"If you live in the West, the methamphetamine horror stories I heard last week in Tulsa were nothing new. The scabby faces. The days and days without sleep, the violent paranoia. The children sexually abused, burned with chemicals and boiled alive. Crude forgery rings in small western cities. And those labs, those labs, with the nasty chemicals in hotels room and the trunks of cars.

Although when someone at a rap session at the National Congress of American Indians mentioned that meth-freaks sometimes drink each other�s urine for the residuals, and that detainees in county jails will battle one another for the fresh urine of a newly arrested crank-head, I had to admit I hadn�t heard that one.

At this particular discussion, a series of experts seemed to agree: The West�s big meth problem is extra-bad -- or at least bad in a specially insidious and unfortunate way -- in Indian Country.

So what are the Indian leaders, assembled for one of the year�s biggest Native conferences going to do about it?"

Get the Story:
A Discussion on Meth in Indian Country (The New West 11/7)

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