Meth

takes toll on kids

December 23, 2005

Editor's note: This is the second in a five-part series on meth and its effects on life in the Valley.

MARY AMES\Frontiersman reporter

MAT-SU - It was March or April, still cold, when some children were brought out of a meth lab last year. They had to be decontaminated, stripped of clothes and washed off with buckets of water while they were in the garage.

&#8220Those kids will probably never know how many people they affected that night,” said Rita Huss, an emergency room nurse at Valley Hospital. &#8220We saw them, and we said that we have to do something. Our task force began because of those children. When you see the kids, you see this drug is so deadly and so ugly.”

The Mat-Su Drug Endangered Children's Task Force, formed by the plight of those children, started as a response to the spread of methamphetamine production in the Mat-Su Valley. At first, the task force consisted of people representing the agencies directly responsible for the immediate fallout of meth labs - the Department of Environmental Conser-vation, Alaska State Troopers, Drug Enforcement Agency, Department of Youth and Family Services, Mat-Su Borough Emergency Services and Valley Hospital.

Their purpose was to come up with a unified response to the people in meth labs who do not choose to be there - the children.

The detrimental health effects of methamphetamine on adult users are well documented. The drug is a stimulant that blocks the re-uptake of dopamine and seratonin in the brain, creating a subsequent flood of those chemicals and, at the same time, destroying the brain's nerve receptors.

It takes more and more meth to recapture the initial feelings of euphoria and excitement. Adults can make a choice about using meth and producing it. Their children have no choice.

&#8220During decontamination, they don't cry,” Huss said. &#8220At 3, 4, 5 years old, the affective brain disorders are already in place.”

At one of the larger meth labs busted in the Butte in October, a 2-year-old girl was found in a trailer with two men, three loaded handguns, syringes, acetone, muriatic acid, Coleman fuel, a butane torch, more than 150 blister-packs of cold remedy medicine and a gram of meth, among other things.

Both the toddler's father, Erik Ostensen, 29, and the other man, Mark Graham, 52, had a misdemeanor reckless endangerment charge added to the multiple felony counts against them because they were in such a dangerous environment with a little girl.

Due to lack of processed evidence, however, Graham was recently set free by Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler, with even the reckless endangerment charge dis-missed. The state protested.

&#8220For the record, if someone is caught in a meth lab, knowing a child is in there with meth, it doesn't support the charge of reckless endangerment,” said assistant district attorney Richard Payne.

According to current Alaska statute, ordinary people are not required to alert authorities to the plight of a child in danger of harm or neglect. The charge stuck to Ostensen only because he is the tot's pop.

&#8220Yeah, unfortunately, we give legal rights to adults and don't give the same rights to children,” said Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, a local family-practice doctor who has been concerned with meth issues for the past several years. &#8220There's no mandate to report, other than to follow your conscience.”

Baldwin-Johnson chairs the task force, had already attended a national conference on meth use when the task force formed and has seen the effects of meth firsthand, in children referred by the Office of Children's Services, and in people of all ages when she is on call in the emergency room.

&#8220The youngest was a newborn,” Baldwin-Johnson said. &#8220The baby was very jittery, with breathing problems. We had to send it to the neo-natal unit at Providence. How much a baby is affected depends on the extent of the mom's use. Reports are of babies who are smaller, born into drug withdrawal, more irritable and difficult to control.”

Studies are few and not always consistent, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence about meth's damage to children, she said.

Infants and small children have faster metabolic rates than adults. For their body size, they breathe in more air than adults, which in meth labs is a stew of toxic substances that clings to every permeable surface, including toys, clothes and blankets. Their brains and immune systems aren't developed and are more easily damaged. They crawl around, touch everything and constantly put their hands in their mouths.

But the biggest concerns are signs of neglect and abuse, according to Baldwin-Johnson. The children are usually filthy, hungry and may have burns from contact with the solvents, lye, acid and heat used in the cooking process.

As far as concrete evidence of brain damage, Baldwin-Johnson said no studies have been done with children. But PET scans of adults who use meth show long-term damage, even years after someone has stopped using. Fine-motor function apparently doesn't recover.

Huss, also a member of the task force, has been giving classes to educate people in the community about the risks, damage and dangers of meth use for more than a year, on her own time. In her work in the emergency room, she, too, sees the effects firsthand.

&#8220Whether they come in because they've been busted or not, if someone's high on meth, they're agitated, paranoid and aggressive,” Huss said. &#8220They clench their teeth, make rapid movements, their eyes jitter without blinking and they have tossed-salad verbiage. The half-life of a dose of meth is 12 hours. They call it the poor-man's cocaine. Withdrawals are severe, the crash hurts their bodies.”

Huss is concerned with brain development, not just with meth lab children, but with teenagers who are picking up the habit.

&#8220In teens, with the brain still developing, the nerve endings are still developing toward the cerebral cortex, the area of the brain that processes information,” she said. &#8220When we speak about teens, we say that literally, their nerve endings don't go to the top of the head. When they use meth, they get stuck in a reward system of primitive thinking.”

The first sign Sean Owens remembers of teens tracking toward meth were reports of them shoplifting Sudafed.

&#8220There's not a lot of reason for them to have to do that,” said Owens, supervisor of juvenile probation officers at the Mat-Su Youth Facility. &#8220In 1997, when I started as a probation officer, there was no meth use that I was aware of. In 2002, we started to see some cases. In the last two to three years, kids, mostly 15 to 16 years old, have tested positive for meth. It's really hard for them to stay clean and not relapse. They do fine for a while, then they disappear. When we finally find them, they're looking pretty ragged.”

Owens said a few times young meth users were tied in with parents who were users. But kids who make meth, he said, are usually not connected with parents who are aware of their production.

&#8220We found a 17-year-old kid who had part of a meth lab in his backpack,” he said. &#8220The kids we see as meth producers aren't necessarily the dregs of society, either. They're not losers, they see this as a lucrative business.”

Owens sees few youths relapsing often on the harder drugs such as heroin and cocaine. But with meth, its different.

&#8220With meth, they understand it's a very hard, very dangerous drug,” he said. &#8220And they relapse again, knowing they have so much to lose. All juveniles have the ability to think of consequences, however fleetingly. With meth users, it appears they don't care or don't get the consequences. They know they can be taken away from their family and locked up for more than a year. They've already had a shot across the bow and their behavior continues.”

For the younger children, victims of adult meth users and cookers, there have been some improvements brought about by initiative from the task force. Now, when they are removed from labs, they are wrapped in Tyvek suits, according to Huss, brought to the hospital and passed through warm showers to decontaminate them, no longer subject to bucket baths in a cold garage. From the moment they leave the lab, they are surrounded by caring adults.

But because of toxic contamination, they leave everything behind to begin a future full of unknowns.

For youths, Alaska offers some generic long-term treatment programs, but none in the Valley and none that Owens knows of that are specific to meth users.

&#8220Kids that test positive for meth are different,” Owens said. &#8220It's difficult to describe, but there's a difference in behavior. It's extremely difficult to break the habit, even with long-term institutional programs like the one at McLaughlin (Youth Facility in Anchorage). They get out and fairly shortly they're back in the cycle. But with meth, there's the added bonus that their teeth fall out and they get sores on their skin. Fortunately, teens are vain. Someone might think, ‘I want my teeth, I want to have a girlfriend.' It takes word of mouth from kids. We gotta get the word out to kids from kids.”

Next: The impacts of cleaning up after a meth operation.

Contact Mary Ames at

352-2284 or mary.ames@

frontiersman.com.