Thread: 90% of crime on Harbor linked to meth

Could it be that this drug trafficking from Mexico is facilitated by the indifference of local elected officials regarding the illegal alien problem in Grays Harbor??

90% of crime on Harbor linked to meth
By Callie White - Daily World Writer
Thursday, April 5, 2007 11:07 AM PDT

On Grays Harbor, meth is cheap, highly addictive and everywhere, causing a high that leads to incredible lows.

“Ninety percent of the criminal activity in Grays Harbor County has a nexus to methamphetamine,” Undersheriff Rick Scott told a packed forum in Montesano Wednesday night.

Beyond the shadowy, menacing sales network that supplies the bootleg stimulant, the drug’s pernicious effects on its users spur them to commit crimes from traffic violations to domestic abuse to theft to homicide, Scott said.

And there are few the drug hasn’t touched. Scott related the surreal experience of pulling over two meth users who were fighting in a car and learning it was purchased with his own sister’s credit card checks, which had been stolen from her mail.

Hosted by Families Against Methamphetamine, the Meth Awareness Forum drew a large crowd to the Montesano High School commons — more than the 125 or so who signed in. Law enforcement officials talked about the ways meth has made inroads into Grays Harbor County, while health officials addressed how addicts can receive treatment. Participants also learned just how much an effect that one drug has had upon the community.

A potent, $20 dose of meth will give users an hours-long high, followed by a day or so of “tweaking” — drug-induced hyperactivity. Those long, restless hours are often spent doing all manner of inane, repetitive tasks. The users, awake for often days on end, become paranoid and delusional. When they crash, they feel a profound low, according to Sgt. Keith Fouts of the Grays Harbor County Drug Task Force.

“They will do anything to get high again,” Fouts said. “They’ll spend all their money getting high. Then they’ll spend yours … money they take from people they don’t know.”

Usually users smoke meth, but Fouts said he was seeing more meth touted as “Strawberry Quik.” The pink, sweetened and flavored stuff is ostensibly to prevent its “aluminum foil” taste from lingering in the mouths of users who take it orally. But it may be a marketing tool that makes the substance palatable for younger people, he worried.

Washington State used to be No. 3 in the nation for meth labs, Fouts said. But today’s dealers are getting pure stuff from Mexico and South American drug cartels.

Fouts showed a slide of a car trunk. There were 11 pounds of pure methamphetamine inside, and a passel of empty bags.

“We missed 15 pounds of it. It had been sold,” Fouts said. “A quarter million dollars of meth is sold in this community each year, even in our depressed economy.”

All last year, Scott said, the Sheriff’s Office seized 12 pounds of meth. This year, so far, it has taken in 81/2 pounds.

Scott attributes the wide availability of meth to the Harbor being part of a larger drug corridor that runs from Mexico to Canada along I-5.

The health effects are also devastating. Fouts showed before-and-after pictures of meth users from Oregon’s Multnomah County. Then he showed a picture of a mouth with ground-down, brown teeth separated by vast expanses of gum.

“That picture was taken in Elma (Grays Harbor), ” Fouts said.

Brain scans of drug users of various ages and habits were shown. Meth users of only a few years had craterous holes in their brain.

Perhaps the most compelling testimony against meth comes from its users, Fouts said.

“When we make a marijuana arrest, they always say, ‘This stuff should be legal,’ ” Fouts recalled. “We never have a meth addict who says that about meth. Even they don’t think it should be legal.”

The county ends up paying a lot of medical bills for meth addicts, Undersheriff Scott said. Dental, to be sure, but also mental health.

Larry Kahl, director of Chemical Dependency at HarborCrest Behavioral Center in Aberdeen, said there are numerous treatment options, and that coming down from meth, a psychological addiction, doesn’t entail the “shakes” or vigorous illnesses that are associated with quitting heroin or alcohol.

One woman asked about the cost of treatment. There are programs that subsidize indigent users and even working users with a sliding scale, but residential care can cost from $10,000 to $40,000 for a program. About 23 percent of patients in recovery are there because of meth — far less than alcohol, but more than any other drug — said a county representative.

“That doesn’t give me much reason to hope,” the woman muttered.

But hope — and love — were the order of the day from Kahl. He said there were former users in the forum who had made great recoveries against incredible odds, and they couldn’t do it without love and hope from concerned people. He even cited a statistic that 60 percent of patients receiving treatment for drug abuse recover — the same as those in care for coronary artery disease. Patients with greater resources — economic or social — have rates of recovery in the 80s, he added.

“There is no ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ in what I do,” Kahl said.

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Originally Posted by legal4mykidsfuture

Washington State used to be No. 3 in the nation for meth labs, Fouts said. But today’s dealers are getting pure stuff from Mexico and South American drug cartels.

And imagine what the NAU super-highway could do for the cartels. A meth super-highway......