Carson City can win against meth

Tonight, the meth dealers will be out again in Carson City. Users - teenagers, mothers, maybe someone in your neighborhood - will be making scores in parked cars, run-down apartments, maybe even in your neighborhood. At least those who have the money. The rest will be finding ways to get the cash. It doesn't matter to them if it involves breaking into a house and ripping off anything they can find of value.

Deputies have shown they're tenacious in infiltrating this darkness and making arrest after arrest. But they can't solve the problem. There's not enough prison space to hold all the meth dealers and would-be meth dealers who pollute our communities.

Carson City is fortunate in that it has a plan to remove meth's grip on this community, thanks to those who have worked as part of Partnership Carson City. That plan - which addresses stopping the flow of meth, arresting dealers, getting treatment for addicts and educating the community - is as close to a perfect plan as there can be.

But there's still no guarantee it will work. That's just how powerful meth is.

Are there enough officers? Enough treatment programs? Enough guidance for children to help them escape? Unfortunately, there will always be a need for more.

Many addicts fail in their initial attempts to get off the drug. That's partly because for them to escape meth, they have to escape almost everything they know. Often, that includes family members and the people they knew as friends. That's hard to do in Carson City.

That's why we applaud the people featured in today's paper who've successfully escaped that world. They're proof that Carson City can win this war.