A report from a child advocacy group says Iowa’s new law meth law has helped some children, but there’s still a large number impacted by the drug use of adults. Prevent Child Abuse Iowa executive director, Stephen Scott, says the law has cut the number of kidsabused due to exposure to the dangerous chemicals used to make meth. He says the clandestine meth lab seizures are down about 75 to 80-percent. He says that’s good news, but he says the problem is that is only the smaller portion of the adverse effects of meth. He says most of the other factors are quite high.

Based on D-H-S records, Scott says the biggest problem remains parents who use meth and other drugs and neglect their kids. He says fixing that problem is still an ongoing battle. He says it is easier to drive the labs away by cutting off the supply. He says when you talk about parental abuse, you’re talking about drug addiction that can be cross-generational, and he says in some communities, drug use is part of the subculture.

Scott says drug use in the home has a big impact on kids. He says parents who’re using meth are not being good parents. He says there’s chronic neglect, there’s chaos in the living circumstances. If they sell the drug, there are questionable people coming into the home. He says meth has an impact on the sex drive and children in a home where parents are using meth have a much greater risk of being sexually abused.

Scott says it comes down to trying to get parents to quit using drugs. He says you’d almost like to roll the clock back before anyone starts using drugs. He says you get into issues about why people start using drugs in the first place. Scott says there needs to be a whole coalition of people to address the problem. He says a coalition came together to craft the law that made it harder to manufacture meth, so hopefully they can get together and do something to get people with kids to stop using drugs. For more on Prevent Child Abuse Iowa’s study on the drug problem, surf to its website: www.pcaiowa.org.