(March 29, 2002)- Lincoln mayor Don Wesley has announced plans for a methamphetamine summit in May. The conference aims to bring together crimefighters, counselors and other experts to look for new ways to stop the spread of meth. The stakes are high. Lincoln Police Chief Tom Casady calls meth the greatest drug risk to the community he’s seen during his career. Meth is dangerous on a lot of levels, and that makes it an expensive problem. Money from Federal sources has helped pay the bills, but a $500,000 grant that helped local law enforcement agencies buy equipment is nearly gone. The money is not in next year’s budget, and that could mean more expenses for local police and sheriff’s departments. “Statewide’s Brad Penner looks at some of the reasons for the ever-increasing cost of meth.

TRANSCRIPT Transcript of Perspective ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: • Office of National Drug Control Policy - http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov • National Institute of Justice - http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij • National Institute on Drug Abuse - http://www.nida.nih.gov

VIDEOS Watch the Perspective story here: RealPlayer | QuickTime

Transcript of COST OF METH

Methamphetamine takes different forms.
[Sgt. Mike Bassett]"One of the rarities that we found inside was a syringe, which was still filled full of liquid containing Methamphetamine. It comes from different places."
[Glenn Elwell]"They're going out and they're making it everywhere."
It triggers different behavior.It comes from different places."
[Steve Jensen]"There's usually some sort of psychosis related to it that are substance induced. It takes longer to unravel and longer to stabilize."
     Meth busts used to be big news in Nebraska. Now we're getting used to them. Last year authorities found 104 working meth labs in the state. There were 207 lab incidents reported. Those include any situation where officers find equipment or chemicals used to make meth.
[Nancy Martinez]"There are clandestine laboratories though. Local labs where people make their own Methamphetamine. And that has a much different type of cost factor to it than dealing with any other type of drugs."
Nancy Martinez is state coordinator for a federal program known as HIDTA, high intensity drug trafficking area. She says most Methamphetamine sold and used in Nebraska comes from large labs in Mexico. But small local labs create large costs.
[Nancy Martinez]"As far as the significance of drugs, it's quite minimal. However everything that he uses when he manufactures Methamphetamine becomes a hazardous waste material."
[Glenn Elwell]"We're talking the different organic solvents. Ether, hydrogen chloride gas, phosphene gas… the stuff that will either make you very, very sick or kill you dead if you don't know what you're doing."
"Okay, go ahead and start your valve. Keep going now. Remember to take a big breath."
     Glenn Elwell of the Nebraska State Patrol helps train law enforcement officers to handle meth labs. Part of that training involves learning to use oxygen tanks and masks.
[Glenn Elwell]"So your comfort level with this airpack is important because if it stpers to give you problems you need to be able to quickly troubleshoot it so you can get yourselves out."
The training course lasts several days. It includes a lot of classroom time.
[Glenn Elwell]" Mentally it's tough for them because they're learning… they got Chemistry 101 the first couple days of this week. And they have to know what they're dealing with and the contaminants that they have to worry about. And there's a lot of stuff to know besides just being a regular police officer out on the street."
     Officers from several communities came to learn how to handle a meth lab.
[Officer/Trainee]"We've been involved in some labs in Seward and just felt that we need to get trained more for it and keep ourselves safe and keep everybody else safe."
[Glenn Elwell]"You have to have people that can respond. And if you only have so many people that can respond then you are so reliant on them that you wear 'em out. You beat 'em up too bad because as you get more and more labs you just start depending on the same individuals. So we're training as many people as we can so that we have enough people that can respond and take care of the problem safely. And so that we're protecting the citizens of the State of Nebraska".
     Each officer who responds to a meth lab must wear a protective suit. It's used one time and costs 30-to-50 dollars. Lab teams use 5-to-10 suits per incident. If the lab is inside a building, officers wear air tanks and masks. The equipment cost alone for a meth lab clean up could be 500-to-1000 dollars.
The Environmental Protection Agency paid for this training course. It costs roughly a thousand dollars per person. More than 150 Nebraska officers have been trained for clandestine lab teams. That's more than 150 thousand dollars for training alone.
     In Nebraska, federal funds form the HIDTA program also pay for drug investigators, special assistant U.S. Attorneys to prosecute federal drug cases, and a chemical analyst in the State Patrol Crime Lab who works on cases. All together it adds up to over a million dollars per year.
Early on a cold January morning, a Lancaster County deputy stopped this vehicle. Inside, he found the makings of a meth lab so he called in the clandestine lab team. Sgt. Mike Bassett of the Lincoln Police Department leads the team.
[Sgt. Mike Bassett] "Myself, I got pulled out of bed to go to this. You know, I have to kiss my wife on the cheek and arranged day care for my son. These officers have to come out from their days off as well."
     The extra work means overtime for Lincoln Police officers and Lancaster County deputies on the team. It takes several hours to assess the situation and remove hazardous chemicals from the vehicle.
[Sgt. Mike Bassett] "We're actually very happy to get it in a vehicle, if you can say happy. Rather than getting it in a motel room or in a house in a residential area where the risk is quite great."
