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ROCKEFELLER CO-SPONSORS BILL FOR HELP IN METHAMPHETAMINE FIGHT

Sen.  Jay Rockefeller has co-sponsored legislation that would give police agencies across the nation more manpower and more financial resources to fight methamphetamine, restoring what police say is vital grant funding used to battle the scourge. 

If passed, the bill would turn back the White House's plans to eliminate most funding for the Community Oriented Policing Services program, according to Rockefeller's office. 

"West Virginia has a growing meth problem," said Rockefeller, D-W.Va.  "Our law enforcement officials need the tools and resources to address a drug problem that is unlike any we've encountered before."

The bill would add 50,000 new local enforcement officials across the nation over the next six years and would provide millions of dollars in drug grants.  The bill, which has 36 sponsors from both parties, has been submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee

Since 1998, the grant program has doled out $300 million to battle the meth problem and has directly resulted $40 million to hire 700 police officers and county deputies in West Virginia. 

Locally, police departments use the grant money to put deputies in public schools. 

Through a grant secured last year, the Kanawha County Sheriff's Department was able to put two officers in schools throughout unincorporated areas of the county.  The department has used money from the program to buy equipment. 

Jennifer Herald, the county's grant coordinator, said the officers can patrol the schools, hold lectures about avoiding drugs and the dangers of a life of crime and "generally serve as role models" for the students. 

Sheriff Mike Rutherford said, the grant "has been very, very helpful."

Rutherford contends that any new money infused into the program would also be a boon to agencies that are facing cuts from other federal programs, like grants through the Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Program. 

Regional drug tasks forces and other law enforcement agencies use that money to pay overtime and deal with other departmental costs.  Officials have expressed concern because the White House has "zeroed out" those programs in its budget submission. 

The Community Oriented Policing Services grant program was started during the Clinton era, but has been reduced every year under the current administration.  Rockefeller said that the money is extremely important now because of the expense police agencies face trying to combat meth. 

West Virginia has also taken a progressive approach when it comes to reining in meth.  Gov.  Manchin on Monday signed into law a bill that forces stores that sell over-the-counter cold medicines to limit access to the drug and document the names of people who buy it. 

Through a volatile chemical process, meth cooks isolate pseudoephedrine, the cold medicine's active ingredient, to make the highly addictive drug.  When Oklahoma passed a similar law, officials there reduced the number of labs they busted by an estimated 80 percent. 

Although state law enforcement officers have lauded the measure that takes effect in July, the U.S.  Attorney's Office has recently warned that simply limiting access to certain precursor materials will not immediately eradicate the drug. 

The office is calling on retailers to limit access to severe cold formula caplets, powders dissolved in hot liquids, cough syrups and other water-and alcohol based liquids and softgels containing pseudoephedrine. 

The office announced Thursday that "drug specialists" have told them the use of non-controlled liquid cold medicines and multi-ingredient tablets are being detected in "a more difficult, but not excessively complicated, pseudoephedrine extraction-meth production process."

The office also warned that state residents must be vigilant about the influx of meth from surrounding states and Mexico.