Crimes rise with meth addiction

• Authorities warn of devastation of drugs and violence on community
by Naomi Klouda and Sean Pearson
Homer Tribune
A 62-year-old Homer man was arrested and charged with second-degree assault in connection with a stabbing that occurred on Jenny Lane Saturday afternoon.
Alen Blatchford was arrested after he allegedly stabbed Michael Hanno, also of Homer, with a large kitchen knife. Hanno is recovering from his wounds at South Peninsula Hospital.
According to the felony criminal complaint lodged by the Homer Police Department, Hanno said he contacted Blatchford inside the defendant’s residence to “discuss arrangements of paying off a debt that he owed the defendant.”
Hanno said the defendant became angry with him, grabbed a large kitchen knife and stabbed Hanno on his “left side torso, between his lower rib and his hip.”
Homer Police have indicated that they do not know yet if meth was involved in this latest stabbing, but Blatchford was reported to be acting strangely prior to the incident.
As recently as July 14, two young Homer men were arrested in connection with the stabbing of a 17-year-old high school student. Police said meth played a role in that crime, and indicate that the drug continues to make its troubling way into to Homer.
It may even be on the rise.
The Cook Inlet Council on Alcohol and Drug Addiction has known that meth is increasingly a problem in Homer, though it was much slower to reach here than in the Kenai-Soldotna area. CICADA Director Henry Novak said meth brings with it a variety of social problems.
“We’ve definitely seen the emergence of meth,” Novak said. “It seemed like back in 2000, it was an oxycontin problem. Now it’s meth.”
Novak called the drug, “very toxic.”
“You see people who — in just six month to a year — have trashed their bodies,” he explained. “It does a devastating number on the body, rotting out teeth and reducing them to skin and bones.”
Homer Lieutenant Randy Rosencrans agreed.
“Meth is physically addictive, so the body begins to need it in order to function,” Rosencrans said. “The chemicals begin to show themselves in the body through serious of scabs and lesions. It’s how the chemical leaches from the body.”
Rosencrans said that, while Homer continues to see some issues with heroin, he would still consider meth to be more of a problem on Homer streets.
“That’s the thing about drugs, you can’t eradicate a drug unless you eradicate the demand for it,” he explained. “As long as there is the demand for it, people are going to find it. That’s why we continue to work on demand-reduction strategies.”
CICADA counsels people trying to come off meth. The organization also works to educate the public about what meth is and its effect on people. Novak said users become agitated or erratic, and can experience severe mood swings. Long-term use and/or high dosages can induce full-blown psychosis and hallucinations.
“The frustrating thing for me is that there’s an acknowledgment of the crimes and the tremendous problems meth causes, yet the weakest area is in funding for treatment,” Novak said. “As a society, we pay for it sooner or later.”
Despite being able to target known drug dealers in Homer, police continue to fight the public misconception that they are doing very little to remove them from the streets. According to Rosencrans, it actually comes down to the way the drug laws work.
“It’s a very deep issue that goes way beyond the police,” he explained. “Most drug charges are not taken very seriously by the courts. We are taking these dealers off the streets, and then they are allowed right back out there.”
Rosencrans also indicated that the general understanding regarding the infusion of meth into the community is that it is being manufactured in super labs in the Lower 48, and shipped up to Alaska.
Novak said the Alaska Division of Behavioral Health will ask the Legislature to be more proactive about addictions by funding alcohol and drug treatment. Currently, Serenity House is the only residential treatment facility on the Kenai Peninsula, and has just 12 beds available. Some non-residential treatment programs are also available.
“All it needs is for some legislator to take it on as a project,” Novak said. “But it’s not sexy. There is the mentality that this is a self-inflicted problem, so we should just throw them in jail. There is a lot less empathy.”
According to Novak, CICADA is also seeing a high incidence of young women hooked on meth. He said Kenai Peninsula police used to comment that nearly every crime scene they went to involved oxycontin.
“Now they make the same comment about meth,” he said.

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