The problem of methamphetamine abuse has the attention of the country. The media has captured it with horrifying pictorial spreads and catchy terms like "meth babies" and "meth mouth," while lawmakers are inundating legislatures with bills to raise minimum sentences and restrict access to materials used to make methamphetamine. It is easy to be seduced by dramatic headlines about the nation's latest drug epidemic, but that hype should not change the underlying premise of how to deal with the problem.

Sensational reporting and legislating aside, methamphetamine abuse should be addressed as a public health, not a criminal justice issue. This means focusing on creating more effective preventive education, increasing treatment resources, promoting harm reduction measures, and dealing with the environmental consequences of methamphetamine labs. The Alliance is working right now on specific recommendations in these areas that can shape public policy around methamphetamine.

These efforts build on current and past work to find appropriate responses based on science, reason, compassion and justice. This weekend in Salt Lake City, the Alliance is joining the Harm Reduction Project and 1,000 attendees at Science and Response, the first national conference on methamphetamine. Alliance public health director Glenn Backes was involved in planning the conference and will be a presenter, as will national affairs director Bill Piper, New Mexico office director Reena Szczepanski, and executive director Ethan Nadelmann.

Alliance staffers are joining with policy experts, health departments, scientists and treatment providers at the conference to share knowledge and gain insight about how best to approach the complex issues surrounding methamphetamine through the collaborative efforts of the drug prevention, drug treatment, harm reduction and law enforcement communities.

New Mexico Alliance director Reena Szczepanski is also speaking this week at the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, where she will discuss her formation of a statewide working group to create coordinated, strategic policy recommendations around methamphetamine.

And thanks to ongoing work by the Alliance, Prop 36, California's treatment-instead-of-incarceration initiative, has been effectively treating people with methamphetamine problems for four years. Over half the people who enter Prop 36 are methamphetamine users, according to a new UCLA report, and those users have the same rate of treatment success as users of other drugs.

More thoughtful consideration of methamphetamine is starting to make its way into the public consciousness. In recent weeks, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Slate all have spoken out against the sensationalistic reporting that characterizes methamphetamine as "America's most dangerous drug," and a group of doctors and researchers has condemned the use of the inaccurate term "meth babies."

The Alliance applauds these voices of reason and continues to work toward scientific, public health-based, compassionate policies around methamphetamine - regardless of the media hype.