Profiling a "typical" meth user is not yet possible, though examining who's receiving treatment suggests they are white 20- and 30-somethings who are blue collar or unemployed, researcher Jeffrey Greene, Ph.D., of Augusta, reported to the Cass County Methamphetamine Task Force's second meeting Wednesday morning at Southwestern Michigan College.

" Support groups, such as Narcotics Anonymous, seem to be helpful as an adjunct, but they don't work as the sole source of treatment," Greene said. "Methamphetamine addiction is just too powerful. Another thing that's important is there is no pharmacological treatment at this point for meth addiction," such as methadone for heroin.

Greene has been researching the meth epidemic for two multi-county coordinating councils.

Cass County is part of the Lakeshore Coordinating Council along with Allegan County. St. Joseph, Van Buren, Barry, Branch and Kalamazoo counties constitute the Kalamazoo region.

Interacting with police officers convinced Greene that "people like us, regular citizens, underestimate how dangerous meth addicts are to the community. When you're whacked out on meth you're unpredictable, you do weird stuff. You're dangerous to yourself, you're dangerous to others, you don't take care of your kids. You do crimes. You break into places and steal things because you've got to get more money to get more meth. There's a lot of crime associated with meth other than cooking the substance.

"Our police officers also say they need help lobbying for resources for prevention and treatment. Dismantling labs leaves them with less time to chase bad guys," Greene said.

"Another comment that came from a variety of folks is that we're very reactive to meth. When we find a lab it's because we stumble on it. We pull somebody over for their taillight being out and find all the ingredients in their car or something like that. Police officers I talked to estimated that for every lab we find, there are nine others we didn't."

Education "far and away is what police officers, prosecutors, medical people, treatment clinicians, virtually everybody" recommend that "we as a public need to no more," although it has gone from non-existent at the turn of the century to 57 percent responding that meth poses an "extremely serious" problem in Cass County and regionally.

"I'm not a methamphetamine content expert," Greene said, "but from all the data I collected from surveys and interviews in focus groups, what needs to happen is that people who know about methamphetamine, like Jennifer (Lester of Woodlands Addiction Center, coordinator of the task force) and Kori White-Bissot (prevention coordinator for the five-county Lakeshore Coordinating Council in Grand Haven) and community members must analyze the findings and use the data to decide how to proceed with the task force.

Greene surmised, however, that while "county residents understand meth's an issue and they know some specific things about it, but they also have some very specific gaps in knowledge - like how toxic it is to children. Meth is huge, and people recognize it as such, but we don't have enough treatment resources. Creating the resources we need will probably call for a different model than that we customarily use for other substances"

Provoking dialogue can help use the data culled in five different areas -public knowledge and attitudes, production use and sale, laws and enforcement, prevention and treatment and environmental concerns - to develop priorities, a "theory of change" and a comprehensive plan to tackle the issue.

"Public awareness and knowledge are lacking," he said. "We need to know more as a general public about methamphetamine. That seems fairly clear to me as a layman."

Greene defined "theory of change" as "intentionally using this data to create change in the community."

That data shows that 59 percent in Cass County rank methamphetamine as the "most significant public health threat," compared to just 16 percent for alcohol, 6 percent for tobacco, 8 percent for underage drinking, 6 percent for underage smoking and 4 percent for marijuana.

"I'm very much surprised," commented Dowagiac's Cass County Commissioner John Cureton, "that meth should occupy such a high level as compared to alcohol and tobacco. It seems to me that alcohol and tobacco in the overall picture cause more trouble in more people than meth."

But alcohol and tobacco also enjoy a "level of legality," pointed out Penn Township Supervisor John K. Gore.

Cureton suggested that contaminated former meth labs could be "burned down for practice" by local fire departments.

"If there were landlords affected, insurance companies ought to develop" appropriate policies, Cureton added.

Coordinator Jen Lester of Woodlands Addiction Center in Vandalia said that's the point of the task force.

"The questions you folks are raising," she told15 people at Mathews Conference Center West, "are exactly the questions that need to be raised, and they need to be raised by you."

"A task force is a wonderful opportunity for common sense throughout the community coming to bear on problems we've got," Lester said. "You don't need to be a legislator, you don't have to be running an office, you don't have to be a high mucky-muck to really make an impact in your community. One of the things we do know is that tasks forces, with community involvement and community education, work" when "the community decides what's most important for us to attack first and focus our efforts on that."

'Terrifically addictive'

Lester said there are four "routes of administration" - swallowing meth, snorting it, smoking it or injecting it.

"Smoking and injecting are terrifically addictive," she said.

If 100 people drank alcohol daily for three weeks, eight would be addicted.

