In Meth's Grip

Methamphetamine is easy to make, cheap to buy and so powerfully addictive that it is wreaking havoc on SLO County. It is destroying families and taxing local law enforcement and treatment resources.

Hazardous chemicals are hauled out of quiet neighborhoods. Drug deals go down in grocery store parking lots. Children play near parents cooking drugs. This is the stark world narcotics detectives in San Luis Obispo County see almost daily. "I'll go into locations and in this area are the kids' toys on the ground where I'm working as a hazardous materials handler," said Mike Kennedy, investigator for the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney's Office.

While local teens who use drugs continue to favor alcohol and marijuana, their use of methamphetamine is rising.

San Luis Obispo County isn't providing what local law enforcement, health care and social service officials say is critical to long-term methamphetamine treatment: more residential beds for recovering addicts.

As the number of local residents being treated for meth addiction increases, San Luis Obispo County has begun using a far more rigorous treatment to help them.

Recovering methamphetamine addicts at River Community, a residential treatment facility in Los Angeles County, attend counseling sessions, meet with doctors and hold down jobs.

Meth is easy to get, according to two teens who said they began using it as 16-year-olds.

"Kids don't wake up saying, 'Today I'm going to be a meth addict,' " said Frank Warren, a prevention specialist with San Luis Obispo County Drug and Alcohol Services.

The white powder was in two neat lines on the stainless steel toiletpaper holder in a nightclub bathroom.

Denise Walker had been homeless for more than a year in Sacramento when she moved to Atascadero in early 2001.

Frightened by a judge's threat to take her infant daughter, Denise Walker sought treatment for her methamphetamine addiction. On Oct. 11, 2005, she entered the Pasos de Vida residential treatment program for pregnant women and mothers in southern San Luis Obispo County. After eight years of abusing meth and losing everything, it was time to confront her addiction and the guilt of hurting her three children.

Denise Walker had little money, rusty work skills and no family in San Luis Obispo County when she graduated in August from a 10-month drug treatment program and began to rebuild her life. Like many people who go into treatment from the streets, the 35-year-old had no home to which she could return.

Proposition 36 lets nonviolent drug offenders receive substance abuse treatment instead of going to jail. Approved by California voters, it took effect July 1, 2001.