Posted on 05/01/2005 10:20:53 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
Associated Press
CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. - Police Officer Deb Brettingen hates methamphetamine for what the drug does to people - something she saw daily in a two-year stint on a regional drug-fighting task force.
"I can't stand the rotting teeth, where they are light brown," Brettingen said. "This woman, her teeth looked like a vampire, they were so sharpened. (The drug) is eating away at their enamel, and eventually eating away at their teeth."
Brettingen, 28, recently completed her service on the West Central Drug Task Force, which encompasses several law enforcement agencies in the Chippewa Valley.
She said she now can easily spot someone who is using methamphetamine.
"I've dealt with people who were high-end dealers, people using it in front of me," Brettingen said. "I can recognize people, walking down the street, who are on it. It's just that obvious to me."
Among other things, "it's their sunken eyes, the way the eyes have rolled back into their heads," she said. "You can see every single bone in their bodies. And their breath - it smells like a cat urinated in their mouth."
Back on regular patrol, she shows other officers the signs of meth use, such as nervous twitching, constant scratching and severe weight loss.
During a recent traffic stop, she recognized the person was exhibiting unusual symptoms, suggesting he used meth. She discovered he had the drug and a pipe on him.
"This one guy, I thought he was going to rip the back of neck off, he was itching so bad," Brettingen said. "Another guy was chewing on his tongue, like it was a piece of gum."
One meth user was convinced police put bugs in his car to harm him.
Brettingen thought the man meant electronic listening devices were planted.
"He lifted his shirt, and there were literally seven marks in his chest where he had dug into his skin," she said. "He actually thought we put a flesh-eating bug in his car."
Paranoia is common among meth users, she said.
"One person spent three days in a closet because he thought it was safe there," she said.
Other symptoms include staying up for days or even weeks without sleep and losing memories from entire days.
"They can go from being in one state on Monday to being in another state by Thursday, and not knowing how they got there," she said. "It doesn't seem to bother them."
Brettingen has seen meth users as old as 63 and as young as 12, a statistic that alarms people when she speaks to groups about meth.
"It really hits people hard," Brettingen said. "It's affecting kids who are very young. How many kids in junior high does (a dealer) get to use meth?"
She said she has seen people ruin their lives in just three months after first trying the drug.
"It really messes up priorities," she said. "They aren't the same person anymore. They lose their job, their car, their house. They have spent all their money on meth, and they have nothing left."
Meth is made from a combination of over-the-counter items, including a chemical commonly found in a variety of cold and allergy medications. It is usually cooked in a flask, giving off a powerful and toxic odor.
Of 67 people arrested in 46 Chippewa Falls drug cases in 2004, 24 were arrested for meth-related charges. Brettingen said the next most popular drug is marijuana, followed by cocaine.
Though she no longer is on the drug task force, Brettingen serves with a state unit that cleans up meth sites, which requires wearing heavy plastic suits while in the labs.
She also is involved in writing a county policy on how to handle children discovered in a house with a meth lab.
"The whole house is contaminated," she said. "We measure and document if a child could have reached a gun or meth. It's an immediate reaction to remove the child and get it to a safe environment."
Obligatory photo.
Maybe this is what Heuy Lewis meant in his song "I Need a New Drug".
You would think NOBODY would be STUPID enough to do this stuff. Surely most, if not all, people know what this stuff can do, but some do it anyway. I don't want my taxpayre dollars subsidizing these LOOOOOSERS, whether in jail or on welfare. A pox on them; let them Darwin themselves out of the population!
Of course, it could be argued that this LOSER lifestyle is what comes of having access only to illegal, and therefore unregulated, substances. Do you really want any of your taxpayer dollars subsidizing a meth-head LOOOOOSER, whether in jail or on welfare, or would you rather have YOUR daughter be able to make a choice to use some highly-regulated, highly-attenuated, relatively-non-addicting, and environmentally-friendly form of this LOOOOOSER substance, if she's determined not to listen to you?
Losers all.
ping for a.m. coffee post
So, you're saying it's the role of government to protect people from making poor PERSONAL decisions? Sounds pretty "liberal" to me.
I, for one. Drug enforcement is socialism for Republicans. I'm a Darwinist. Let meth users naturally select themselves out of the population.
Is...... it...... Thursday...... already???.............FRegards
The problem as I see it, is that due to the half-socialist nature of the current system, the risk/reward system is out of whack.
Get sick? No problem, the ER is required by law to take you in, even if you cannot pay.
No money for rent? There is Section 8 and subsidized housing.
If the first time you went on a meth binge you were shivering half-naked in the cold and realized that you needed to stop to pay the doctor's bill for catching the flu, it would tend to stop people before they got too far.
Of course, I say we just take the warning labels off EVERYTHING and let nature take its course...
I wonder if they'll revise it to, "Suda-Fed behind the counter, picture ID and signature required".
martin, not fair posting pictures of that Kennedy broad. ..........FRegards
Oh come on, are you trying to ruin the pro-recreational drug agenda by some here on FR that claim conservatism in some warped version of the Constitution?
Well, GOOD FOR YOU!
Tell me about it. I have a whole family of ex-con meth heads living next door to me (property owned by enabling mommy & daddy. I have alarms on my locked doors, a pistol in my nightstand. Other immediate neighbors and I make sure that one of us is around at all times to keep an eye on each others property. Welcome to the wonderful world of meth. It's afriggin' epidemic for sure. But like the article states, they are fairly easy to spot especially when they are seriously tweaking.
chad, if your daughter got caught-up in the drug lifesyle, it's either her own fault, or it's your fault for not teaching her properly.
The 'WAR on DRUGS' is bull$hit-socialism war on people! Any Coppers involved in the the so-called 'War-on-drugs' are either fools, or are involved in the money!
People will choose to do want they want to do. The stupid laws against drug-use just fill our jails and line our politicos' pockets.
Look, if there were NO drugs at all in the world - no pot, coke, meth, heroin, etc, - there would still be people that would be spinning-around in circles until they fell-down-dizzy, JUST so they could could get a different feeling, because they didn't like the feeling they had before!
Hemp was cultivated for tens of thousands of years in order to make rope. The by-product, canabis-sativa, was used for many things, including medicines. Ditto for Opium and Cocaine. The drugs invented afterwords are just by-products of things that some Cro-Magnum Homo-Sapiens wanted to enjoy.
The ideology that 'Drugs Are Bad For You' was tried-out in the last century, and it was called 'Prohibition'! It didn't work, but it sure-as-hell put the Mafia in business! They were able to buy all the Politicos that they needed.
If there were no 'Crack' laws, there would be no 'Crack-Whores' and no 'Crack-babies'. Without 'Whore-Laws', there would just be 'buisiness-women'. That pretty much covers my ex-wives.
I guess my point is to just let Darwin and God take it from here! They're smarter than me, and I got youse-guys balls-to-the-wall...................FRegards
Judging from the AM postings on this threat, I imagine more than one poster is on something.
As for me, thank God for Flowmax. I can pee again.
You mean the warped version that lets the feds regulate intrastate commerce as in the Controlled Substances Act? That's unconservative, all right.
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