The Meth Battle
A Discussion on Meth in Indian Country
By Sanjay Talwani, 11-07-05
If you live in the West, the methamphetamine horror stories I heard last week in Tulsa were nothing new. The scabby faces. The days and days without sleep, the violent paranoia. The children sexually abused, burned with chemicals and boiled alive. Crude forgery rings in small western cities. And those labs, those labs, with the nasty chemicals in hotels room and the trunks of cars.Although when someone at a rap session at the mentioned that meth-freaks sometimes drink each other’s urine for the residuals, and that detainees in county jails will battle one another for the fresh urine of a newly arrested crank-head, I had to admit I hadn’t heard that one.
At this particular discussion, a series of experts seemed to agree: The West’s big meth problem is extra-bad -- or at least bad in a specially insidious and unfortunate way -- in Indian Country.
So what are the Indian leaders, assembled for one of the year’s biggest Native conferences going to do about it?
One thing they’re not doing is waiting for the federal government to rise to the occasion. Now, Indian Health Service is funded at only 52 percent of its need, and at only at seven percent of its “Behavioral Health� needs, said Holly Echo-Hawk at a “breakout session� at the conference, something like a panel discussion but really just a series of five or six presentations, with no questions or give-and-take. Echo-Hawk, who runs a management company that deals with children’s mental health, said there’s only one meth-specific IHS program in the country (in Tulsa).
“We have to do it ourselves,� said Lynette Willie, who works in Window Rock, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation for the U.S. Department of Behavioral Health Sciences. “Through education. We as a people have to take that first step. We have to take the steps to protect our children.�
There’s a lot to educate, she said. Nowadays most kids in Navajo country are raised by their grandparents. Explaining to a grandmother, who has never taken illegal drugs, that her fifteen-year-old granddaughter is using meth, is no easy task, but Window and her program are traveling to the remotest corners of the vast Navajo nation, to the furthest tendrils of rural America, where there are people using meth and others who apparently still have barely heard of the stuff.
They’re showing them pictures of meth paraphernalia, the little baggies and pipes, and what meth labs look and smell like. They’re teaching grandmas some of that hep lingo the kids are using do talk about their dub, jumbo and glass.
“We had to tell them, if your kids are talking about ice on the Navajo reservation in the summer, they’re not talking about the winter,� Willie said.
As Willie described the Navajo elders, I thought of a county attorney in Montana who once lamented to me that nowadays a lot of the grandparents on his local reservation are the ones doing crank. So these education programs had better be finely tailored.
These speakers all had a shared implicit message: On the Navajo Nation, said Willie, that means including the elders, medicine men, and teaching against the desecration of body and land by the drug.
Meanwhile we see slides of Navajo kids smoking crank outside their high school. And we also heard that meth-rehab programs have relapse rates above 90 percent - for those lucky enough to end up in a program
So where is there success? The federal government is incarcerating plenty of Indians, thanks to a huge budget, mandatory minimum sentences and strict guidelines that judges must follow in sentencing. Also, there is no parole in the federal prison.
Thomas Heffelfinger, the United States Attorney for Minnesota and chairman of a key Justice Department advisory committee on Native American issues, made almost no mention of incarceration. He instead pointed to the problematic patchwork scheme of jurisdiction: “Is there anybody in this room who understands criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country?� he asked.
And with all the talk about meth labs, about the human and environmental costs, Heffelfinger may have surprised some by pointing out that 80 percent of the drug in the country comes from Mexico, not home-brews. So the sale of Sudafed at Wal-Mart contributes to less local meth than some might think.
(Once I heard a senate aide brag to all present, including a U.S. Senator, that his hotel room back in the home state had been used as a meth lab, as evidenced by the smell in the room of cat piss. He rejected my theory that perhaps it WAS cat piss.)
As Heffelfinger sped off to a much more heated discussion on a controversial tribal gaming issue, I asked him about sentencing disparity between Indians and non-Indians.
“There is no disparity,� he said. A federal commission studying it found very little, he said.
So I checked and it turns out this study deals with assault, manslaughter, murder, and sexual assault. But it doesn’t address drug crimes at all. Heffelfinger may be right - that Indians do not receive longer prison terms than non-Indians for the same crimes - but there’s no definitive data and many folks in and out of Indian Country dispute his claim.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from prison are some of the more holistic healing methods that tried to incorporate healing with what’s worked for Indians before -- involvement with the elders and a big-picture view of tribe, body and spirit. One speaker showed complex models of things like a forest of healing - with a diagram of trees of different sizes; with labels like “sexual assault victim� on one tree; and the roots intertwining below in three layers of soil; and the soil having labels such as “forgiving.� I could follow, but time will tell of the real-world success of these models on their meth-addicted targets.
Native ways like the sweatlodge, and talk of four directions and 12 steps may well work; but no one at this conference seemed too confident that Indian Country is going to whack this plague. Not when meth-users’ teeth are rotting in prison so fast that dental costs are stretching the budgets of prison systems around the west. Not when counties are running out of jail beds. Indian leaders warn that meth is the greatest threat to survival of their people, that it’s the “Devil’s dope� and all this innovation and education may not be enough. [End of article]
Tragic.
Comment By Karen Taylor, 11-07-05Unbelivably so.
Comment By Dylan Tucker, 11-08-05The problems facing all rural Montana communities seem to be magnified on reservations. It is clear that new approaches to drug prevention need to be used against Meth due to it's uniquely destructive nature. When it comes to Native American communities, new factors make this uniquely difficult.
This may be the largest problem facing communities in the rural west today, without any exaggeration.
This article is a good step to keeping the meth problem in our faces, where it belongs. I hope that the trend continues, that more articles are written, that this problem never gets swept under the rug again.
