State officials today announced another milestone in Iowa’s fight against methamphetamine. Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge says special tank locks have now been installed on anhydrous ammonia tanks in all 99 counties. The effort involved 4 years of work and more than one million dollars from the federal government.

Iowa Drug Policy Coordinator Gary Kendall says Iowa’s had a 90 percent reduction in meth labs, since a new law was passed limiting sales of products containing pseudoephedrine. Kendell says the national reduction is near 58 percent, "so it’s clear that there’s something else at work in Iowa that’s leading to the reduction in the number of meth labs. It’s programs like this, the anhydrous ammonia tank lock program, that sets Iowa apart."

Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey says there are now 24,000 tank locks installed around the state. Northey says farmers can now be assured that anhydrous ammonia is feeding their crops, rather than being used to "poison the families of Iowa." So far this year, there have been 77 meth labs busts in Iowa. In 2004, the state had 1,500 meth lab incidents.

Iowa’s Drug Czar says he’s pleased with the progress Iowa has made in battling the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine in the state — but still wants a few more changes to Iowa law. Marvin Van Haaften oversees the Office of Drug Control Policy he wants to tweak Iowa law to make it match the recently passed federal law.

Van Haaften says he’s presented a proposal to the legislative services bureau that would make Iowa law similar to provisions in the federal law that he says are tougher than Iowa’s law.

Van Haaften says one of the tougher provisions involves the amount of pseudoephedrine you can buy. Van Haaften says the federal law has a daily limit you to buying only seven-point-five grams of the drug per day, while Iowa law has no daily limit. Pseudoephedrine is one of the key ingredients used to make meth.

Van Haaften would like to link changes to match federal law with a change that adopts a rule that’s new in Oklahoma. Van Haaften says Oklahoma has a “real time” tracking of sales of drugs with pseudoephedrine in them so all pharmacies know instantly when someone buys pseudoephedrine, and can stop someone who has bought their limit.

Van Haaften says Iowa’s law that moved drugs containing pseudoephedrine behind the counter has cut meth labs by 77 percent in the state, and the addition restrictions would help even more.

National, state and local officials today talked about the ongoing effort to shut down the use of illegal drug methamphetamine. Assistant U.S. Attorney General Rachel Brand says they’re introducing a couple of new things as part of today’s “National Methamphetamine Awareness Day.”

Brand says one is a new website — www.usdoj.gov/methawareness — that brings together all the existing materials about meth, and includes a new video presentation about how meth is made, how meth affects your body. She says the video includes the stories of meth users, including one Iowan. Brand says the website is a tool that can be used by many people. She says they hope it will be useful to law enforcement, teachers and others to teach about the dangers of meth.

Matt Whittaker, Iowa’s U-S Attorney for the Southern District, says the state’s new pseudoephedrine law has helped cut meth labs by 77-percent, and made Iowa a leader in the fight. Whittaker says while the state can’t declare victory, the cutback in meth lab can be seen as a major victory. Whittaker says we can’t afford to become complacent in the fight against meth.

Whittaker says good cooperation among law officers at all levels has helped in the fight and that will continue. Whittaker says he’s committing his office to work together to redouble their efforts to combat methamphetamine, and especially the organization that bring meth into the state. Brand says the majority of meth is now coming into the country from Mexico, and federal officials are working on cutting that supply.

Brand says the U.S. Attorney General got together early this year with the Mexican Attorney General to work on the problem. Brand says the announced a number of new joint issues they’re working on, such as sharing information at the border, they’re implementing enforcement teams at the border, and she says Mexico is improving its precursor laws to work with the United States. Iowa law officers are taking part in two-day training session for drug task forces to learn how to do complex drug conspiracy investigations.

Related web sites:
Meth Awareness website

A Dubuque man has been sentenced to prison for manufacturing meth and lying about it in court. Forty-five-year-old David Turner was found guilty in March of attempting to manufacture methamphetamine and one count of making a false declaration before a court. Turner is accuse of falsely testifying in the March 2005 trial of Rex Breitbach of Dubuque, claiming he did not assist of have any involvement with Breitbach in making meth.

Fourth months later police were called to Turner’s Dubuque home on the report of a fire. Turner ran from the home before authorities arrive. Inside the residence firefighters found items used to make meth. Then at Turner’s trial, Breitbach testified that Turner did help him make meth in his home. Turner was sentenced in federal court to 188 months in prison.

Iowa law-enforcement and drug-prevention leaders today said the state can’t rest on its laurels after leading the nation in the fight against methamphetamine and pleaded for the restoration of funding they say is shrinking.

State Drug Policy Coordinator Marvin Van Haaften said federal funding’s being scaled back and the state’s lost the funding equivalent of the salaries of 21 drug officers over the last three years. Van Haaften says they’re asking Congressional to restore funding for the program that states use at a level of $900 million, where it was three years ago, saying it would prevent more law-enforcement layoffs.

Van Haaften, a former county sheriff himself, says national figures show what a good investment the drug cops are. Van Haaften says nationally, every narcotics officer makes 79 arrests a year, on average. “That’s 79 people that are moving, selling, using drugs on the streets of our communities,” he points out. He adds the narcs seize 54,000 guns a year in those arrests and investigations.

Van Haaften says Iowa’s tough new state law cut the number of meth labs more dramatically than other state in the nation. But he says Iowa drug-enforcement task forces still seized more than $43 million worth of illegal drugs last year. The drug czar says that was more than 11,000 pounds of illegal narcotics. “There’s three million people in Iowa,” he says, “And that’s enough to keep all three million people high for at least two days.”

Van Haaften says keeping a lid on drugs helped local communities in many other ways. He says for many years violent crime’s been declining, but it shot up recently and went up in Iowa five times more than the national average. “What you see is, as federal funds have declined, we see violent crime rising,” Van Haaften says.

Bill Vaughn, chief deputy with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, said his task force has opened 400 new cases in the last six months in a half-dozen central Iowa counties and notes there’s a lot of overhead expense. They struggle with operating costs like money to make drug buys, rent, utilities, supplies, equipment, and other things that help the drug agents “deliver the mission,” Vaughn says.

Ken Carter, director of the State Division of Narcotics Enforcement, says they’ve built on the concept of the drug task force as it proved worthwhile, and 24 are operating today across the state. “We don’t want to be reactive, we want to be pro-active,” Carter says. He says the work of drug task forces should continue and focus on drug-shipping gangs, so Iowa can remain a leader in drug enforcement.

The number of meth labs fell by 70-percent the year after the new state law locking up precursor substances used to make it. But Carter had a chilling observation for those who think Iowa’s won the war on illegal drugs. In 2005, he says agents seized twice as much cocaine as methamphetamine. “While for a long time our resources were devoted to meth labs, cocaine mever went away, marijuana went away, heroin never went away,” Carter says. In the last three years a federal initiative (the Byrne-Justice Assistance Grant) has been reduced by 54-percent and Congress is considering more reductions. Today’s presentation by local, state, county and federal officials in Iowa and other states was a call to keep the funding at full strength.

Related web sites:
Byrne Justice Assistance Grant

A Crawford County couple is charged with running a meth lab inside their home with several young children there. Sheriff’s officials this week executed a search warrant at a residence in Arion in response to a report of illegal drug activity taking place inside the home.

As a result of the search, 37-year-old Richard Julich, and his wife, 29-year-old Stacie, were both arrested on charges of manufacturing a controlled substance, methamphetamine and child endangerment. While searching the home, deputies located three children inside ranging from one to eight-years-of age. The couple is being held in the Crawford County Jail with bond for each being set at one-hundred-36-thousand-five-hundred dollars.