Meth is everywhere these days – in newspaper headlines, police records, legislative bills, clandestine labs. In a Jan. 24 press release about meth-related bills before the Legislature, Sen. Trudi Schmidt, (D-Great Falls), called meth "an epidemic spreading across Montana."

No doubt, methamphetamine use is a major concern in our state. No doubt, either, that the more buzz any subject generates, the more prevalent it seems. Between the reporting and the reality, the question is this: How big, exactly, is Montana's meth problem?

Not all the statistics are as straightforward as they seem. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's web site reports that 2003 federal drug seizures in Montana included zero kilograms of heroin, zero ecstasy tablets, 0.5 kilograms of cocaine, 107.2 kilograms of marijuana and 8.8 kilograms of methamphetamine.

But that isn't to say that ecstasy and heroin aren't issues in our state. Rather, explains Mark Long, chief of the Montana Narcotics Bureau in the Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI), "we always have way more on our plate than we can handle, so kind of like triage in an ER, we just pick those things that we figure are the most dangerous to the public." Because meth labs generate toxic fumes and are highly flammable, and because meth is highly addictive, meth is considered particularly dangerous to the public; thus, in Montana, about 95 percent of DCI's resources are currently devoted to fighting meth, Long says. The remaining 5 percent fight all other drugs, and such prioritization is reflected in those 2003 seizure statistics.

In 2002, Montana law enforcement agencies responded to 122 meth labs statewide, Long says. Given Montana's sparse population and the assumption that for every one lab found there are probably 10 that go unnoticed, "It's splitting hairs on whether we call it an epidemic," he says, but "it's very problematic."

Interestingly, the number of meth labs found in Montana has gone down since 2002, to 89 in 2003 and 63 in 2004. But again, these decreasing numbers can be deceptive. Long explains that while a reduction in meth labs is in part attributed to law enforcement efforts, it is also likely a result of out-of-state "superlabs" that are making better, cheaper meth that is then imported to Montana, thus decreasing the need for in-state labs.

Spokesman Bill Weinman for the DEA in Denver, which is the division that includes drug enforcement in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, says that the DEA doesn't consider meth an epidemic nationally ("meth use still takes a back seat to marijuana," he says), but that some areas are worse than others; meth use in Montana, he says, is of concern to the DEA for two reasons:

"What we see in Montana is a little bit higher than the national average in methamphetamine use for young adults in particular. We also see significantly higher than the national average in intravenous methamphetamine use, which is an indicator of the more hardcore addict."

Weinman references the Montana Office of Public Instruction's 2003 Montana Youth Risk Behavior Survey for high school students; in that survey, 9.3 percent of students in grades nine through 12 reported using meth at least once in their lives (about the same percentage as had tried cocaine). That percentage is significantly lower than the 44 percent who reported using marijuana at least once in their lifetimes and the 37 percent who said they had had five or more drinks in a row at least once in the past month. But Weinman adds an important detail the report leaves out: The national average for high school students who've tried meth is 7.6 percent, notably lower than Montana's 9.3.

Likewise, he says, a national 1998-2001 Meth Treatment Project found that 56 percent of meth addicts treated in Billings were intravenous users, the highest rate in that study across the country.

And then there's this significant statistic, too: Weinman says that the fiscal year 2002 U.S. Sentencing Commission data shows that 74.4 percent of federal sentences in Montana were a result of methamphetamine-related crimes. The national average for meth-related federal sentencings was 15.5 percent.

These above-national-average statistics suggest that calling meth use an "epidemic" in our state might not be off the wall. Still, says Al Brockway, program manager for the Montana Board of Crime Control, "we don't really classify it as [epidemic] necessarily, but [since] I first came to work here when the drug task forces were first formed in 1987, meth has come a long way to being the second-most-purchased and used drug in Montana to marijuana."

He also says that "with the notoriety methamphetamines have now by the press and so forth, I think you're going to find that between two drugs, methamphetamines will probably be the one investigated by the task force."

Which brings up the media's role in meth's portrayal.

Kelly McBride, group leader of the ethics department at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., says she is surprised by "how quickly one newspaper or television station can create a trend." Recalling her 15 years of police reporting in the Pacific Northwest she says, "meth is this perennial issue to law enforcement, and I really think you've got to look at the numbers to see if it's even a trend ... but even then you're looking at numbers of busts, not the amount of stuff used, and if you want to look at usage, you've got to go into kind of social polls, and those are very hard to come by."

She also says that by consuming any media anywhere in the country "you can come to certain conclusions about the 'master narrative' of drug use, sexual assault, education, any number of issues ... And then if you go out into the world and determine what the real 'master narrative' is, there is a gap, and there's always going to be a gap. But as journalists our job should be not to perpetuate the gap but to narrow it."

Long says it's valid to suggest that media attention can make an issue like meth seem more like an epidemic than it may actually be. But "if the media does a couple articles and gets everybody fired up," he says the heightened awareness is worth even the increase in false-alarm meth-related calls that his office receives. "If we get 50 false alarm calls, I'd rather take those, absolutely," he says, than have people unaware of meth's danger.

