Q: What other problems does methamphetamine pose to …



Q:  What other problems does methamphetamine pose to society?

A:  Automobile accidents; explosions and fires triggered by the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine; environmental contamination; increased criminal activity, including domestic violence; emergency room and other medical costs; spread of infectious disease, including HIV, AIDS and hepatitis; and lost worker productivity. Economic costs also fall on governments, which must allocate additional resources for social services and law enforcement. See also, Methamphetamine: What are the real costs to society?

Q:  How is the production of meth more dangerous than other drugs?

A:  Meth trafficking and production are different than other drugs because they are dangerous from start to finish. The reckless practices of the untrained people who manufacture it in clandestine labs result in explosions and fires that injure or kill not only the people and families involved, but also law enforcement or fireman who respond. Any number of solvents, precursors and hazardous agents are found in unmarked containers at these sites. These potent chemicals can enter the central nervous system and cause neural damage, effect the liver and kidneys, and burn or irritate the skin, eyes and nose. Environmental damage is another consequence of these reckless actions, and violence is often a part of the process as well.

Q.  What are the most serious environmental consequences of meth labs?

A:  Each pound of meth produced leaves behind five or six pounds of toxic waste.   Meth cooks often pour leftover chemicals and byproduct sludge down drains in nearby plumbing, storm drains, or directly onto the ground.   Chlorinated solvents and other toxic byproducts used to make meth pose long-term hazards because they can persist in soil and groundwater for years. Clean-up costs are exorbitant because solvent contaminated soil usually must be incinerated.

Q:  What is the cost of a cleaning up a clandestine meth lab site?

A:  Cleanups of labs are extremely resource-intensive and beyond the financial capabilities of most jurisdictions. The average cost of a cleanup is about $5,000 but some cost as much as $150,000.

Guidelines for Cleaning up former Methamphetamine Labs.

Q:  What are the federal penalties for methamphetamine trafficking?

A:  The basic, mandatory minimum sentences under federal law are:

• 10 grams (pure) = 5 years in prison

• 100 grams (pure) = 10 years in prison.

Q:  What is the Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act of 1996?

A:  This federal legislation takes significant steps toward preventing meth from becoming the next crisis in drug abuse. The bill:

• Permits the domestic seizure and forfeiture of methamphetamine precursor chemicals.

• Directs the Attorney General to coordinate international drug enforcement efforts to interdict such chemicals.

• Increases penalties for the possession of equipment used to make controlled substances, and for trafficking in certain precursor chemicals.

• Requires an interagency task force to develop and implement prevention, education and meth treatment strategies.

Q:  What is Midwest HIDTA?

A:  High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTAs) are areas identified by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) as having the most critical drug trafficking problems adversely impacting the U.S. The Midwest HIDTA, which includes Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota, was created specifically to fight the spread of meth in the Midwest. It promotes a comprehensive, cooperative strategy by law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels to reduce drug trafficking.

Q:  What do I look for if I suspect a meth lab in my neighborhood?

A:  Unusual, strong odors similar to the that of fingernail polish remover or cat urine; renters who pay cash; large amounts of products such as cold medicines, antifreeze, drain cleaner, lantern fuel, coffee filters, batteries, duct tape, clear glass beakers and containers; and residences with windows blacked out and lots of nighttime traffic.

Warning signs of living near a meth lab

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| |IS THERE A METH LAB COOKIN' IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD? |

