Meth bill proposes sweeping reforms

OLYMPIA – Rattling off a long list of the societal costs of methamphetamine – toxic labs, theft, children taken from their parents, ruined lives – state Attorney General Rob McKenna and half a dozen lawmakers Monday called for tougher penalties and more treatment.

“You have to have both,” McKenna told a Senate committee.

Among the changes they’re proposing: spending $1.1 million a year through 2010 to set up three drug task forces to help rural counties. Two of the three would focus on sparsely populated Eastern Washington counties, such as Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille.

“We have been kind of a collecting point,” said John Didion, sheriff in Pacific County, which would be served by the third task force. “Whenever the federal task forces around us squeeze, the methamphetamine users kind of ooze into our county.”

Senate Bill 6239 and House Bill 2712 would:

“Refill with state money any more federal cutbacks to the state’s drug task forces.

“Expand treatment of meth users by setting up a grant system for counties. The amount of the grants is still undetermined, but McKenna said adding 100 treatment beds would cost about $2 million a year.

“Treatment is hard, and it takes many, many months,” he told lawmakers at a hearing Monday. “But if they are willing to go through treatment, it should be available to them.”

“Limit “good time” credit for prison inmates convicted of meth offenses to no more than one-third of the sentence. It’s currently 50 percent.

“Allow health officers to get search warrants to inspect suspected labs and seize property.

“Allow cities and counties to prohibit use of or entry to contaminated property.

“Require enhanced sentences for meth – such as for manufacturing it close to a school bus stop – to be served consecutively with the main sentence, instead of simultaneously.

“Basically, this bill is everything including the kitchen sink,” said Sen. Jim Hargrove, prime sponsor of the Senate version.

The total cost to taxpayers is unclear. Sen. Stephen Johnson, R-Kent, estimated the changes would cost around $10 million a year. McKenna said that replacing the federal cuts would cost about $4 million a year and that setting up the three new state task forces for rural areas would cost about $1 million more.

“I would suggest there’s way more savings than cost,” Hargrove said.

More people free of meth, McKenna said, means fewer prison inmates, lower court costs, fewer children in foster care and fewer crime victims. In fact, more than 80 percent of the foster-care court cases handled by his office, he said, involve parents who use methamphetamine.

“The costs of meth to the state are easily in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year,” McKenna said.

At Monday’s hearing, Sen. Mike Carrell said he’s frustrated that meth bills keep coming before the Legislature without apparent effect. Last year, for example, the state restricted sales of pseudoephedrine, a common cold medicine that can be used to make meth.

“Are we seeing the light at the end of the tunnel?” said Carrell, R-Lakewood.

“I don’t think there is one single solution, or we wouldn’t have the scope of the problem that we do right now,” said Mike Whelan, Grays Harbor County sheriff. “But I think there is a solution.”

Some of the state’s efforts to fight meth use seem to be paying off, McKenna said.

The number of meth labs found in Washington last year was about half the 2,000 found five years ago. But he said that drug traffickers have stepped up their efforts to feed demand and that about three-quarters of the meth in Washington is brought in from out of state, particularly from Southern California, British Columbia and Mexico.

The next step, McKenna said, is working with other states to restrict the sales of bulk quantities of chemicals, like red phosphorus, used to make the drug.

“This bill is not the end of the road,” he said.