A scourge, well seen

By J. Patrick Coolican (contact)

Thursday, Feb. 8, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

CARSON CITY - They came for the meth, they stayed for the first lady.

The Legislature building's largest committee hearing room was packed with social workers and cops, concerned parents, curious lobbyists and a bevy of reporters, all there to learn about the scourge of methamphetamine, and to get a glimpse of first lady Dawn Gibbons.

Gibbons has taken on meth as her chief policy cause, and she's Gov. Jim Gibbons' point person on an issue he called "the colossal struggle of our times" in his State of the State address. Nevada is a national leader in meth use.

The hearing, led by Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, and Sen. Maurice Washington, R-Sparks, began with a poem.

If you need me, remember, I'm easily found.

I live all around you, in school and in town.

I live with the rich, I live with the poor.

I live just down the street and maybe next door.

The poem's cadence carried an uncomfortable similarity to Dr. Seuss. After that, the panel showed a film called "Crystal Darkness." It was about meth and how bad it is.

Rob Bovett, an anti-meth guru and legal counsel for Oregon's drug control agency, was the first to testify. He has shaggy hair and a goatee - a look that said, I'm cool, and meth ain't cool. He said this of Nevada: "You have so much energy to deal with this problem." He gave a lengthy talk about the dangers of meth and what to do about it.

Bovett is a pro at his presentation by now, mixing humor, science, and audio and visuals. There were pictures of meth, and meth labs, and meth molecules, and skin that had been rubbed raw by a crankhead, and mouths afflicted with the ever-pleasant "meth-mouth," which is the rotted-teeth dental condition caused by meth addiction.

Before Bovett got very far into his presentation, the feeling of legislative momentum was unmistakable. No legislator is going home to her district without saying she didn't do something about the wretched crystal.

Dawn Gibbons gave a short talk, less factual, more personal and poignant. She called meth a "21st-century plague that could literally destroy a generation." In an interview afterward, Gibbons said she runs into someone almost every day who has a meth horror story to tell, even on an airplane home recently. She's worried about the 18-to-25-year-olds, but also the women in their 30s, too, the ones trying to work two jobs, raise kids, stay slim.

New Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto took a different approach than Gibbons. She was loaded with facts, and her delivery, empirical and ice-cold, was appropriate for the problem at hand - 40,000 Nevadans use meth.