Washington Looks at
Meth in Indian Country
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From The
NewWest Front Page
By Sanjay Talwani, 4-10-06
Kathleen Wesley-Kitcheyan, Chairwoman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe in
Arizona, came to Washington last week and told the Senate Indian Affairs
Committee -- or at least, the four senators who attended -- about
what's happening on her reservation.
For starters:
*A baby was born with a deformed pelvis and legs and no feet to a
14-year-old Meth user, the Arizona Republic reported.
*A meth-addicted baby was born with legs that are numb and will likely
never be usable.
*About a month ago, a pregnant woman on meth was arrested and gave birth
in jail to a premature baby, who died.
*Two years ago, a meth-using mother killed her own little boy, saying
later that he was the "devil" and "possessed."
*In late 2005, a 9-year-old meth user was admitted to the San Carlos
hospital with hallucinations and violent behavior. "We are worried that
kids even younger are doing meth," said Wesley-Kitcheyan.
And it goes on: One in four pregnant women testing positive for meth; half
of all newborns testing positive for drugs or alcohol; 101 suicide
attempts in 2004; even 106 cases of arson.
Wesley-Kitcheyan had mixed feelings about airing such dirty laundry, she
said, but police and other local services are overwhelmed, and the tribe
is at risk of losing the spirit of its ancestors to the drug. She has 55
grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews, she said, stopping once to
compose herself. "I lost one about two years ago on the Tohono O'odham
Reservation. A champion, a rodeo champion. He won over 26 buckles. He won
over six saddles. The wrong choices cost him his life. He was doing drugs,
drinking and was engaged in human smuggling because of the lack of
employment."
The stories from across the West stretch our comprehension. As nations
without effective government become havens for wrongdoers, so problems in
Indian country make it attractive to predatory drug dealers.
Matthew Mead, the U.S. Attorney for Wyoming, had a nasty list of
meth stories as
well. The Goodman drug clan dealt more than a pound of meth a month (plus
cocaine, marijuana, and prescription pills) on the Wind River Reservation,
servicing 20 to 50 buyers a day. Even a tribal judge pleaded guilty in
that case, along with more than 20 members of a single family, Mead told
the panel in his written testimony.
Then there's
Jesus Sagaste-Cruz
and his gang. According to Mead, Sagaste-Cruz and his buddies read a
Denver Post story about the bleak town of Whiteclay, Nebraska, a
two-mile stumble from Pine Ridge Village on the famously tough Pine Ridge
Reservation in South Dakota -- a "dry" reservation, where alcohol sales
and possession are prohibited, but are smuggled in from Whiteclay. The
little stores in Whiteclay made millions, the paper said. So Sagaste-Cruz
and his crew plotted to give free meth to Indians to get them addicted.
According to Mead, the gang, who figured they would blend in with the
Lakota, even took up with local women and fathered children, all to get
the moms addicted to the drug so they'd sell it to pay for it.
BIA Director William Ragsdale told the senators he heard of police
officers on some reservations being intimidated by the drug gangs. "As a
former police officer, I found that hard to believe," he said. But he
spoke to some officers, "none of whom were cowards, freely admitting that
they were intimidated, that the magnitude of drug trafficking and illegal
immigration into Indian Country in some areas had overcome their ability
to provide proper response."
The Senators
Was anyone listening? John McCain, the panel's chairman, was called away
to leadership meetings on the doomed immigration bill, leaving the gavel
to the vice chairman North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan
Dorgan, who has held field hearings in North Dakota on both meth use and
suicide in Indian Country, also welcomed Conrad Burns, although Burns
isn't a member of the Indian Affairs Committee. Back when I worked on
Dorgan's DC staff, I saw this alliance in action frequently, especially on
funding for Indian programs, what with the pair as serving as the top
Republican and Democrat on the Senate Interior Appropriations
Subcommittee.
Burns noted with sensitivity the poverty and lack of treatment options in
Indian Country. "In addition, treatment for meth addiction often takes
place off-reservation, meaning that in order to receive help. Montana's
Indian youth are taken out of the country that they know and are placed in
communities dominated by non-tribal members," Burns said, reading from a
prepared statement. "However, this situation represents the best that we
can offer under the current circumstances."
Indian Country Today has
an analysis of the politics of meth as revealed
by the hearing. And for skeptics of the crisis, Slate offers an analysis
here.
