(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Each week we bring you stories about the people
and issues in our state.
This week, the seductive and destructive power of meth.
For merattics reveal how the illegal drug takes hold
and why the use of meth is skyrocketing.
Also this week, the votes are in,
discover whether all the public schools
in Florence County will close.
Learn about a martial art called Kendall
and why this instructor also teaches
the Buddhist philosophy of non-violence.
And Greyhounds take to the track one last time in Deleven.
The question is, what's next for the dogs in Wisconsin?
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided
by the people of a lion's energy who bring safe, reliable, and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes,
neighborhoods, and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
A lion's energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
UW Health, providing specialty in primary care
for all ages throughout Wisconsin.
Information on UW Health physicians and clinics
and on University of Wisconsin Hospital
is available on the web.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, providing local education
for the crucial occupations essential to our communities.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, Communities First.
- Throughout this month, we're focusing
on a growing threat to our state,
methamphetamine, meth for short.
It's an illegal drug, a powerful stimulant
that has the northwestern part of our state in a vice grip.
Federica Freiberg has spent months
looking into meth in Wisconsin.
- Patty, last week we had an overview
of the meth problem in the state.
This week, a personal look at addiction.
The latest health department figures show
about 10,000 Wisconsin residents over the age of 12
have used meth in the last year.
And given that experts say this drug is uniquely addictive,
those numbers add up to trouble.
- Once you do it once, you are addicted.
- If I could help this one person,
not have to go through what I went through,
then tell you my story was worth it.
- This St.
Croix County woman says meth gave her the energy
to work the night shift and get her housework done
during the day.
But over a period of four years, she began snorting so much meth,
she came very close to death, and yet she couldn't stop.
- My nose was so close gabs from it burning basically
the inside of my nose out that I would have to take
like little razor blades and cut the scabs out of my nose
to be able to get it up there.
- Kathy says she's been clean for eight years.
She hides her face to protect her teenage daughter.
- I was a terrible mother.
- Why?
- Because I would sleep.
When I came off of the meth, I would fall asleep.
And she would have to take care of herself
for eight, nine, 10 hours, and she was year and a half old.
- Kathy lost custody of her child
and then did even more meth.
- The longest I ever stayed up was 14 days.
And after 14 days, it felt like somebody was ripping
my fingernails out, like pulling it
'cause my body was so dehydrated.
- Despite her powerful message, Kathy believes telling
the story of meth use is not as powerful as seeing it.
- You can see the meth skin.
And what that basically is, it's a lot of sores
and ulcers on the skin.
Not a very pretty picture actually
because the meth users will feel as though
there's something crawling underneath their skin,
like bugs.
And what they will try to do is pick those bugs out
or claw them out or scratch them out.
And it leaves sores on their skin.
- You just felt like your things calling all over you,
you know, it just made you feel all itchy.
- Jackie Peterson has her own before and after mug shots.
This one time, Nurses Aid from New Richmond
lost it all to her methodiction.
- I couldn't work.
I didn't work for like the last two years.
I couldn't comprehend on what to do.
After an arrest for delivering meth and fetamine,
Jackie Peterson landed in jail.
Her release date is February 2006.
- I was scared.
You know you're staying here.
- Jailers say this is what meth addicts look like
their first days in jail.
After sometimes days or even weeks without, they sleep.
- This one's suicidal.
- They are closely watched.
This is the meth addict's lowest low.
It follows quickly on the heels of the highest high.
- Wow.
I mean, it was instantly like you're adrenaline.
Your my whole body warmed inside.
But the more that I used it, when I would come down, I
would be just depressed.
Suicidally depressed.
- And paranoid, a homework of meth use.
I would hide.
I would hide in my house.
I thought like I would hear helicopter gover.
I thought they were coming to get me.
I was literally scared of my own shadow.
- You're like, keep yourself in your house
doing the day and then you come out at night
because you feel that nobody can see you at night.
- Very severe hallucinations and paranoia.
That's going on with the patient at last for hours.