Robin Prosser has become Missoula, Montana's poster child for legalizing the medicinal use of marijuana. Two years ago, she sustained a 60-day hunger strike to call attention to the need for legally prescribed marijuana. In May, Prosser, who suffers from severe pain and nausea caused by an immunosuppressive disorder, could no longer endure the chronic pain. She attempted suicide. Police helped her psychologist enter her apartment in order to save her.

They allegedly found pipes and pot residue. On May 10, she was charged with possession of an illegal substance and paraphernalia. Now, Prosser may be off the hook.

On Sept. 2, a deferred prosecution agreement was filed, signed by Prosser and the city of Missoula, by which Prosser's case will be deferred for nine months if she meets certain conditions. She "shall commit no acts that could result in charges for violations of federal, state, or local law." There's one exception: "Defendant's use of treatment recommended by her health care providers for her chronic painful permanent medical condition is not a violation of this subsection."

In short, Prosser may continue to use marijuana. If she complies with the conditions, after nine months "the city of Missoula will not oppose a motion to dismiss" the charges presently pending.

Patients like Robin Prosser may also be relieved from prosecution for possession of marijuana if the Montana Medical Marijuana Act, Initiative-148, passes in November. Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and, most recently, Vermont have passed similar measures.

If the initiative is approved, I-148 would authorize the Department of Health and Human Services to issue ID cards to qualifying patients and caregivers and absolve qualifying patients and physicians from prosecution for using or prescribing medical marijuana. Physicians would be able to prescribe marijuana to qualifying patients without being subjected to arrest, prosecution or disciplinary action by the board of medical examiners. Patients like Prosser would be able to treat pain and nausea with marijuana without fear of prosecution.

Relief from MS

Linda Merchant, 42, who lives in the town of Broadus, in Powder River County, is one such patient. She has long wanted to see such legislation.

"I've wanted it to be on the ballot years ago after seeing so many people suffer," she says.

Merchant splits her time between her own home in town and, when she isn't feeling well, her parents' ranch in the country. She suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS), an auto-immune disease that affects the central nervous system.

"There is no cure," she says. There is only management. Over the course of her illness, she has taken Valium, Neurotin, Robaxin, B-12 shots, vitamins, bee pollen and marijuana. She has had extreme adverse reactions to some medications.

"I'm very allergic to all the Betaserons," she says, of a medication commonly used to treat MS.

Other meds she takes in high doses.

"I am on morphine," she says. "Enough to knock a horse off his feet."

Merchant tired of the pills that were supposed to stymie her seizures or increase her appetite. Some made her "walk drunk." Others made her feel worse.

"I would have to take a pill to keep a pill down, you know?" she says.

About eight years ago, she started smoking marijuana for her headaches and nausea. She had used pot recreationally in the past, but she says she hasn't been high in years. "All it does [now] is take away the pain."

The MS causes pressure in Merchant's head, including excruciating eye pain.

"Instantly, when I take a hit, I get relief," she says. "The pressure starts going down."

And her appetite returns a little, to where "Maybe I can keep down half a sandwich."

Broadus is a small town, population 448. Everybody knows everybody else's business, says Merchant. While she's convinced her marijuana use isn't a secret, she doesn't flaunt it. Law enforcement officials, she says, have not troubled her, and she isn't worried about going to jail.

"The cops don't bother me," she says. "They've never seen me, and they won't. If they want to take a sick person like me [to jail] go ahead."

Fear of Prosecution

Teresa Michalski of Helena was worried about jail. Last December, her son Travis died at 29 of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system. He, too, used marijuana. One evening at the kitchen table, Travis told his parents that using marijuana was helping him through the cancer, says Michalski. It helped with pain, anxiety and appetite. He wanted his parents' permission to smoke in their home, where he was living.

They agreed, says Michalski, but they worried about the law.

"The cops here are right out of the police academy, and they don't ever give any kid a break," Michalski says. While she believes that police should toe the line, she worried that her son would be charged and her family would suffer the consequences. He was never busted, though, and she's glad.

"Our names would have just been drug through the mud," she says.

Travis died in December. Now, Michalski campaigns on behalf of I-148.

"This is something that'll help me heal," she says. Plus, she imagines her son cheering her on: "Go Mom, go."

The argument that upsets her the most is that marijuana is a "gateway drug."

Most people who use marijuana medicinally have a terminal condition, she says. Most, she believes, don't have the strength to leave their own homes.

She views the Medical Marijuana Act as apolitical: "It's one of those issues that, if people are real, it's not a party issue, it's a humane issue."

The most dangerous Indian in America is an imp-voiced Blackfeet named Elouise Cobell. According to President Bush's Bureau of Indian Affairs director, Neal McCaleb, Cobell's assaults had so "taken their toll," he had to step down on Dec. 31. It was the latest victory for the Montanan some have called the Rosa Parks of Indian Country.

Cobell's one-woman siege of Washington began six years ago when she filed one of the largest class actions ever brought against the feds. She alleges that in 125 years of leasing Indian lands to miners, loggers, ranchers and farmers, the government has lost or stolen up to $137 billion in royalties belonging to as many as 500,000 Indians. She is almost certainly right.

