Registry posts names of methamphetamine makers
Some say Tenn. list stigmatizes offenders
NASHVILLE -- It was no secret when police caught up with Mary Ann Curtis last winter, after the methamphetamine addict had returned to her tiny hometown of Waverly from Las Vegas. Her mother knew what had happened even before Curtis called to tell her about the arrest.
Now in rehab, the 40-year-old Curtis hopes to win back her son's trust someday. She wants to coach after-school sports again. She wants to regain her nursing license.
Curtis might have a better chance than others in her situation. Her most serious methamphetamine crimes predate Tennessee's new methamphetamine registry, which posts on the Internet names of people convicted of manufacturing the drug.
''I just want a normal life again. I want to be able to walk into a basketball or a football game without everybody saying, 'There's that dopehead walking by.' I just want to be Mary Ann again," Curtis said.
In December, the state launched the nation's first Internet methamphetamine registry, which allows the curious and the cautious to search by name and county for people convicted of making the drug.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which oversees the registry, has posted more than 200 names.
''The purpose was to get these names out there so that members of the public can see who these people are who have been arrested for meth manufacturing," bureau spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson said.
The registry concerns civil libertarians and some drug rehabilitation advocates, who say the list violates privacy and stigmatizes people who have been punished by the state.
Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, said the registry labels those on the list with ''a big red 'M'."
''We're making it virtually impossible for them to escape their previous life of crime, and live in neighborhoods without being . . . permanently identified as meth cooks," she said.
Although Curtis is not on the registry, she believes that those who are will have a tougher time recovering. ''You're always going to be judged," she said.
Cheap to manufacture, methamphetamine is made from cold medicines containing ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, such as Sudafed. When ''cooked" with chemicals, which can include lye, drain cleaner, or antifreeze, the result is the highly potent and extremely addictive methamphetamine, also known as ''ice" and ''crank."
The drug also creates a toxic chemical soup that contaminates homes and the environment where it's dumped. Because many ingredients are flammable, methamphetamine ''kitchens" often explode, taxing hospitals in areas with a high concentration of the drug.
Methamphetamine has become a nationwide epidemic, and in recent years has exploded in Tennessee. In 2004, police found more than 1,500 methamphetamine labs in the state, the highest in the southeast and the second-highest in the nation that year, after Missouri.
Alarmed at the methamphetamine epidemic, Governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, formed a task force in early 2004 to come up with remedies. The recommendations, which became law last year, included tougher penalties for methamphetamine crimes and a requirement that pharmacies keep medications used to make it behind the counter.
The law also created the registry, loosely modeling it on sex offender registries. The registry is meant to deter those using or manufacturing the drug, and to notify communities about methamphetamine makers among them. Those who are on the list can apply to get off after seven years.
Other states may follow suit. At least two other states -- Oklahoma and Washington -- have pending proposals for methamphetamine registries similar to Tennessee's.
Since the law passed, the number of methamphetamine kitchens discovered in the state has fallen sharply, though it is not known whether that's because of the restrictions on cold medications or because of the registry.
Judge Seth Norman, who heads Nashville's drug court and supports the registry, said only time will tell whether the registry is achieving its goals.
''Everybody is searching for the answer to the problem," Norman said. ''That's the problem with always being the first state to do it. You're plowing new ground, and no one knows what's going to work and what won't work."
Assistant public defender Rick Taylor, who has clients accused of methamphetamine crimes, said it doesn't seem right to have such a registry when there's no database for other dangerous drugs or for repeat drunk drivers.
''Suddenly methamphetamine is in the political spotlight, and we're going to create a registry for people who get hooked up on meth. I'm not so sure that's even-handed administration of public justice," he said.
The registry has supporters even among methamphetamine convicts. After police stormed Tina Edwards's house in Pulaski in 2003, she lost her nursing license and her two children and was sentenced to six years of supervised probation.
Now 39, she recently finished a year of drug rehabilitation at a Columbia clinic. She called her arrest her ''glory story" because it helped set her life straight.
Edwards, who was convicted before the registry came into effect, concedes that she is relieved not to be on it. But if she were, she said, it wouldn't matter. ''We all have a past, and we all have wreckage and some of those irreversible consequences," she said. 