Emergency room doctor Carson Harris describes the state
as severe psychosis.
He says people admitted to the ER on meth
are often agitated and very violent.
That also spills on to police blotters.
- We're seeing more violence within our domestic situations.
We've had some stabbings in the county
that have been meth related.
- It's devastating to families and it's devastating to kids.
- I started shooting it.
- This young river Falls mother first was offered meth
at a party.
She liked the effects.
- I had gained 68 pounds when I had her
and after that I lost it right away
like the first two months I lost it all and plus more.
- You want to go rock climbing?
- Yeah.
- But Crystal didn't, couldn't stop there.
While pregnant again with her second child
she continued to shoot up.
- I knew it was wrong but and I'd be so sick.
- According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse
fetal exposure to meth and fetamine can cause an array
of problems from preterm delivery to
congenital deformities.
Crystal says her baby escaped harm,
but after arrests and relapses she says she feared
she would eventually lose custody of her children.
So just after Christmas 2004 she says she made a
permined to quit.
- I want them to have a normal life which is schedules,
stability and education.
I mean I just want them to live a normal happy life.
- Crystal was one of the lucky.
As a member of the Ho Chiang nation,
her tribe offered her long term inpatient treatment.
She's now in college.
Mitchell Nat was an addict with access
to all the meth and fetamine he could use.
He shows the place he cooked meth,
a garage on his small farm in St.
Croix County.
Nat is now in jail for the crime,
something he credits with breaking the
back of his addiction.
- I'd probably be dead.
I'd probably be dead.
That's where I look at it.
I mean I look at the jail as saving my life.
- Jail time often serves as a methodics clean time.
Drug counselors say it's only then after two or three months
behind bars that the brain recovers enough
for the person to understand and participate in treatment.
- Treatment doesn't even start for these folks
until 60 days, 90 days out because they're a
limitation of thinking.
- Professionals say to work treatment must be long term,
a full year at least.
Most treatment programs last three months or less,
but that costs money, thousands of dollars.
Private treatment centers can cost tens
of thousands of dollars.
Those in the trenches say the need for meth
treatment is rising, but the government
dollars for it are not.
- Sometimes we feel like we're asked to go to war
and we're fighting a big tank, but all we have to use
is like a small weapon.
- Even people in law enforcement say they cannot arrest
their way out of the problem.
Increasingly, they are thinking of it
as a public health crisis.
- It has to be recognized by the community
that we have a muffin for the epidemic.
And that epidemic is an epidemic of a fatal disease.
- And this is what's gonna happen to you if you use it.
You will go to prison or you will die.
(soft music)
- The Sink-Proy County Sheriff's Department
gave us uncommon access for our reports.
You may have noticed that we said one of
the men we interviewed was in jail, but he was out
on the roadside with us.
Well, he was escorted there under guard to show
that a home-based meth lab can hide in plain view.
And Patty, next week we have an inside look
at law enforcement's battle against meth.
- Oh, thanks, Brad.
If you'd like to comment on this report
or suggest additional topics, we'd like to hear from you.
Here's how to reach us.
(soft music)
- We turn now to the issue of school funding.
Most school districts struggle with finances,
but right now the biggest struggle may
be in Florence County.
This past July, the school board there voted
to dissolve the district.
Referenda to exceed state spending caps
had repeatedly failed.
And the board felt the district simply
could not continue operating.
The schools would close and the students
would be divided among four or five neighboring districts.
The public outcry prompted the school board
to hold one last chance referendum.
That election was Tuesday.
Producer Art Hackett was there.
- Cray P.
Per Garland's were going up in the halls
of Florence High School on Tuesday night.
- We want the kids to like walk into a sea of breeding gold,
so it like that.
- This is like the ultimate playoff game.
- Yeah, really is.
- Even though it was described as if it were a game,
it wasn't.
Voters were being asked if they wanted to allow
the Florence County School District
to exceed state spending limits by $5 million
over the next five years.
