Cuts could put hole in meth fight

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Burke Fitzpatrick, grants administrator for the state's Department of Public Safety, said funding cuts would "pull the rug out" from under law enforcement agencies in South Carolina, which he said has a growing meth problem and the highest per capita crime rate in the nation.

"We have a serious problem, and it's no time to pack up and abandon things for local law enforcement," Fitzpatrick said.

The president intends to eliminate a $634 million grant program for state and local police departments and cut anti-drug spending in "high intensity drug trafficking areas" such as Atlanta from $226 million to $100 million.

"If (the budget) passes the way it is, it would put us completely out of business," said Billy Cook, director of the 14th Judicial District Drug Task Force in Tennessee. His state seized 1,259 illegal methamphetamine labs last year, the third highest number of seizures in the country, behind Iowa with 1,300 and Missouri with 2,707.

South Carolina seized 254 meth labs last year — with Greenville County leading the count at 68 labs. John Ozaluk, the Drug Enforcement Agency's agent in charge in Columbia, said he expects those numbers to grow in 2005.

Federal funding in South Carolina has been used to train 80 local officers how to recognize and respond to clandestine meth labs.

Fitzpatrick said meth labs are particularly tricky because of the risk of explosions and poisoning in the labs that are sometimes located near schools and in homes where children live.

"Children are crawling around on contaminated carpets and breathing in fumes," Fitzpatrick said. "It's a clear and present danger even to people not directly involved."

Bush's budget also would reduce spending on a Justice Department methamphetamine initiative from $52.6 million to $20 million, a 60 percent cut.

Most recently, this allocation included $98,000 to the city of Columbia. It also helped pay for a multi-jurisdictional narcotics task force in Lexington County, which has the state's biggest meth problem outside the Upstate, Ozaluk said.

John Horton, associate deputy director for state and local affairs in the Office of National Drug Policy, said the administration takes the methamphetamine epidemic seriously.

"We've had to make some tough choices," Horton said. "If we had unlimited money, it would be different."

He said the administration's strategy focuses on working with law enforcement agencies in Asia to disrupt the illegal export of pseudoephedrine, one of the main ingredients in meth.

"We think that's where the meth market is particularly vulnerable," Horton said. "The most important thing we can do is to make sure the labs don't get set up in the first place."

Overall, Bush plans to spend $12.4 billion on the drug war in fiscal 2006, a 2.2 percent increase over current funding. But most of the additional money is targeted toward intercepting drug shipments before they cross the border and international programs, such as crop eradication.

Bush's budget would:

• Eliminate grants to states under the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities program, funded at $441 million this year.

• Eliminate grants to states under the National Alliance for Model State Drug Laws, an organization that has been instrumental in helping states draft legislative responses to the methamphetamine crisis.

• Eliminate Justice Assistance grants used to bolster multi-jurisdictional anti-drug task forces.

South Carolina agencies, slated to receive a total of $5.8 million in the Justice Assistance grants this year, have used it to pay for school resource officers, multi-jurisdictional task forces for crime and narcotics investigations, salaries, weapons, bulletproof vests and radios, Fitzpatrick said.