     Overtime costs vary depending on the agencies involved, but typically it's between 15 hundred and three thousand dollars. Local law enforcement can apply for federal funds from the EPA to pay for overtime costs. With overtime and equipment costs, lab clean ups cost 2-to-4 thousand dollars.
[Sgt. Mike Bassett] "This comes out of Lancaster County; this comes out of Lincoln Police Department's budget. It also comes out of the federal budget as far as HIDTA and DEA funds."
     But the initial clean up is only part of the process.
[Ron Eriksen]"Essentially here we're going to be transporting evidence and disposing of the waste from the site."
     Ron Eriksen works for the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department. He's trained in removing the waste and storing contaminated evidence that can't be held at the Police Department.
[Ron Eriksen]"The materials are highly flammable. They can also be fairly poisonous and reactive. Some of the materials will catch fire in the air, just being exposed to air. Some of them are water reactive. It depends upon what kind of method they're using to manufacture their meth."
     But Lincoln is unique. In other ppers of the state, the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency pays a hazardous waste company to do the job.
[Nancy Martinez]"In Nebraska it averages four thousand dollars per site for EnviroSol to come up from Kansas City and remove the hazardous waste on site at a laboratory."
[Ron Eriksen]"The federal government does have a contract with waste management firms that come out of Kansas City and Oklahoma City. The problem we have there is the police officers tend to sit for six or eight hours until those guys get up here. We can do it much faster. It takes us an hour to do it. Now we'll transport the stuff out to a storage facility. Pack the material up and it'll be shipped out as a hazardous waste to a facility in Arkansas called Ensco."
     Meth labs wouldn't be a problem if there were no meth users. But there's strong demand for the drug, and it's reaching into schools. Gary Keck is a drug counselor at Grand Island Senior High.
[Gary Keck]"What is new is that its making its way down to adolescents a lot more than it has say when you and I were in high school."
[Raymond Ramirez]"I tried it. You know it's really an addictive drug and it's really not that hard to get a hold of. And most of the time you don't even need money to have it if you've got the right friends or… you know, people to hang around with. And so I did it a lot. It like progressed, and you know basically I got addicted to it I guess you could say."
     Raymond Ramirez started using meth his freshman year at Grand Island Senior High. He got caught with the drug when he was a sophomore. He decided treatment would be better than a trip to the Youth Rehabilitation Center in Kearney.
[Raymond Ramirez]"And I didn't want to go there so I was like; well I'll just go to treatment. Maybe it'll make me look better. And I had no intentions on becoming sober whatsoever".
     Today Ramirez is a freshman at UNL. Looking back on it now, he realizes he was in bad shape.
[Raymond Ramirez]"I didn't want to eat at all whenever I was high on meth. You know, so I got skinny. I lost a lot of weight. I was like delirious all the time. I was like really delirious. I didn't know what was going on; I'd like black out occasionally.
     Steve Jensen is program manger at the St. Francis Alcohol and Drug Treatment Center in Grand Island.
[Steve Jenson] "Their treatment needs are different than other addiction treatments in that they usually need longer treatment because of the physical debilitation and psychological debilitation that they have had."
     Jenson says meth users typically need up to a week of detoxification and stabilization.
[Steve Jenson]"Violence is always a potential, especially in withdrawal stages were people are not feeling very well and paranoid of anxious".
     A month of intensive in-patient treatment follows the detox stage. After that, nine months of outpatient therapy involving individual counseling and group sessions.
[Steve Jenson]There is usually some kind of psychosis related to it that is substance induced. It takes longer to unravel and longer to stabilize.
     Last year St. Francis treated 225 people whose primary addiction was Methamphetamine. Few patients can afford the 10 thousand dollar bill for treatment. They pay what they can, sometimes insurance pays, sometimes the state. Donations also help.
[Steve Jenson]"Funding is a real problem. We have to be very creative with finding funds to treat these people and for enabling them to stay in the system."
     But meth users often go back to their old ways. Some may try treatment several times before they change.
[Steve Jenson]One of the hallmarks of Methamphetamine users is impulsivity. They have little impulse control and quite often they will relapse faster than say a drinker.
     Gary Keck sees the pattern at Grand Island Senior High. He works at St. Francis's In-School Wellness Center.
[Gary Keck]"They end up falling into the same old behavior so quickly its not even funny. And if they're in school and they're around their peers, you know it's so easy to get sucked back into it."
     Keck helped a younger Raymond Ramirez turn his life around by breaking away from his old crowd.
[Raymond Ramirez]"It is kind of a hard thing because you've gotta find new people and that's not always a good thing to do because you've gotta start trusting… put your trust in other people and find new friends. But at least with these friends, you know, they're a lot more understanding and their minds clear because of course my friends don't do drugs."
     "Raymond Ramirez has a college scholarship. He's a part-time tutor, active in campus organizations. And he wouldn't be here if he hadn't gone through expensive treatment."
[Raymond Ramirez]"While I was there I just kind of… you know, I found like a higher power and gave myself to God. And that's my strongest hold to keep me here. And if I wouldn't have went into that treatment I don't know if that's what helped me find God but I think I'd probably in jail."
     "The cost of fighting meth in Nebraska is high. But the cost of not fighting meth might be greater. Reporting for STATEWIDE, I'm Brad Penner."