Children of meth users need more help, conference says

SACRAMENTO - More than 1,000 children were found living in clandestine methamphetamine labs seized by law enforcement officers in California last year, officials at a Drug-Endangered Children conference said.

Thousands of children are living in toxic waste sites as their parents cook, use and sell methamphetamines, making them among the most at-risk children for abuse, neglect and medical problems, experts warn.

Between one-third and one-half of those children showed traces of the drug in their systems, officials said.

Violent outbursts associated with methamphetamine use often are targeted at children living in the household, experts also noted.

Law enforcement officers and child welfare experts urged communities to create special task forces to focus not on the abusers but on the children.

For years, police arrested the suspect and left the children with the nearest person, said Mitchel Brown, an assistant chief with the state's Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.

Brown and his wife, a Butte County district attorney's investigator, helped start the state's premier Drug-Endangered Children task force, which incorporates social workers, law enforcement officials and prosecutors to ensure children taken from meth labs are protected.

Children get high on meth by inhaling secondhand smoke from their parents' pipes, Brown said. Others eat food that is contaminated by being refrigerated next to chemicals used to make meth or ''crank.''

''Unless you break the chain of events in their lives, these kids are our future felons,'' he said.

Between 1994 and 1998, the number of labs seized nationally increased from 263 to 1,627, said Sue Foster, research director of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

The problem is most acute in rural areas, where law enforcement officers are far-flung and communities often lack the tax base to provide comprehensive medical, mental health and other resources to specifically address the needs of children in meth homes, she said.