There was also an advisory question
on whether voters wanted the district to be dissolved.
- I am a junior, so my senior year
could possibly be somewhere else,
which is something that's very hard to grasp.
We want to keep positive spirits no matter what happens.
- I don't want my children going anywhere else.
I chose this district that's where I want my kids to go.
So as a parent, it was a very difficult decision.
- Even though she wants the district to survive,
Jenny Baramon of Long Lake was one of the school board members
who voted to dissolve the district.
We talked to her in a cafe in Long Lake,
which is almost into the next county.
The bus that carries Baramon's two children
travels a 116 mile round trip twice a day.
It's not just high transportation costs
that are causing the Florence district problems.
Baramon says part of the problem is the state's
school aid formula.
- We have a lot of property, so the state sees
us as property rich, but we're very
income poor up here.
A lot of people have gotten their land from their families.
It's been passed down.
It's not that they've come up here and bought this land
and able to afford to buy this land,
but we're paying the property taxes on it.
- Some local business people like
Realtor Mary Lou Dorzock of TIPLAR
argue the district still isn't driving
a hard enough bargain with teachers.
- Their benefit package is way beyond what the
private sector gets.
- But the local business association
and Florence supported raising the spending caps.
Todd Patterson says if the school district did close,
the city would lose an identity necessary for prosperity.
- You cannot draw in any kind of tourism,
you cannot draw in any kind of families to work here,
if you do not have a school district to go to.
- No votes, 1,253.
Yes, folks, 1,400 points.
(audience cheering)
- The result wasn't the heckyosh,
the science called for.
The margin of approval was only 170 votes
out of about 2,700 cash.
But a clear majority, one of the district to stay in business,
even if some of them didn't want to spend more money.
- I believe that there is a mindset
on the part of some of the people
that we need to live within our means.
- But district officials feel they may be
in the same situation again in five years
if the state legislature doesn't make fundamental changes
in the state's aid formula.
- In addition to Florence County,
there were school referenda in nine other school districts
around the state this week.
In the Hortonville area school district,
a $1 million referendum to purchase land for a new school
passed by just one vote.
For more information on all of the school referenda
in the state, go to our website at
www.org/inwisconsin. As in Wisconsin
travels the state, we not only learn
about important issues like those in Florence County,
we also meet interesting people, people like Menorru Kiyota.
Kiyota is an American citizen born of Japanese parents.
History reminds us that the rights of citizenship
should not be taken for granted.
Students at UW-Madison welcome distinguished guests
from Japan.
The visitors demonstrate the ancient art
of Japanese swordsmanship called Kendo.
The demonstration is a part of the Kendo class
taught by Menorru Kiyota.
Kiyota has been teaching Kendo for 16 years.
The Kendo class uses wooden swords
and weapons made of bamboo.
The object of this exercise is to contact
specific points on your opponent's body.
Kiyota teaches his students both the physical
and philosophical aspects of Kendo.
The practice of Kendo can help students transform challenges
into personal growth.
Kiyota knows this lesson only too well.
His challenges began at a young age.
Kiyota was born in America, but when he was 11, his
mother sent him to Japan.
She wanted him to learn the culture of her homeland.
To prepare him, she signed him up for judo
lessons after school.
I think I owe much to my mother.
Rather than playing basketball, she told me that I
should go to judo.
Simply because the boys there would not look down upon me
if I study judo.
Kiyota lived in Japan for four years.
He says it was hard at first, but his experience
in judo and Kendo provided common ground with
his Japanese classmates.
His Japanese teacher taught him an important lesson.
Don't fight outside the classroom.
And that was a great message for me
because it gives you an inner strength.
Don't fight.
And since that time, whether I studied judo or Kendo,
I never got into a fight.
This life lesson was put to the test
after returning to San Francisco.
Kiyota was in high school in 1941
when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
Four months later, the US Army forced
West Coast residents of Japanese descent
into detention camps.
It didn't matter that many, like Kiyota, were US citizens.
