A three-day Appeal-Democrat series is focusing on three major aspects of the Mid-Valley meth scourge: changes in the sources and distribution of the drug; local education efforts to combat meth use and addiction; and meth's impact on families and communities.

In today's second installment, reporter Ryan McCarthy details the anti-meth initiatives and their effectiveness.

Her two faces — the first a smiling 12-year-old in her school picture, the second a booking photo of a ravaged, haggard youth — can be seen on billboards in the Yuba-Sutter area.

Look at Angela Fatino to see what methamphetamine can do, say local leaders in the anti-meth effort.

"It ages people in dog years," David Scott, program coordinator for the substance abuse treatment program "Options for Change," said of one law enforcement official's description of the drug's impact.

Fatino, the Iowa youth shown in billboards, lost more than her looks. At 15 she took her life during her struggle with meth addiction.

The effort here to educate about the dangers of the drug includes her terrible transformation to show the devastation meth brings.

"The pictures really seem to make a difference," said Dulia Aguilar, substance abuse prevention specialist with Sutter-Yuba Mental Health Services. Aguilar recalled the reaction of a young woman, who came out of a theater in the winter after watching a suspense movie, and then saw the anti-meth billboard at Highway 99 in Yuba City.

She looked over, saw the pictures and screamed, Aguilar recounted.

The before and after photos — on billboards funded through Sutter-Yuba Mental Health — are compelling to youth, said Ruth Mikkelsen. For 19 years Mikkelsen was principal at Harry P.B. Carden School in Marysville, which serves youth in juvenile hall, and at Thomas E. Mathews Community School in Marysville, for at-risk students.

"It's creepy because she was so cute," Mikkelsen said of the photos' impact. "That little girl is dying."

Anti-meth messages extend beyond the billboards and transit posters. The Substance Abuse Steering Coalition of Sutter, Yuba and Colusa counties will give Frisbees to the first 500 people attending the Thursday Gold Sox game in Marysville. High school students in Yuba and Sutter counties received bookmarks with the before-and-after photos of the young methamphetamine user.

The physical changes follow the drug that tries to cheat nature. Methamphetamine releases high levels of dopamine — a mood enhancer that the body produces on its own — to induce euphoria and energy.

Exercise safely elevates levels of dopamine, many medical experts say. But the body pays a price for the accelerated levels of the chemical when introduced artificially from meth. The brain loses its ability to make more dopamine, said Dr. Charles Moore, medical director of the chemical dependency recovery program for Kaiser Permanente in Sacramento.

A meth user ends up relying more and more on the drug for the high.

Ugo Punteri, who has a masters in social work, teaches at Yuba College and works at Leo Chesney Community Correctional Facility in Live Oak, said meth's hold can be so strong that parents will neglect their children and require the intervention of Child Protective Services.

"It destroys families," Punteri said of the drug. "It's nasty stuff."

Its physical impacts include the mouths and minds of users.

Meth mouth, the rotting teeth that afflict users who crave sweets because of the drug and also suffer dry mouths that accelerate gum disease, is one problem. Another is what the drug does to the thinking of users, noted Punteri, recalling the concerns of a 33-year-old who said, "I can't think straight because my brain's fried."

The initial high comes with a cost that can be physically apparent in just months. The best way to beat meth is never to use it, say experts.

"They shouldn't even try it one time," said substance abuse prevention specialist Aguilar.

Still, some do. Youth, particularly, can believe themselves bulletproof — and that the destruction the drug brings happens to others but not to them. They face an addiction with a hold as powerful as heroin, without the alternative that methadone provides addicts.

"They haven't found a replacement for meth that's not as dangerous as the drug itself," said Scott.

Jim Denney, who as Sutter County sheriff testified before Congress in 2000 about the drug crisis in Northern California, saw the dangers of meth extend beyond its users and makers. As a narcotics officer, Denney saw kids playing on the floor of meth labs.

"That's the kind of upbringing they got," he said. "The deck was stacked against them from the beginning."

Others spared such childhoods can still fall to the lure of meth, Denney said, since the drug can create a dependency with its first use.

"You're constantly chasing that rush," he said of users.

Early anti-meth education efforts focus on youth to "keep them from taking that first hit," Denney said.

The efforts can be a key to keeping those — Denney deems them "fence sitters" — uncertain of whether to try the drug.

Some things as fundamental as doing well academically can deter drug use, Denney said.

"If they're not succeeding in school," he said, "they become prone to criminal issues, substance abuse issues."

"They've got nothing else going for them," Denney noted.

Principal Mikkelsen said educational success is important — as are the anti-drug messages schools impart.

But schools, she said, are not a magic bullet that can solve a drug problem with roots that reach beyond classrooms.

"If you think you're going to clear up something in a one-hour class, you're not," said Mikkelsen, 67.

Successfully combating meth requires a community-wide commitment against the drug and the devastation it brings to a region.

"It takes everyone deciding that's not going happen," she said.

Anyone puzzled about why anti-meth messages don't always work should consider the hold that cigarettes have on smokers, Mikkelsen said, and how efforts to combat smoking have succeeded on some fronts and failed on others.

"How many people read the little notice on the cigarette pack?" she asked of the warnings about the dangers of smoking.

Fighting meth and successfully turning around the lives of meth users is never going to be an easy undertaking, the former school principal said.

"It's hard work — every inch of it," Mikkelsen said. "The things that work are hard work."

The effort comes in the Sutter-Yuba area that is sometimes labeled the "meth capital of California." But that label has been applied to regions around the state, including San Diego, San Bernardino County, Los Angeles and Turlock in Stanislaus County in the Central Valley.

"We tend to think it's only here," substance abuse prevention specialist Aguilar said of the problem.

That so much of California may see itself as the center of methamphetamine abuse suggests residents realize the impact the drug has on their community.

"People want to highlight what a big problem it is," said Nancy Lee, the alcohol and drug program manager for Sutter-Yuba Mental Health Services.

Lee participates in regular meetings of a methamphetamine prevention planning group begun in September 2007. Such efforts show the seriousness of the anti-meth effort, Lee said.

Past drug problems — cocaine abuse in the 1980s or the range of illegal drugs prominent in the 1960s — weren't met with such organization, she noted.

"We should have," Lee said. "We've learned."

This Series:

MONDAY: Central Valley and Mexican labs supply local meth.

TODAY: Yuba-Sutter anti-meth education efforts ramp up.

WEDNESDAY: How a Yuba City woman battled meth addiction and got her kids back.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ryan McCarthy at 749-4707 or rmccarthy@appeal-democrat.com