By Greg Rayburn

The Daily Citizen  15 Dec 2003

Editor's note: The following story details a videotape compiled by the White County Drug Task Force with which local law enforcement professionals are trying to educate the public about the local methamphetamine problem.

The Searcy City Police Department and Harding University, with the assistance of a $225,000 grant, have produced a video to educate the public on the problem of methamphetamine in White County.

The video was produced out of a small portion of the grant funds.

Roger Pearson, a narcotics officer for the Searcy Police Department's Drug Task Force, said the purpose of the video was to show the effects the drug has on the mind, body, and community.

"We cannot over-emphasize how much of an effect methamphetamine is having on our community," Pearson said.

Kyle Osborne, coordinator of the White, Prairie, Lonoke Drug Task Force, said news of methamphetamine use may be turning off some readers with repetition, but the DTF needs all the help and support it can get from the community in fighting this battle.

"We are having a hard time concentrating on some of the other drugs because of how bad the meth problem is here," Osborne said.

The video's earlier segments show a young, attractive woman in the early stages of meth use. By the time she has used the drug 100 months, the young woman appears to be a senior citizen with an haggard, ravaged expression on her face.

Dr. Randy Maddox, an emergency room doctor at White County Medical Center, explains how common the drug is in the community as well as how easy it is to make.

A little later in the video, DTF officers interview one woman as she gives an account of how the drug has affected her.

"I am so tired of being high," says the young woman in the videotape.

At one point, she tells viewers she feels compelled to take meth and be with her "loser friends" rather than spend time with her eight-year-old son.

"I know this has to have an impact on my son," she said, crying.

She said spending time in the county jail was not as bad an experience as one might think.

"It is like a family reunion here," she said. "Most of the people I know in here are using meth."

The woman reveals another problem law enforcement officers said they are especially worried about: many meth users make their own stashes.

"I would say about 90 percent cook it themselves now," she says. "And a lot of people don't know what they are doing and they are making some really bad dope."

The woman says she has become a slave to the drug.

"I don't feel very good about myself anymore," she says. "I feel like only God believes that I can overcome this. What I really need is some long-term rehab. Being in here a short amount of time is not enough."

She says one reason she doesn't mind being in jail is because it helps her stay off of meth, although she also says inmates can get meth sometimes from fellow prisoners, visitors, or even jail employees.

But the woman insists she knows of no specific incident where a White County jail employee ever delivered meth into the county jail.

"It ruins you. Your body doesn't heal from what it does to you. My nerves are shot right now," she says. "I was a good person at one time. I used to go to church. I want to accomplish something in my life. I want to get some rehab and learn to work."

One effect meth has on a person is that the user can become apathetic about life.

"When you are high, you just don't care about anything because you are high," she says. "I know many people who don't have a job, have never had a job. All they do is get high."

Although she loves the drug because she craves it, she admits she hates it, too.

"It's the devil, I tell you," the woman says. "You like to take it when its dark and that's where the devil is."

The video proceeds as Pearson goes into a local hardware store and shows viewers just how easy it is to make one's own dope.

For about $120, a person can go into a local hardware store and buy all the materials and supplies to make their own dope, Pearson says in the video.

Spending $128.90 plus tax on equipment to make meth can result in producing $1,000 in the illegal drug, Pearson said.

Officers in the video report that users of the drug are hard to spot because it does not concentrate on a specific age, race, or economic class.

"That is why it is so hard to enforce," Osborne said.