Montana teams up with the private sector for a statewide anti-drug campaign

What do you do when a major federal report lists your state as having the highest prison population increase in the country, and then state officials blame it on a methamphetamine abuse problem run rampant? If you're Department of Montana Director Bill Slaughter, who retired shortly after speaking to Corrections.com, you continue with business as usual.

Information about his DOC, which recorded a 7.9 percent prison population increase in a DOJ prison inmate study released last week, did not surprise him, neither did Republican Congressman Denny Rehberg's statement that 85 percent of the state's female prisoners are incarcerated because of meth-related offenses. That figure recently has been decreased to about 53 percent by Montana Attorney General, Mike McGrath. Meth abuse is responsible for about 35 percent of the male offender population.

Slaughter says for the past seven to eight years his officers have predicted that meth abuse would be the state's next major drug problem.

“Meth is cheap and highly addictive, but it smells horrible when made, so you need to be away from people, which gives it a history of being a rural drug” Slaughter explains. “Because meth is more of a rural problem, though, it has not gotten much attention.”

Unfortunately, it has caught the eye of  a major state population groups. Meth distributors are targeting the state's seven Native American reservations because of their remote location. As a result, the MTDOC is struggling to manage the increasing number of Native American offenders.

The high percentage of female meth offenders is puzzling too, but Slaughter says they have had a number of chances to right their situation before ending up in prison.

Montana's prison system differs from other states in that judges can initially decide whether an offender goes directly to jail or is ordered into the MTDOC's custody. In fact, approximately 12,000 offenders are under its supervision, with about 75 percent of them in community corrections programs.  Approximately 68 percent of convicted offenders do not spend time in prison.

“If they come into our custody, we can get offenders into rehabilitation programs. So, they have a number of chances to improve,” Slaughter explains. “But many of the male and female offenders seem to work hard at getting themselves into prison. Probation officers work with them, but they're out of control. They've failed at the numerous opportunities they were given to get their lives back in order.”

Peg Shea, Executive Director of the Montana Meth Project, believes the meth problem reaches deeper than that. 

“There are a couple of different issues going on. We're seeing an addiction rate that's impacting individuals and their criminal behavior, but we don't have a lot of treatments. A judge would order treatment and the offender would agree to it, but then he or she would have to wait six, eight, or nine months for treatment. In the meantime they continue to do the meth which would typically lead to a crime, so back in prison they go,” says Shea.

Another problem is the country's overall inability to stop the flow of meth coming from other countries. Only 20 percent of the drug is produced in Montana. Slaughter says the other 80 percent comes from Mexico and Canada.

“We're aware that meth labs find their way from Canada,” he adds, “The Feds know it too. It's no secret.”

Inadequate state funding for treatment programs, dwindling industry, and the fact that Montana ranks near the bottom of nationwide median incomes has not helped matters much either.

“We struggle with budget issues and the lack of real leadership to finance treatments. This translates to an increase in meth use and related crime, and then our prison growth rate is one of the highest. People aren't committing more crime, they're not getting the resources related to their addiction,” Shea adds. 

Thanks to area leaders like, millionaire Seibel Systems founder Tom Seibel, more resources are becoming available and Montana residents are hearing about it loud and clear.  To date Seibel, through his foundation, has invested more than $5.5 million into building and promoting Shea's program, which is the only prevention-focused organization in the state.

“The Meth Project is a tremendous boost. Seibel did a lot of research to figure out how to get people to notice this campaign,” says Slaughter.

“He decided to make an investment in his state and use his connections to take care of this problem on the front end,” Shea adds. “He's taking the meth problem and applying business solutions to it and using a consumer marketing approach to  get the word out.”

Montana's isolation made it a perfect experiment area for Seibel to examine how private sector solutions affected public problems. He researched the time of day that would provide the most impact for his campaigns, and conducted surveys to find out which audiences most needed to hear the anti-meth messages.

“We polled teens and young adults and found that they didn't understand much about meth. They told us it was easily accessible, and we discovered that about 25 percent of  the kids had been offered the drug,” Shea says. “So we knew it was widely available. There was this perception too that there might be some benefit to using it, and that its risks weren't so bad.”

The Meth Project knew that it had to target fist-time users to reduce meth use. That meant getting its message to the most vulnerable groups; children ages 12 to  17, and young adults in their early 20's. If it could impact this group, and raise the dialogue among this population, it had a chance at battling the state's meth problem.

As a result, Seibel and Shea created a hard-hitting anti-meth campaign that spoke to this population. It included a a television and Internet ad campaign and highway billboards.