More and More Children Falling Victim to Meth

Feb. 22, 2005 -- -- When an Indiana girl was killed, allegedly because she had seen people cooking methamphetamines, it reinforced the image of meth users as a menace, but law enforcement and child services professionals say there are more insidious and more pervasive threats to children from the drug.

Children whose parents abuse alcohol or any illegal drug are always at higher risk for neglect or abuse than other children, but people who operate meth labs expose their own children -- and in many cases children who live nearby -- to toxic chemicals and gases.

With thousands of small-scale meth labs believed to be operating in homes and motel rooms in nearly every state across the country, there could be hundreds of thousands of children at risk from exposure to the toxic chemicals used in the cooking, and the sometimes lethal gases the process produces.

As meth production and use has spread over the last decade, the ravages of the drug on children who have never smoked, snorted or shot it up has become more and more apparent.

"Think about it this way: The ingredients in methamphetamines range from battery acid to Drano to starter fluid. All these things are toxic, and when they and other ingredients are combined they create chemical reactions, which produce gases, some of which will kill you," said Holly Hopper, a University of Kentucky professor and chairwoman of the Kentucky Alliance for Drug Endangered Children, which was created in December to help coordinate the efforts of law enforcement, health workers, children's services and school personnel.

"Children want to do what their parents are doing, they want to be big," she said. "Surveillance video has shown that children are often right there when they're cooking or using or selling it."

A U.S. Department of Justice Office for Victims of Crime report from 2003 noted that "until recently" police and child protective services personnel typically did not treat children found living in and around active meth labs as victims, and rarely screened them for physical or psychological problems that they might have suffered.

Joella Dethman of the Hood River, Ore., office of the state's Department of Children's Services said roughly 30 percent of the abuse and neglect cases her office handles are related to meth use -- but she only has those figures because she and her staff decided to do their own tally when they started noticing that more and more children in their care were coming from meth-addicted parents.

Police and public health agencies in other states have found similar numbers.

In Kentucky, for example, the state Division of Adult and Child Health Improvement estimates that as many as 30,000 children are likely exposed to the toxic effects of meth production.

In Montana, Idaho, Colorado and Washington, state officials say as many as 25 percent of the youngsters entering the care of protective services were children of meth users, and many of them needed treatment for the physical effects of the drug.

And in Riverside County, Calif., children's services workers say roughly half the youngsters they have to care for are there as a result of their parents' involvement with meth. That is true, even though since 1997 people convicted of drug offenses in California get an extra two years added on to their sentences for every child present during that use.

Even if children are off at school or out playing when meth is being cooked, that does not spare them from exposure to the toxic substances, law enforcement and health care workers say.

Residue from the gases will form on every surface in the house, including food, plates, glasses, cookware and children's toys.

"Let's assume they feed their children -- and very often they don't, because meth reduces their appetite and they assume nobody else is hungry -- but assume they do feed their child, there's gong to be meth residue on the bottle, on dishes, on food itself," Hopper said.

The chemicals also mass in high concentrations in porous materials, such as carpets, curtains, furniture and beds. As a result, young children may develop chemical burns that can look like severe acne, rashes or worse. Teaching educators to recognize these and other telltale signs of exposure to meth is part of the mission of the KADEC, and of similar joint efforts in other states.

The Justice Department recommends states take these kinds of joint measures to ensure that children suffering the physical effects of living in a meth lab are identified and removed from the dangerous situation.

Because of the contamination created by meth labs, from 60 percent to 80 percent of children found living in or immediately around homes where the drug is cooked test positive for methamphetamines, Hopper said.

Todd Bellanca, with the Riverside County, Calif., Department of Children's Protective Services, said his agency has found similar numbers.

He recalled one 14-year-old girl who was in a motel room where her mother and the woman's boyfriend were cooking meth along with "a couple stragglers." Just from being in the same room, Bellanca said, the girl's heart rate was so elevated she had to be hospitalized.

Locations where meth has been cooked are often so contaminated, they are treated as hazardous waste sites, and several states are considering laws requiring that prospective buyers be told if a property once housed a meth lab.

"We go out and deal with these labs and we take precautions, we get training, we wear protective gear, and here you've got a kid living there," Bellanca said.

These health hazards add another level of danger to those normally faced by children of addicts or heavy drug abusers, such as neglect, abuse and ingestion of the illegal drugs their parents abuse.

The abduction and slaying of Katlyn "Katie" Collman of Crothersville, Ind., allegedly at the hands of methamphetamine users who thought the 10-year-old had seen them cooking the drug, dramatizes the dangers, and though the case is shocking, it may represent another threat that is not all that rare.

"That's not uncommon at all," Hopper said. "Anybody who interferes with drug use is at risk. That's pretty much true of any drug, but with this drug it's worse, because of the way it affects users."

Heavy users at first experience euphoria from the drug, then they seem to lose the ability to feel anything but the most extreme emotions, and over time they become increasingly paranoid and suffer from bouts of rage and depression because of the damage meth does to the brain.

"If they're in charge of a 3-year-old, and that 3-year-old is hungry or wants to be held or play, and that child keeps coming to a parent like that, what's going to happen?" Hopper said. "Any time you hear something about child abuse and it sounds so horrific, check the meth link."

Bellanca agreed.

"Compared to marijuana, when they tend to be more calm, with meth they snap a lot," he said. "They do things that are so off-base you can't fathom."

Sexual abuse of children is also frequently seen among long-term meth users, because since the drug eventually destroys a man's ability to perform, they will turn to more and more deviant behavior to achieve arousal, Hopper said. One police officer she works with who has long been involved in the fight against meth claims that when he goes into a meth user's home, he can estimate how long the person has been using the drug from the amount of pornography around, she said.

Beyond the immediate health risks from exposure to the chemicals and byproducts of a meth lab and the neglect and abuse children of heavy meth users can suffer, the long-term effects on youngsters are not yet known. The prospect is disturbing, though, considering that the brain damage adult meth users suffer does not begin to repair itself for two years after a person quits the drug, Hopper said.

"The teachers are really struggling to educate these children." she said.

The danger there, Hopper said, is that a criminal cycle could be created.

"The thing I worry about in this is another generation of criminals," she said. "They're innocent victims now, but it's going to be our fault if we don't do something to help them."