Officials under the Clinton and Bush administrations responded to her suit by shredding files, lying to judges, and retaliating against her--for example, by cutting off cash to Indian Country. Cobell fired back in court, and in 1999 U.S. district judge Royce Lamberth held Bruce Babbitt and Robert Rubin, Clinton's interior and treasury secretaries, in contempt, issuing steep fines and wicked verbal bruisings. Last September, McCaleb and Interior Secretary Gale Norton met the same fate. Lamberth has even threatened to jail Norton.

Not bad for a Montana Indian who grew up with no electricity, an outhouse and a creek for running water. Cobell's rise and her defeat of McCaleb are apt markers of a new Indian activism that is at once imposing and not imposing enough.

The new Red Power comes from three sources. Litigation, as Cobell has shown, can be a potent catalyst. In addition to exposing a BIA rotten with neglect, her case has inspired similar suits for federal bungling of tribal accounts and has brought rare ink to reservation distress--an old story that is little covered but remains achingly fresh for the 51 percent of Indian Country living in poverty.

The judiciary, however, is a fickle friend. Rightists on the Supreme Court have eroded the two bases of Indian legal strength: tribes' state-like sovereignty and the federal duty to care for Indians.

"If this trend in the court's rulings continues," Senate Indian Affairs Chair Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) told tribal leaders in early 2002, "you may still have governments, but they will be governments in name only."

In December the court heard two cases--U.S. v. White Mountain Apache Tribe and U.S. v. Navajo Nation--in which Bush's solicitor argued for razing part of the government's historic duty as fiduciary trustee for Indian lands. If the court agrees, future Cobell-like suits for financial redress could be mooted. In response, the nation's largest tribal consortium, the National Congress of American Indians, is mounting a drive to convince Congress to roll back Supreme Court decisions--no small task given a Congressional mood toward Indians that ranges from apathy to antipathy.

To better the odds for such efforts, tribes are relying heavily on a second source of strength: casino money. Most tribes have no casinos, and of those that do, most net only enough to keep the doors open. But some have done well; a few spectacularly, like Foxwoods on Connecticut's Mashantucket Pequot Reservation--yearly gross $10 billion.

In 2000 tribes spent roughly $750,000 of such riches against Congress's most loathed Indian hunter, Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.). Gorton's narrow loss to Maria Cantwell sent an NRA-style message that crossing tribes can be hazardous to one's electoral health.

The message is not limited to Republicans, who are by no means alone in disrespecting tribal sovereignty. The November loss of swing-state senators Jean Carnahan of Missouri and Max Cleland of Georgia, both Democrats and both opponents of tribal gambling, may have depressed progressive America, but the casino Indians who gave to their opponents mourned little. Indeed, 2002 marked the first time gambling tribes gave a majority of donations to Republicans: 56 percent, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, up from a mere 21 percent in 2000.

Native Americans have also found the power of their franchise. Though just 1.5 percent of the American whole, they make up as much as 11 percent of Western states that teeter between Republicans and Democrats (and 19 percent of solidly Republican Alaska).

Fifteen years ago, led by the Northern Cheyenne group Native Action, Montana's Indians began changing themselves from the nation's worst minority voters to the best. In 1992 their high turnout gave Clinton the state and saved liberal Congressman Pat Williams. Last November they elected seven Indians to a statehouse that until the 1990s had sat one.

Tribes in other states are emulating Montana, including in South Dakota, where Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson survived a squeaker last month thanks to a drive that registered thousands of Indian voters. For the moment, tribal votes, unlike tribal donations, are soundly Democratic. But that could change if Indians are not rewarded. In the Southwest, the Indian vote for anti-gambling Democrats has dropped from the usual 90 percent to the high 50s. And in South Dakota, Native agitator Russell Means is already urging Indians to dump Sen. Tom Daschle in 2004.

The combined clout--money, votes and lawsuits--"allowed tribes to defeat several attacks in Congress in 2002, particularly where gaming money was involved," says Acee Agoyo, editor of Indianz.com. "Attempts to tax tribal lands and tribal casinos, even to study tribal casinos, went down."

Tribes were also strong enough to bloody Secretary Norton when she tried to privatize BIA schools, and again when she wanted to create a new agency to oversee Indian accounts without tribal input. Interior withdrew both efforts in disgrace (though in late December the BIA-reorganization plan was resurrected, to great tribal outcry; its outcome remains uncertain). Taking the fall, McCaleb tarred tribes as anti-reform, and reporters ignorant of Indian affairs too often agreed. But as Elouise Cobell says, "What's happening here is an entire race of people that has been ignored is learning to reclaim its power."

Yet powerful as the fights against paternalism and malfeasance are, they are essentially defensive. Marshalling offensive strength--the power, say, to win humane funding for the Indian Health Service, whose per-client budget is one-third of Medicare's, or for tribal colleges, funded at half their authorization--will take many more election-day hits. A few more justice-minded justices wouldn't hurt either.

Stephen Hendricks has published in the Boston Globe, DoubleTake and Seattle Weekly. He lives in Helena, Montana.