December 11, 2007 by Gary Warth, North County Times

When we began out series on methamphetamine use in the summer of 2007, I hoped to stress two things.

First, meth affects everybody in our county. You may live in a neighborhood where you never see addicts, and you may have never been a victim of a crime committed by someone desperate for another hit, but the drug probably still has affected your life in some way.

The new standards for mail boxes in the county are a result of officials trying to find a way of stopping identity thief, a crime that is believed to be committed mostly by meth users. To read what the District Attorney's Office says about the problem, go here. 

Last January, the county Board of Supervisors directed managers to allocate $300,000 to find safeguards to protect taxpayers' personal information from identity theft. Read about it here. 

A study at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego revealed that treating meth users in its trauma center cost about $1 million, because the patients often don't have money or insurance.   The study also revealed that the extent of injuries to patients on meth were more severe than other patients.

If you've had a cold or allergies lately, you may have noticed that some of the medicine you used to be able to find on the shelves is missing. While you still don't need a prescription for Sudafed and other products that contain pseudoephedrine, you do have to go to the counter and ask for it, and then sign your name when buying. The new restrictions, which include limiting sales of pseudoephedrine to 9 grams a month, are all designed to keep clandestine chemists from converting the medicine into methamphetamine.

So from your mailbox to your cold medicine, methamphetamine use is affecting your life in ways you may have never realized. It's a problem in the world today. Maybe not the worst problem, but it does seem the world would be a nicer and safer place without it.

The second thing I wanted to stress in the series was that meth can be overcome. Legislatures could have done more to regulate the distribution of pseudoephedrine before it grew to the problem we have today, and they still can do more.

But even more important than stopping the drug is stopping people from using it. Meth addiction itself can be overcome, despite a myth that there was no way to break free of it.

By now, everybody knows the horror stories. There is a good chance that someone in your life has had a problem with the drug. But we did not want to write a series that was all doom and gloom. While we did our share of stories that showed how lives had been destroyed, I also profiled former meth addicts who were kind enough to share their stories with us. Some had lost their homes, their children, loved ones and jobs because of their abuse, yet they found a way to beat methamphetamine.

The county has set up a hotline to report suspected meth use and to refer people to places where they can get help to overcome their own addiction.

The number is (877) NO2-METH. The same resources can be found at the county's Web site, www.no2meth.org.