If 100 people used cocaine daily for three weeks, 14 would be addicted.

But if 100 people smoked or injected meth just twice, 90 would be addicted to the point of needing treatment.

"In terms of this room," Lester said, "one would be an alcoholic, three of us would be addicted to cocaine if we snorted it for three weeks and all but two of us would be addicted to methamphetamine. That's how addictive this drug is.

"It may not be the primary drug of choice in the community yet, but you can see how this problem can get awfully big awfully quick. We know when drugs come into a community, they never leave, so the answer becomes how do we keep that drug's presence in the community as low as possible?"

What the data shows

According to Greene's study, 57 percent don't know whether or not doctors prescribe meth; 6 percent believe they do. Two-thirds don't know meth's effects, with 12 percent believing it qualifies as a depressant. About half lack any clear knowledge about its addictive power.

Almost two in three respondents (59 percent) recognize that someone doesn't have to use meth a lot to become hooked, although by the same token a third don't know that.

Two percent report knowing someone who regularly uses meth. About 20 percent report knowing where they could score some. More than a third (39 percent) believe meth is easy to come by in Cass County.

Greene's research also found that 35 percent feel a jail sentence is the best community response for a convicted meth user while 65 percent feel meth production is a more serious problem than meth use.

Sixteen percent feel the meth issue is no more important than any other county substance abuse issue.

Eighteen percent don't perceive treatment for meth addiction to be any different than treatment for cocaine addiction; 22 percent know better.

About a fourth of respondents perceive that meth users live below middle-class; a third did not know.

Fourteen percent think meth is too expensive for most people to buy; 31 percent did not know. About 25 percent think meth is mostly a problem with people over age 21, while 29 percent do not know.

Eighty percent of county residents know meth can be produced in a typical kitchen. Fourteen percent believe it is difficult to acquire the ingredients; 71 percent thought it's easy. Two thirds know meth ingredients can be purchased at common retailers.

About three-fourths (74 percent) know meth production can cause environmental problems, while 51 percent know there are telltale signs of production in a house; yet almost half (45 percent) do not know.

Almost half (45 percent) do not know about health dangers from being in a place formerly used as a meth lab.

Ninety percent of respondents said if they were sure there a meth lab existed in their neighborhood, they would report it to the police. Half believe retailers have an obligation to keep people from buying ingredients needed to make meth.

About two-thirds (65 percent) stated they would participate in a campaign to help stop meth production in Cass County.

Children are particularly affected when their homes become toxic methamphetamine labs because "they are little and they breathe really fast," Greene said. "Their hearts beat really fast and their metabolism works things through their little bodies faster. For their proportion of body weight, they drink more, they breathe more liters of oxygen. And they do kid stuff. They crawl around on these toxic floors and they put things in their mouths" and infect pajamas, teddy bears, sheets and silverware.

One suggested solution is developing a strong drug-endangered child protocol that exceeds pulling them out of homes.

"There's a medical side of that and a recovery side for the parents. We don't know about the toxic effects of methamphetamine," Greene said. "We still don't know if a kid lived in a meth lab for a year at 5 years old, what does that mean for him or her at 12?" Greene asked about potential brain or lung damage.

Nationally, more than 2,000 children were present during meth seizures. Children are present about 30 percent of the time labs are busted.

A Lewis Cass Intermediate School District official sees mothers who used meth during pregnancy.

"Folks who work in the treatment business say meth addicts are the very hardest to treat of all drug abusers that they've ever dealt with. The detoxification and withdrawal is pretty similar" to other drugs and alcohol. "They're clean physiologically, but the intense psychological and emotional desire" for meth "takes a long time to go away," Greene said.

That "wall" period lasts six to eight months for casual users and two to three years for regular users.

Indiana's total of 670 meth labs detected in 2002 is believed to be highest in the Midwest because of piecework in the recreational vehicle industry.

"It tweaks you and you can work faster and longer and make more money," Greene said. "We're kind of in the middle in Michigan with 206 labs discovered in 2002. "Not as many as Illinois (423), but certainly more than Ohio (78) and Wisconsin (63)."

Greene only reports Michigan State Police data because "I learned that in every county's - indeed, within counties - meth lab definitions vary. In Cassopolis, for example, a lab might be defined as two elements of production. Maybe a propane tank and a bunch of Sudafed boxes. But in, say, Allegan or Dowagiac, they may say a lab is when actual production has occurred and all of the elements have to be there."

"What that does, though, unfortunately, is it woefully under-reports the number of labs that have been discovered," Greene added.

For example, state police statistics show the first meth lab discovered in Cass County in 2000, eight in 2001, two each in 2002 and 2003 and seven in 2004.