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| |Many people may be unaware that they're living near a meth lab. Here are some things to look for: |

| |Unusual, strong odors (like cat urine, ether, ammonia, acetone or other chemicals). |

| |Residences with windows blacked out. |

| |Renters who pay their landlords in cash. (Most drug dealers trade exclusively in cash.) |

| |Lots of traffic - people coming and going at unusual times. There may be little traffic during the day, but at |

| |night the activity increases dramatically. |

| |Excessive trash including large amounts of items such as: antifreeze containers, lantern fuel cans, red |

| |chemically stained coffee filters, drain cleaner and duct tape. |

| |Unusual amounts of clear glass containers being brought into the home. |

| |Presence of the following items could indicate the existence of a meth lab: |

| |Alcohol |

| |Ether |

| |Benzene |

| |Toluene/Paint Thinner |

| |Freon |

| |Acetone |

| |Chloroform |

| |Camp Stove Fuel/Coleman Fuel |

| |Starting Fluid |

| |Anhydrous Ammonia |

| |"Heet" |

| |White Gasoline |

| |Phenyl-2-Propane |

| |Phenylacetone |

| |Phenylpropanolamine |

| |Iodine Crystals |

| |Red Phosphorous |

| |Black Iodine |

| |Lye (Red Devil Lye) |

| |Drano |

| |Muriatic/Hydrochloric Acid |

| |Battery Acid/Sulfuric Acid |

| |Epsom Salts |

| |Batteries/Lithium |

| |Sodium Metal |

| |Wooden Matches |

| |Propane Cylinders |

| |Hot Plates |

| |Ephedrine (over-the-counter) |

| |Cold Tablets |

| |Bronchodialators |

| |Energy Boosters |

| |Rock Salt |

| |Diet Aids |

| |If you suspect a meth lab in your neighborhood (Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota) |

| |Call the Crank Hotline at 1-888-664-4673 |

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Methamphetamine users can be identified by:

• Signs of agitation

• Excited speech

• Loss of appetite

• Increased physical activity levels

• Dilated pupils

• High blood pressure 

• Shortness of breath 

• Nausea and vomiting 

• Diarrhea

• Occasional episodes of sudden and violent behavior

• Intense paranoia

• Visual and auditory hallucinations

• Bouts of insomnia.

• A tendency to compulsively clean and groom and repetitively sort and disassemble objects, such as cars and other mechanical devices

 

|Short-term effects can include: |Long-term effects can include: |

| | |

|Increased attention and decreased fatigue |Dependence and addiction psychosis |

|  |paranoia |

|Increased activity |hallucinations |

|  |mood disturbances |

|Decreased appetite |repetitive motor activity |

|  |Stroke |

|Euphoria and rush |  |

|  |Weight loss or anorexia |

|Increased respiration | |

|  | |

|Hyperthermia | |

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|06/10/2002 - Updated 08:47 AM ET |

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|Meth use among women tough to detect |

|DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — To outsiders, Debra Breuklander appeared to be a tireless single mother of three. She had an immaculate |

|home in a middle-class suburb, perfect credit and was a homeroom mom at her children's schools. |

|She also was taking methamphetamine and selling the drug to make ends meet. |

|"I thought I was 'Super Mom' and I was doing everything right," said Breuklander, 43, now serving a 35-year prison sentence. "In|

|actuality, my thinking was so twisted. I was doing everything wrong." |

|Breuklander is among a growing number of women who have abused meth, a highly addictive stimulant that produces a euphoria |

|similar to cocaine, but lasts longer and is made from common household ingredients. |

|Experts and users say meth appeals to women because it's relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain, and it gives them energy to |

|take care of their children or feel more efficient in everything they do. |

|"There's no comparable drug that we've ever seen as long as I've been in substance abuse that appeals to women as much as meth |

|does," said B.J. VanRoosendaal, spokeswoman for the Utah State Division of Substance Abuse. |

|Nationally, women made up 47% of patients in substance abuse treatment centers who identified meth as their primary drug of use |

|in 1999, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. |

|In Iowa, 43% of women entering prison in the first quarter of fiscal 2002 said meth was their drug of choice, compared with 29% |

|of men. In fiscal 2000, it was 25% of women and 19% of men. |

|More than 40% of women arrested in the counties surrounding Honolulu and San Jose, Calif., in 2000 tested positive for meth use,|

|a National Institute of Justice program found, and the figure was more than 20% in several other areas studied. |

