Meth is Behind Kansas’s Growing Crime Rates
Methamphetamine addiction is plaguing Kansas, driving up the crime rate and filling jails with people who would be better served in treatment centers, local leaders say.
“It’s up to all of us not to turn a blind eye,” Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said. “It affects our employers, it affects our schools, it affects our social fabric. It’s still fueled by meth, it’s just coming from south of the border instead of somebody’s barn on the back 40. Nevertheless, it’s there.”
Schmidt was a panelist at the Wichita Crime Commission’s Sedgwick County Drug Summit on Thursday. A group of local and state leaders met with community members to answer a single question: What should Sedgwick County do, as a community, to solve the growing meth and opioid problem?
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“We’ve been fighting the War on Drugs since the 1980s,” Sedgwick County Sheriff Jeff Easter said. “And we’re losing.”
At the state level, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation was awarded a $848,459 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday to help the state fight its growing meth problem, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney in the District of Kansas Stephen McAllister.
The money will be used to “locate or investigate illicit activities, including precursor diversion,
laboratories or methamphetamine traffickers.”
