It’s that combined with the realization that it appears it is almost impossible to quit once [people have] started on it,” he said.

He also sees a similar percentage of cases where the court has to put children into foster homes because of meth-related incidents involving their parents, Bosworth said.

Ripple agreed.

“Methamphetamine use has a great impact on students as well, because of the situations it creates in the home life of those children,” he said.

Methamphetamine is the drug of choice across not only Johnson County, but the whole country, Cmdr. Adam King of the county’s Stop the Offender Program Special Crimes Unit said.

“I’m confident it has overtaken marijuana use,” King said.

Methamphetamine may be so popular that dealers are switching to it from heroin and cocaine, King said.

The latest trend in methamphetamine use is a smokable concoction called “ice,” King said.

“Ice is to methamphetamines as what crack is to cocaine,” he said.

Most people start using meth to try to lose weight quickly or for a quick energy boost. However, after just one use, many users are hooked, King said.

“People confuse methamphetamine with amphetamine,” King said.

Amphetamine has pharmaceutical uses and can be prescribed by doctors in small amounts, King said.

“But methamphetamine has no medical use. People think it can be self-prescribed for weight loss and for an energy boost, but it can’t,” he said. “They’re dealing with a highly addictive drug. Meth is every bit as bad as heroin or any other drug.

“It takes a hold of them and consumes their whole life,” King said.



Philip Navarrette can be reached at 817-645-2441, ext. 2337, or reporter@trcle.com.

[palmspringsbum]

<span class=postbold>See Also:</span> 10 Sep 06 - Drug test failures lead to job shortages

Roughneck Reality: Testing Positive: Oil-field meth use grows

By JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS Associated Press
TulsaWorld.com
12/26/2006


<span class=postbigbold>Long hours amid a labor shortage opens the door for stimulants. </span>

<table class=posttable align=right width=300><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg width=300 src=bin/bronco_drilling.jpg></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap>Frank Harrison, CEO of Oklahoma City-based Bronco Drilling Co., says meth has replaced marijuana as the banned substance most often found in the company's drug tests.</td></tr></table>When Bruce Humphries broke into the energy business in 1975 as an oil-field laborer, he found two things king among roughnecks: booze and bluster.

Now, Humphries, a rig manager in Duncan, says the hard work is still there, but he's seeing something new he doesn't like: "It seems like the drug of choice is the meth. It's just a scourge."

Little federal or state data exist to show how bad the drug-abuse problem has become in the oil patch. But some industry officials are concerned about the dangers of methamphetamine in an industry where the work is known to be hazardous.

Frank Harrison, CEO of Oklahoma City-based Bronco Drilling, which employs 2,000 people, said evidence of meth use shows up in nearly half of the company's positive drug tests.

Meth has replaced marijuana as the offending substance most often seen in the company's tests, he said.

"We've got an absolute epidemic," Harrison said. "You've got a formidable foe. Good Lord, you've got the devil himself in meth."

Tom Cunningham, drug task force coordinator for the Oklahoma district attorneys council, said industries

that demand long hours, such as oil rig work, can foment drug abuse.

"Any job that requires people to operate 12- to 18-hour shifts -- that will push a person toward a stimulant," Cunningham said.

Meth can keep users wired for days but has drastic side effects that leave abusers sick and emaciated.

"On a rig, the hours are long and the pay is pretty good, but the work is tiring and the conditions can be tough," says Joe Kem, regional manager for Rock Island, Ill.-based Bituminous Insurance Cos., which provides property casualty insurance to the oil and gas industry. "It's a situation where some workers could be susceptible to drug use."

In 2005, methamphetamine killed at least 71 people in Oklahoma, up 36 percent from the previous year, according to the state Medical Examiner's office.

Lawmakers have sought to curb its spread by making pharmacies put cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, a key meth ingredient, behind counters. Customers must show identification before buying the products.

But law enforcement officials say meth continues to proliferate, smuggled straight up Interstate 35 from Mexico. And any kind of drug abuse is a concern in a thriving industry undergoing labor shortages and known for dangerous working conditions.

There were 15 deaths in the industry last year in Oklahoma, com pared with five in 2002, state Department of Health records indicate.

Drug urine tests are used in an attempt to weed out abusers, but the tests aren't foolproof. Employees have been known to cheat.

High demand for domestic oil and gas production has boosted labor needs.

Making matters worse, scores of industry workers, the ones lucky enough to have weathered the oil bust in the 1980s, are fast approaching retirement age, and some companies are scrambling for laborers.

The industry employs more than 325,000 people, mostly in California, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Roughnecks can earn $50,000 a year, not counting overtime.

"Right now, finding competent employees is a problem," says Mike Bernard, president of the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association of Oklahoma.

Bronco is working to implement a policy that treats some workers struggling with substance abuse and to put a counselor on the company payroll.

Representatives of many of the leading oil exploration companies are reluctant to talk publicly about drug abuse in the industry.

"It's a huge problem in the business," Kem says. "The big question is what do you do about it?"