This is what makes me mad.

[Navy6064]

April 24, 2005 Meth’s little victims
<LI type=square>35 Kanawha children removed from homes with labs since March 2004
wvgazette.com

http://wvgazette.com/section/News/2005042329


A week after police found Johnathon Roach beside a methamphetamine lab in his baby sitter’s home, his mother noticed his lips turning blue.

She rushed him to the emergency room where inflammation in Johnathon’s lungs had to be calmed with steroid shots.

At age 2, Johnathon is effectively a recovering meth addict.

Across the country, thousands of children classified as “drug-endangered” live near the dangers of toxic fumes and drug paraphernalia associated with meth labs.

Children were found in about one in 10 meth labs busted in the United States in 2003, the Office of National Drug Control Policy reports.

Those children also run a higher risk of being abused or neglected by a parent or another user who can act violently when high and sleep for days when coming down.

Unlike many other children exposed to meth labs and users, Johnathon got to go home every evening to breathe clean air.

Some days, Johnathon smelled strange when Sarah Roach picked him up from the sitter’s. She now knows that smell was meth chemicals. She doesn’t know how long her son was exposed, but he stayed with the sitter five days a week for three months.

Johnathon still has anger problems associated with withdrawal, his mom said. Also, a strong scent like perfume or a smelly bathroom can upset his breathing and send him into a coughing fit that leads to vomiting. His pediatrician prescribed a nebulizer to repair the lung damage caused by the lab’s toxic fumes.

Nobody knows or will even estimate how many of West Virginia’s children might be drug-endangered, but some figures are available:

Since March 2004, at least 35 children in Kanawha County and two in Putnam County have been removed from their homes because of circumstances related to meth labs, said Margaret Waybright, commissioner of the state Department of Health and Human Resources’ Bureau for Children and Families.
<LI>Between Jan. 1 and April 7, 30 children were found in 15 of the 49 meth labs investigated by the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Department, according to a database compiled by Detective Sean Snuffer. Kanawha County Family Court Judge Jane Charnock Smallridge said far more than 35 children have been affected by meth in the county this past year, but nobody keeps exact numbers.

“It’s absolutely the biggest drug you hear about in Family Court proceedings,” she said. “It’s prevalent and cheap. In years past, it was crack, but that was not as popular as methamphetamine. However, I don’t know that [meth] has replaced alcohol.”

The county’s four family court judges have seen an increase in the number of custody requests, domestic-violence petitions and guardianship requests because one or more parents is accused of or associated with using meth, she said.

The spike in meth cases has bogged down an already busy court system, she said. “You add more [caseload] based on use of a drug, it’s not helping the system and it ends up taking a social, economic and psychological toll.”

‘Chaos, deprivation and filth’

Criminal complaints filed over the past two years in Kanawha County Magistrate Court tell of the conditions drug-endangered children face.

State troopers found a working meth lab near baby bottles and other baby care items last year in Clendenin.

In South Charleston, children had access to a duffel bag on a kitchen table that contained muriatic acid and other meth ingredients.

In Charleston, three children were taken out of a home described as “unfit to live in” after police found a meth lab, but very little food and no items used to care for small children.

Detective Snuffer often witnesses the squalid and dangerous conditions faced by children of meth users.

“There have been some labs with chemicals on floors, and the kids are crawling in it,” he said. “Some children actually know mom and dad are doing the stuff. They know it’s wrong, but of course they can’t say anything.”

When deputies find a child with a lab or one who has visited a lab, they call Child Protective Services. The child can get medical and psychological help and might be relocated with a relative or someone else.

Deputies also contact the county prosecutor’s office to see whether to pursue child-endangerment charges against the suspects, Snuffer said.

“The ‘meth home’ lifestyle is characterized by chaos, emotional and physical deprivation, the presence of firearms and filthy surroundings,” according to a 2003 federal Justice Department report on children found at meth labs.

Because of children’s natural curiosity and physiology, they are especially vulnerable to the dangers of the meth lifestyle: exposure to second-hand meth smoke, possibly being pricked by a needle or absorbing the drug and toxins through skin.

“The age-related behaviors of young children (such as frequent hand-to-mouth contact and physical contact with their environment) increase the likelihood that they will inhale, absorb or ingest toxic chemicals, drugs or contaminated food,” the Justice Department report stated.

Aside from the toxins and overt dangers of meth labs, children who live with them also are more likely to be physically or mentally abused or neglected, reports say.

“Children living at meth lab sites may experience the added trauma of witnessing violence, being forced to participate in violence, caring for an incapacitated or injured parent or sibling or watching the police arrest and remove a parent,” a 2002 report from the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse stated.

Children are often left to fend for themselves when a parent is high on meth.

“When high, abusers feel good, are active and can get a lot accomplished. They are also irritable and impatient, increasing the possibility of abusive behavior,” according to the NCPCA report.

Addicted parents can fall into a sleep that lasts for days, leaving children of all ages to look for food and take care of their own basic needs.

West Virginia’s drug-endangered children will be one focus of a statewide meth summit that starts Monday at the Charleston Marriott. Hundreds of people from across the state are expected to attend the conference to hear from national experts and develop local strategies to combat meth’s impact on the state’s children, legal system and the environment.

Long-term effects unclear

Because Johnathon already has allergies, and asthma runs in his family, Sarah Roach said doctors cannot tell what effect his exposure to meth ingredients will have on his development.

“I worry that he’ll develop asthma and won’t be able to play sports and do what his older brother can do,” Roach said.

Both people suspected of neglecting Johnathon are out on bond awaiting their trials. The baby sitter, Lisa Michele Burnsworth, and her boyfriend, Shelton Edward Norris, each face four counts of felony child neglect, but Norris also faces a clandestine drug lab charge.

Roach said she learned about Burnsworth’s baby-sitting service from a list mailed to her by the state-run Connect Child Care. Burnsworth could not be reached for comment.

Johnathon is now doing much better in a church-run day-care center, Roach said, but she still worries.

“Whenever he gets sick, I worry was it the meth,” she said. “Maybe when he’s 20 years old, he’ll be dealing with effects of what someone did to him when he was little.

“That’s not fair.”

[Rusty24]

This shit happens in our County all the time. Kids that are playing around or in Meth labs. They are trying to enact a law that stiffens the penalty if kids are around during the bust.