|Miranda Charbonneau, like Breuklander an inmate at Iowa Correctional Institution in Mitchellville, said she turned to meth after|

|previously using marijuana. It soon became an obsession for the then 16-year-old who had left school and was working. |

|Every day, the focus was, "where I could get it, who I could get it from, how much was it going to cost me ... and what was I |

|going to have to give up to get it," said Charbonneau, 23, who is serving 10 years for child endangerment. |

|"I gave up personal items with sentimental value. I sold a lot of my belongings ... I lost my car, I almost lost my job. I ended|

|up losing part of my relationships with my family," she said. "I began to steal to find ways of getting methamphetamine." |

|Breuklander, a former nurse who was on disability for a degenerative back disease, said her relationship with meth began with |

|financial troubles. Her boyfriend at the time was selling meth and she joined in, selling it to a group of friends. |

|"It all looked glamorous and wonderful and there was such a demand for it," she said. |

|"I think for a lot of women, especially single mothers, it gives you the energy that you think you need to keep the house, the |

|kids, the yard, the cars, the groceries, the laundry, everything going," she said. "At least, that's how it took me over." |

|Sheigla Murphy, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Studies at The Institute for Scientific Analysis in San Francisco, |

|said she started seeing women fitting Breuklander's profile in the early 1990s. |

|"There seemed to be a little proliferation when people started to realize that cocaine was trouble and that's when we started |

|seeing more middle-class women drinking 'biker coffee,"' Murphy said. That drink is made by adding meth to coffee. |

|"A lot of women use it for performance things or weight control," Murphy said. |

|Women "get into this for a lot of what many could consider to be good reasons," she said. |

|Women's meth use may initially be more concealed than that of men because of different reactions when they take it, said Arthur |

|Schut, president and chief executive officer of the Mid-Eastern Council on Chemical Abuse based in Iowa City. |

|Men abusing meth get police attention because they are more likely to be involved in assaults or to drive drunk. Women are less |

|likely to do those things, Schut said. |

|Breuklander said everyone thought she was fine because she didn't look like a drug user. |

|"I did not look like an addict, I did not function like an addict, but I was an addict and that's a scary thing," Breuklander |

|said. |

|Meth "can cause you to look like you're highly efficient, highly effective in your daily living when in fact, you're going |

|downhill fast," she said. |

|Charbonneau and Breuklander have been treated at a substance abuse program at Mitchellville and now are mentors there. Nearly |

|100 women are either in the inpatient care program or in after care, which helps prepare inmates for their return to the outside|

|world. |

|Women spend their day in classes, therapy groups and live in a communal environment — all in one room. The treatment is peer |

|led: they give each other push ups — congratulating each other for good behavior — and pull ups — telling each other when they |

|do something wrong. |

|Breuklander is grateful to the program, but has regrets. |

|"I have three children. I have missed two of their high school graduations. I've missed their birthdays, I've missed important |

|things in their life," she said. "It ruined my life." |

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|Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or |

|redistributed. |

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|Meth's path of destruction tears through Oregon | | |

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|TIMOTHY J. GONZALEZ / Statesman Journal | | |

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|A package of methamphetamine is found in late August during the serving of a search warrant on a Woodburn apartment. Known as | | |

|“meth” or “crank,” the cheap stimulant has gained a foothold in Oregon, leaving a wake of social devastation. | | |

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|Marion County is at the center of a drug epidemic that is harming families, increasing crime and taxing society. | | |

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|ALAN GUSTAFSON | | |

|Statesman Journal | | |

|November 4 | | |

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|Drunk on a mountain in the heart of Oregon’s timber country, Hoyt Orr accepted his buddy’s invitation to “feel better” by | | |

|injecting methamphetamine. | | |

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|“It was an incredible rush. I broke out into a sweat, and my whole body vibrated,” Orr, 31, said. “Like an idiot, I liked it.” | | |

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|Even now, more than a decade after his first hit, Orr’s hands start to sweat as he remembers the electric high. It launched him| | |

|into a 10-year blitz of methamphetamine use that ravaged his body and nearly destroyed his life. | | |

