On a snowy day in 2004, MSU Extension agents in Northeast Montana met to strategize the best use of resources to meet local needs. Discussion turned toward an ominous, destructive force that was sweeping through their communities, leaving a trail of broken families, disrupted lives and environmental hazards. The routine program planning meeting ended in an urgent call to action against a common enemy: methamphetamine.

The picture was all too clear: meth has pervasive effects on Montana’s families, communities, economy and environment, beyond the issues associated with drug-related crime alone. Readily available and highly addictive, the deadly drug seduces users from all walks of life, youth and adult. Startling numbers of children are in the care of foster families or grandparents because their parents are in jail for reasons that relate to meth.

Manufactured in make-shift labs from a cocktail of poisonous ingredients, the substance destroys the health of users and creates serious environmental hazards on public and private property. Homes, ranches, cars, storage units, dumps, parks -- even wilderness areas -- run the risk of contamination.

“Meth is a community issue, an ag issue, a family issue, a youth issue, an environmental issue,” says Mike Vogel, Extension Housing and Environmental Health specialist and leader of MSU Extension’s Family and Consumer Sciences programs. “People want to nip it in the bud, and it’s community involvement that’s making the difference.”

The meth education initiative led by MSU Extension is working to empower those communities to reach to the roots of meth proliferation in their part of Montana, and yank, hard. Tying together the efforts of educators, law enforcement and community members, the program used Extension’s statewide outreach network to help hundreds of concerned Montanans weave together a stronger fabric of action and awareness.

Communities can dig into awareness education with a Meth Toolkit that includes a leader’s guide, media kit, video, PowerPoint & print education tools, plus a youth prevention education program. Kits also contain specific tools for groups like auto rental/repair shops, retailers, pharmacists, outdoors-people, ag producers and workers in the housing, motel and storage professions.

Extension filled more than 600 requests for the comprehensive Meth Toolkit throughout 2005 and 2006 and at least 1,200 individuals, retailers, home owners, agriculture producers, educators and local agencies learned more about meth at community meetings and educational sessions all over the state.

Additionally, the “Tools for Schools” meth prevention education program, developed by a cross-disciplinary team of MSU experts, was distributed to each middle and high school in the state. Kirk Astroth, Director of the Montana 4-H Youth Center for Youth Development, conducted 17 workshops, training more than 700 teachers and community educators to use the meth prevention tools.

“Our strategy has been to attack Meth at its roots, by providing persistent and pervasive education,” said Vogel, “It’s not one single factor that’s going to make that reduction -- it’s a collective partnership.”

Now, Extension is partnering with Tribal communities on the development of a culturally specific toolkit for self-guided community education.

COLLABORATION EFFORT: *The content of the kits, and the statewide outreach effort to present them, represent a collaboration of MSU Extension specialists and agents with other university experts and representatives from the housing, real estate, education and law enforcement professions, among others. Funding and cooperation from the Montana Department of Justice made production of the Toolkits possible. The Tools for Schools materials were created with Montana Office of Public Instruction funds by a collaboration of MSU Extension specialists Kirk Astroth, Mike Vogel, Lynn Paul and Sandy Bailey with Gary Lande and Jeff Linkenbach of the MSU College of Health and Human Development’s Montana Social Norms Project.