Meth is comparative to the coming of the caucausian invaders. It began a long time ago with the norsemen and continues to this day. As People we have always pulled together when confronted with an invader of our culture. Meth is no different from every other kind of invasion and abuse of our cultures than the many we have survived. We will have casualties, but we must fight in everyway we know, in the homes, schools, streets, programs, and politically to preserve our people and our ways. WE must create employment with gaming funds NOW in our isolated tribal communties. Find, fund and support the "lemonade stand" because every tribe has the potential marketing item, we just need to think and wisdom will come to us. Prayer is good but it takes "works" to make our dreams realities. All my relatives.
Comment By Sandra Talks About, 11-08-05I'm sorry to say, but unless our Indian Communities (local governments, schools, business, and every Tribal Member or non-member who every encountered or has been victim to this dangerous drug) decides to take back what is rightfully theirs, then these types of epidemics will continue to fester and grow.
Comment By Eagle Vision, 11-08-05I saw an ad in a Native Newspaper that warned of the dangers of Marijuana from the Ad Council,I thought to myself,why aren't enough resources diverted to address Meth? Do people actually still believe in the "Reefer Madness" propaganda to not pursue the meth fight with the same vigor? I'll be frank, in my community Mary J is the least of our worries. Heck, the pot smokers even have trouble finding their ganja because everyone's dealing the Meth now. It's a sad state of affairs to see the feds in denial about this problem. I saw a high school classmate ravaged by meth when I was home and he went under a complete transformation for the absolute worst. It was disheartening to see a guy who was once involved in the community, attended ceromonies, come out 13 years after H.S graduation with one foot already in the grave.
Comment By Devon Wauneka, 11-08-05I attended the Meth session held at the National Congress of American Indians annual conference. The session included various perspectives on how the Meth problem is affecting Indian Country, ranging from justice issues to behavioral therapy. As mentioned in your article, I do agree that many of the panelists could not confidently express a means or end to combating the meth issue, but the presenter from the Navajo Nation, Lynette Willie, expressed that in her program they were "realistic" with the families who were receiving treatment and provided counseling to help the family deal, cope, accept and structure themselves around an addicted family member. This type of family therapy I thought was the most logical because sometime we, as a society, may have to face the reality that we cannot take away all the evils that plague our environment, but rather we have to learn to find balance. I think that is what made this presentation different from all the other meth sessions I have been to because the Indians, specifically the Navajos, showed how they create balance in thier society with the negative elements like meth.
Comment By Edward Crittenden, 11-08-05Devon, I missed the meth session at the NCAI but would like to talk to you more about what they did present and any research material that was available. Would you and anyone else who did attend this meeting please email me at . I have funding for the first detox center in NE, OK for Natives where the meth problem is critical. Any input and suggestions are appreciated. Thanks, Edward
Comment By Chuck Hedin, MAC, CAC III, 11-08-05As a veteran substance abuse therapist since 1972 I have seen many lives turned around from alcohol and drugs. I believe there are ways to confront the problem. When we started tribal treatment programs in the 70's we had little support from tribal and government agencies.
Comment By Lynn Hart, 1-06-08Please visit http://www.noxcusesnone.com
Comment By Edward Crittenden, 1-06-08Although I motivated the Cherokee Council to fund $500,000 two years in a row Chief Chad Smith took $30,000 of the money to do a feasibility study and determined that a detox center in NE Oklahoma was not needed. He instead chose to go in a different direction than helping persons who were at a life and death place in their life and thought it more important to help others in the family around the addict so they would not become an addict. I find this concept disheartening especially when one examines how many full blood Cherokees have died in the city park of Tahlequah, the Cherokee Capitol, of alcoholism and addiction. Smith seems to only drive programs to the Cherokee people that create more and more jobs that instead consume program money rather than help the Cherokee people. Cherokees are in a pathetic state where the present leadership has become so powerful that they are literally untouchable and the corruption has become rampant. In the last eight years of the Chad Smith tenure revenue has tripled, employment base has tripled but services are about the same as before he came into office. Any leader who does not increase services to the people in at the least the same proportion as revenue and employment expansion is not a leader but only a politician building a political base of voters. Cherokees have grown so apathetic that most do not even vote because they think nothing can change it. That plays right into what the Administration wants them to do, quit as defeated poverty stricken people often do. Possibly if Congress freezes the funds to the Cherokee Nation for being so far out of compliance with federal treaties and regulations Cherokee people might have a window of opportunity to take back their government and build it into what they need it to be.
Comment By Ada Wakeman, 11-16-08Meth is defiantly not something to mess with. Methamphetamine is addictive, and users can develop a tolerance quickly, needing larger amounts to get high. In some cases, users forego food and sleep and take more meth every few hours for days, 'binging' until they run out of the drug or become too disorganized to continue.
http://www.meditoxofpalmbeach.com/opiate-detox/opiate-withdrawal.html
One of the key global issues is access to addiction treatment ( http://www.ezpress.info/content/cliffside-malibu-rehabilitation-right-cure-can-only-be-found-right-place ). In countries where opioid substitution is widely available, 40–50% of drug users receive treatment. Most of the unmet need for treatment is in Asia and Eastern Europe, particularly in China, the Russian Federation and, of course, India.
Comment By timada, 1-12-09Many of the problems and violence related to meth use are related to its manufacture and distribution and only partially due to its direct effects as a drug. This will be an ongoing issue and begs the question of whether a focus on closing down labs over targeting individual users should be the strategy.
http://www.casapalmera.com
I don't think there's a problem with meth in India. They mainly have a problem with Pakistan. I think you meant Native Americans...
I can't believe that people still use this 400 year old misnomer. There is a country called India and the people from it are Indians!!!! NOT what some idiot called people he ran into when he tried to sail around the world to India.