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|Orr, who resides in the Santiam Canyon timber town of Lyons, 24 miles east of Salem, sought treatment two years ago. He weighs | | |

|155 pounds, up from the scrawny 110 pounds he weighed when he was shooting meth. | | |

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|The recovering addict feels pity for swelling ranks of “tweakers,” jargon for hyperstimulated meth users. “It was 10 years of | | |

|hell for me,” he said. | | |

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|Methamphetamine, or “crank,” has been hooking people for decades. But illegal production and use of the highly addictive | | |

|stimulant have exploded in the last few years, spawning what some experts call America’s first rural drug epidemic. | | |

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|Crank’s blight extends beyond rural communities. Methamphetamine has become a long word for misery in medium-size cities like | | |

|Salem, Boise and Des Moines. | | |

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|From Oregon to Iowa, government officials say meth ruins more lives, endangers more children, drains more law enforcement | | |

|resources and inflicts more social damage than cocaine and heroin. | | |

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|Part of the drug’s devastating appeal is that users can whip up their own supplies. It’s a make-it-yourself narcotic, with | | |

|recipes posted on the Internet. | | |

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|In our fertile Willamette Valley, meth laboratories have sprouted everywhere from rural barns and urban apartments to motel | | |

|room coffee pots and car trunks. Even backpacks and briefcases have been used as portable labs. | | |

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|Getting meth is easy. Too easy, according to drug cops who spend most of their time fighting the blackmarket trade. | | |

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|“People don’t realize how big the problem is,” said Lt. Dave Okada of the Salem-based Marion Area Gang and Narcotics | | |

|Enforcement Team. “Methamphetamine is probably 80 to 90 percent of what we do now.” | | |

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|Across Oregon, an epidemic of addiction is creating a burgeoning class of victims: children neglected by wasted parents; | | |

|neighbors frustrated by seedy drug houses; property owners saddled with hefty bills for lab cleanups; residents ripped off by | | |

|addicts. | | |

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|Everyone pays for the meth epidemic. | | |

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|Hardcore users rot like fruit left in a sack. Bodies shrivel from lack of food and sleep. Minds reel with paranoia and | | |

|hallucinations. Teeth fall out as gums break down. | | |

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|Thousands of Oregon children are living in squalor, severely neglected by parents devoted to meth. In Marion County, half of | | |

|the children shunted into long-term foster care get plucked out of the homes of meth users. | | |

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|Look closely at skyrocketing rates of property crimes in Salem and nearby communities: Meth is the driving force. Addicts break| | |

|into cars, grab purses, forge checks and steal other people’s identities, all to scrounge more money to buy more meth. | | |

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|Locally, police blame meth users for 95 percent of all property crimes, half of all domestic violence cases, one-third of all | | |

|child abuse incidents. | | |

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|“Meth is clearly our No. 1 problem,” said Salem Police Chief Walt Myers. “It dominates everything we do.” | | |

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|Court dockets are clogged with meth-related cases. | | |

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|“If there are 10 drug cases on my desk, eight or nine of them are going to be meth cases,” said Stephen Dingle, a Marion County| | |

|deputy district attorney. “It is the main fuel for the crime engine in Marion County. There’s just no doubt about it.” | | |

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|You pay for the epidemic in many ways: higher taxes, rising insurance rates, pruned business profits. The bill doesn’t show up | | |

|in your mailbox every month, but drug abuse costs the average taxpayer about $1,000 a year, national studies show. | | |

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|Employers pay because snorting meth in the company bathroom or going on weekend binges cuts into employees’ job attendance and | | |

|productivity. It also drives up their worker compensation claims and health care costs. Drug-abusing employees take an | | |

|estimated 10 percent bite of the profits of Oregon businesses. | | |

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|At schools, teachers are spending more classroom time dealing with disruptive kids raised in drug-infested homes. About one in | | |

|seven children goes to school every day from a home affected by meth or other illegal drugs. | | |

