Guest column: May 22, 2006

Stopping meth addiction and identity theft

by Reps. Al O’Brien and Mark Ericks

Every day, thieves are stealing the identity of average citizens like you. They want to forge checks to empty your bank accounts – or apply for credit cards and run up debts they’ll never pay, ruining your credit.

Meanwhile, the champion of deadly drugs is meth. It’s an epidemic here in Snohomish County.

These two problems are related -- meth addicts are relying on ID theft to fuel their habit.

So what can we do?

How they do it

We both spent our careers as police officers. Combined, we have more than 60 years on the job, putting handcuffs on the bad guys and helping crime victims.

So we saw, up close, what drugs do to people. Meth is one of the worst, and Washington state is ranked in the top ten for meth abuse.

We found 1,337 meth labs last year; and
45 percent of people with the twin problems of meth addiction and mental illness are pregnant women or mothers.
According to Susan York, executive director of Lead on America, a Lynnwood-based anti-drug organization, the state’s meth problem is a 12 –on a scale of 1 to 10.
But meth and ID theft are both complicated issues. We know preventing crime and addiction isn’t as simple as passing a law to make something illegal.

The meth problem today

We have to prevent meth cooks from creating toxic dumps when they cook up the drug in hotels, apartments, storage units or out in the forest. Addicts desperate for a fix will resort to cooking their own meth, then fall into selling it.

So we’ve made it much tougher to cook meth by passing laws restricting the ingredients they need to make it. You can’t walk into a store and buy boxes upon boxes of cold medicine today, because that medicine contains substances used by meth cooks.

But now, more meth is actually coming not from small-time cooks, but from giant drug cartels. They’re smuggling it into the country or cooking it in superlabs.

The drug dealers have adapted, so we have to adapt.

Identity theft

Anybody can break into your car and steal your stereo. It takes skill and experience to steal identities – and that’s why more and more identity theft cases are linked to organized rings of meth addicts.

They work in teams, with one group stealing mail to get bank account and credit card information, then another group forging checks and applying for fraudulent credit cards.

Police in Bonney Lake busted one ID theft gang that held weekend seminars, with nametags to separate members into teams. Some stole cars; others stole license plates to put on the stolen cars, which they then used to drive along rural mail routes to steal mail. They were forging checks and creating fake driver’s licenses and passports.

How we can stop them

As lawmakers, we’ve spent a lot of time listening to police officers, prosecutors and crime victims on ways to combat ID theft and meth addiction.

We’ve passed laws getting tough on ID theft, we’ve made life hard for meth cooks, and we’ve worked with ID theft victims to help them fix their credit and restore their good name.

Beating meth and ID theft, however, will take a team effort. We must:

- constantly adapt to the changing tactics of meth dealers and ID thieves -- by changing our laws, giving police new tools and helping prosecutors get convictions;

- dry up funding for meth by making citizens more immune to ID theft – have your checks delivered to the bank, not the mailbox and shred sensitive financial documents; and

- attack not just the supply of meth, but the demand for the drug; that means getting tough on addiction – helping meth addicts get clean and stay clean to break the cycle of addiction and crime.

How you can help

Our goal is to move Washington state from the top 10 for meth and ID theft to the bottom 10. We want citizens to be safe from this twin menace.

But we can’t beat meth and ID theft without your support.

Get help when a friend, neighbor or family member becomes hooked on meth.

Call your lawmakers and tell them to support innovative reforms to attack not just the supply of illegal drugs, but the demand – to get tough on addiction.

Protect your family from ID theft: lock your mail, shred your bank statements and credit card bills. If we all did this, ID thieves couldn’t get anywhere.