CHEROKEE TRIBE CRACKING DOWN ON METH

More Narcotics Officers Added, And Drug Treatment Is Growing

CHEROKEE - Stepped up enforcement and expanded treatment for drug
addicts are signs the Cherokee tribe is fighting the growing use of
methamphetamine on the reservation, tribal leaders say.

As hundreds of meth labs have been discovered across Western North
Carolina this year, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians made changes
in treatment, law enforcement and public awareness that observers
credit as a model for other communities.

The Eastern Band's anti-drug efforts are among the most effective in
the region because it has encouraged the public to help police,
Western Carolina University professor Gordon Mercer said.

"They have had one of the very best education programs," said Mercer,
director of the university's Public Policy Institute, which is
preparing a report on Western North Carolina's meth problem.

Principal Chief Michell Hicks credits progress in the tribe's fight
against meth to the Cherokees' community spirit.

"Our community is pretty tight-knit," he said, "and I think that has
really helped us with our approach."

The tribe has adopted a law regulating the sale of cold-medicine
tablets containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine that is stricter than
the one North Carolina passed this year.

The Cherokee law, passed in July, requires buyers to get the drugs,
which are ingredients in making meth, from a pharmacist.

A police hot line has generated tips that led to more than 50 drug
arrests, Cherokee Indian Police Chief Eric Pritchett said.

The Cherokee police force has expanded from one narcotics specialist
to three and started a canine unit with three drug dogs.

Pritchett pointed to declines in police calls for service this year as
evidence that the tribe's anti-drug efforts are working. Calls dropped
from 4,647 in the first seven months of 2004 to 3,923 calls in the
same period this year.

Low levels of income and education help explain the appeal of drugs
for some members of the tribe, said Mickey Strother, manager of the
behavioral health program A Na Le Ni Sgi (ah NAH la NEE shgee). In the
Cherokee language, the name means, "they are beginning."

Nearly one in five families on the reservation lived below the poverty
line in 1999, more than twice the 9 percent of N.C. families living in
poverty. More than 8,000 people lived on the reservation in 1999.

"When you have generational hopelessness, when you have people who
have been put down and left on the fringes of society," Strother said,
"drug dealers prey on these people because they want to alter their
perceptions and the way they feel."