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|Meth crooks are jamming jails and prisons. Of the 10,600 offenders locked up in Oregon’s 13 prisons, estimates are that as many| | |

|as 80 percent are there for reasons directly related to alcohol and drug abuse. It costs about $65 a day, or $23,725 a year, to| | |

|incarcerate each inmate. | | |

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|When you have to wait in line at a hospital emergency room, it may be because a doctor is treating a meth user. More than 30 | | |

|percent of all E.R. admissions are in some way tied to drug or alcohol abuse. | | |

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|Families pay for the meth epidemic because an addicted loved one spreads misery like a virus. | | |

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|“I was always waiting for the phone call saying, ‘We’ve got your son in the mortuary,’^” said Ted Orr, 52. “It affects the | | |

|whole family, not just the one addicted.” | | |

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|The former millworker never received that dreaded phone call. His son Hoyt broke free of the drug two years ago. | | |

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|Though father and son have reconciled, Ted Orr vividly remembers the way meth acted like a corrosive acid in his family, | | |

|dissolving ties of flesh and blood. | | |

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|“You go through the sympathetic stage and the begging stage,” he said. “Then it becomes a bad feeling and develops into hatred | | |

|even. I literally wanted to kill him.” | | |

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Children suffer erratic, abusive parenting

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November 11, 2001

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Continued from Part 1: Children are victims of parental meth abuse

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Meth’s toll on children is more devastating than any other drug.

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“It’s a lot worse than cocaine,” said Catherine Earp, a community health nurse in Multnomah County who conducts seminars on meth. “Cocaine is a weekend thing. Methamphetamine is a whole lifestyle, a whole culture.”

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It’s a culture lacking time, patience and comfort for children.

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“Kids are not really on the radar screen of parents involved with methamphetamine. Quite often, there is little supervision,” said Candy Solovjovs, executive director at Liberty House, a Salem assessment and treatment center for abused children.

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“Methamphetamine and parenting really don’t mix at all, and the kids suffer a constant buffeting,” said Dr. Alex Stalcup, a substance abuse expert in Concord, Calif.

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“It’s like someone flipping a light switch on and off at erratic blinking intervals,” Stalcup said, describing meth addicts’ changeable moods and behavior. “When they’re in a good place with the drug, they can be unbelievably warm and loving and cuddly and playful. Then as they go a day or two without sleep, they begin to get really irritable and snappy. They can get really hurtful. Kids can fall in harm’s way, and they do.”

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In one of Oregon’s most horrific cases, 3-year-old Tesslynn O’Cull of Springfield died in 1997 after she was burned with a propane torch, tied up and systematically beaten by her meth-addicted mother and boyfriend.

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Tesslynn’s mother, Stella Kiser, and her boyfriend, Jesse Caleb Compton, had meth parties nearly every night, according to courtroom testimony given by witnesses. To keep Tesslynn from interfering, they bound the malnourished and severely beaten child with ropes and kept her tied for as long as 10 hours.

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On June 13, 1997, Kiser tied the child after a particularly brutal beating. When Compton and Kiser found Tesslyn dead early the next morning, they tried to revive her by applying live electrical wires to her chest and throwing cold water in her face.

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The couple then put the child’s corpse in a laundry basket and buried her in the woods outside Sweet Home. Police found the body days later.

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Both Compton and Kiser were convicted of aggravated murder. Compton now is on Oregon’s Death Row. Kiser will spend the rest of her life in prison.

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In devastating cases that don’t make headlines, authorities find children living in squalor, severely neglected and nearly forgotten by adult caretakers devoted to meth.

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In September, a Keizer day care provider was charged with meth possession and criminal neglect after authorities said she left three children — ages 3, 2 and 1 — locked in her van while she gambled for 11 hours at Spirit Mountain Casino, 30 miles west of Salem. The children were found sweating, soiled and dehydrated.

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