The senators and witnesses discussed some legislative tinkering to the
methamphetamine crisis -- more funding for prevention and enforcement
programs, and adding tribes and territories to the entities that qualify
for anti-meth grants in the recently amended Patriot Act, and tribal
eligibility for programs related to the effects of meth on children,
pregnant women and girls, and mothers.
Solutions Old and New
As always, those involved in fighting meth want to offer some hope and
some innovative approaches with limited funds. Jefferson Keel, Lt.
Governor of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma and First Vice President of
the National Congress of American Indians, cited culturally appropriate
treatment centers, like the White Bison and one Sky Center in Oregon. On
the Cherokee Reservation, a traditional children's marble game has been
adapted in a campaign, "Use your marbles, don't use meth." And the
National American Indian Housing Council has trained 2,000 people in meth
lab identification and safety, providing tribes with the kind of benefit
they never really wanted -- saving money by doing their own meth lab
cleanups. And the Lummi Nation in Washington has used its power of
"banishment," Keel said.
On the San Marcos Apache Reservation, Wesley-Kitcheyan said steps have
included a tribal meth forum in March, including extensive education for
tribal employees; a media campaign; and improvements in interagency
cooperation like having the Arizona Highway Patrol back on the
reservation's highways. They've also started a drug testing program for
tribal employees, "which, as you probably understand, is not very
popular."
Regular old government, of course, is offering its regular old solutions.
Mead, the Wyoming U.S. Attorney, noted that Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales went to the Yakama Reservation in Washington recently to
highlight the problem. On that March 29 visit, Gonzalez also announced a
"cold case" initiative to tackle unsolved murders on the reservation. And
a Native American subcommittee of attorneys just met in Coeur d'Alene and
hammered out a "best practices" document, Mead said.
For all these offerings, maybe the most innovative was the one touted by
Burns -- the
Montana Meth Project, bankrolled by Silicon
Valley tycoon and sometime Montanan Thomas Seibel, that features
hard-hitting, stomach-turning depictions of meth use. Burns praised the
program, referring to Seibel only as "a private party," and mentioned that
the project had just been featured on Nightline.
"He wrote a great big check—to do a survey, to do focus group, and then to
pay marketing people out of San Francisco to produce the ads," Burns said.
"Yes, he has enough money to burn a wet mule, but his heart's in the right
place. And he stepped up to the plate and wrote a great big check."
Burns said the ads are so tough a woman in his church confronted him,
wanting them pulled. "They're too tough," she said, according to Burns.
"In fact, we had to talk to our kids about them."
The Most Comprehensive Meth Legislation Ever
Congress did have one high-profile piece of anti-meth legislation this
year. The "Combat Meth Act," sponsored in the Senate by Jim Talent, a
Republican from
the nation's leader in meth lab busts for four years running, Missouri,
and Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who professed embarrassment that
criminals from her state, California, were responsible for spreading the
drug into the rest of America.
Talent and Feinstein said the Act provides treatment funding and new
enforcement tools. Much of the public may notice the provision that took
effect April 8 and deals with the sales of cold medications containing
pseudoephedrine, which is used to make methamphetamine, although most meth
in West
comes from Mexico, not from the infamous meth labs.
"Everything goes behind the counter, and people are going to have to sign
for it. For grocery stores -- big stores like Safeway -- that don't have
pharmacists, they have to create another place where this can happen."
Feinstein explained, adding a shout-out to the retail giants and their
leaders for not blocking the measure. "What did happen is major retailers
recognized the problem. And this really goes to, sort of, the CEO, who
sees a problem and says, ‘Look, you can't let this happen, Let's just do
it.' Long's and Target and Wal-Mart all stepped up to the plate."
Feinstein and Talent remain committed to keeping pseudoephedrine from the
clutches of meth cooks. The restrictions even apply to gelcaps and liquid
forms of pseudoephedrine, Talent said; even though those are not now
processed for meth; they wanted to stay ahead of the criminals. And Talent
said that in Europe, they have cold medicine with phenylephrine instead,
which he said is 90 percent as effective as pseudoephedrine.
Talent said the legislation putting cold medicine behind counters was
modeled after an Oklahoma law, leading in some places to a 70 to 90
percent reduction in meth labs. In his view, this is major stuff.
Whether it will help stop the mountains of meth coming across the Mexican
border into places like San Carlos is another issue, but Talent made clear
he wasn't going to let such questions ruin his victory dance.
"This was the most comprehensive anti-meth bill ever introduced in
Congress, much less passed," he said.
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