Stripped of his civil rights and surrounded by
guards with guns, Kiyota refused to sign what's
been called the Loyalty Oath.
The Oath required that Kiyota promise
to take up arms against Japan.
Because I was educated in part in Japan,
I knew that I could not take up arms
to kill person with whom I have studied.
Now, if I were in Japan and I got stranded there
and the world began, I would never take arms to
kill my American friends.
In 1943, Kiyota situation went from bad
to worse.
The FBI accused him of belonging to a reactionary organization.
The organization was his high school kendo club.
Afterward, they moved him to a different type of camp,
one earmarked for Japanese labeled "disloyal"
and "dangerous."
And that was a horrible place, you know.
At the new segregation camp, Kiyota lived in fear.
He says other detainees beat him up and a guard shot at him.
In addition, he says he witnessed abusive treatment
of other internees.
They were dragged like an animal,
putting to a pen, and you know what?
The agents, the security agents, they hit the guy on the
head with a baseball bat.
At this point, Kiyota made what he later called
a stupid mistake.
In 1944, Congress passed legislation allowing US citizens
to renounce their citizenship.
In anger at the injustice of his incarceration,
Kiyota signed away his American citizenship.
Kiyota wasn't released from the segregation camp
until six months after the end of the war.
It took almost another ten years to win back his citizenship.
In the meantime, he earned an undergraduate degree
in the United States, followed by a master's and doctorate
in Buddhist philosophy in Japan.
He moved to Madison to teach at the university in 1962.
He says the study of Buddhism helped him put his past
into perspective.
That was a more important phase of life,
rather than choosing sides on loyalty or disloyalty.
Because war is nothing but an extension of state power.
What is most important is to enable the individual
to realize personal growth.
That is the essence of Kendo.
Kiyota enjoyed the benefits of Kendo as a child in Japan
and during every one of his twelve years in college.
I constantly attend both the judo and kendo gym.
So much so that I sometimes wonder how the
hell did I get my PhD?
Since beginning his teaching career,
Kiyota has published and lectured on both
Buddhism and Kendo.
In the United States and in Japan, he has dedicated his life
to creating understanding across cultures and
across generations.
Kendo has served as the key.
Finally tonight, it's the end of the road
for another dog track in Wisconsin.
Geneva Lakes Greyhound Track in Deleven ran its last
live race November 6th.
That leaves hundreds of dogs out of a job and in need of homes.
Puerto Rico Freiberg reports on the effort to
find adoptive families for the Greyhounds.
"Here come fucking and they're off."
Geneva Lakes Greyhound Track has had a 15-year ride
but attendance has declined steadily over the years.
Declining interest in dogs is blamed on increasing interest
in Indian casinos in Wisconsin.
Casinos that opened soon after dog tracks got their start
in the early 90s.
Now four out of the states, five dog tracks have closed down.
"And so here we are today with 17 casinos competing against us.
We've all made major investments and we're gone.
There's only one left."
It's estimated about 15 trainers of the roughly 250 people
who worked at Geneva Lakes will go to Kenosha to Wisconsin's
last operating track, Dairyland Greyhound Park.
"I just can't get away from the dog so I'm heading to Kenosha."
A small number of race dogs will also find work at other tracks
but because these dogs are considered minor league racers,
most will not.
That leaves hundreds of Greyhounds
looking for homes.
That's got Pam Neemeth working the phone.
"She goes out with a small group of other dogs."
As Greyhound adoption director at the track,
Neemeth is trying to connect dogs with
potential adoptive owners.
The requirements, people who want a Greyhound
and can care for one.
"I don't want people just thinking or wanting to adopt
because they want to rescue a dog or that type of thing.
Nothing bad is going to happen to the dogs.
Everybody's going to get adopted.
But I don't want people just making a snap decision
where I'm going to rescue a dog and save a dog
and then in two months they're tired of the dog."
"And down the strip they come and it's bed, rocket spread."
The track has signed an agreement with the state
that it will house and care for the dogs until they are adopted.
The dogs will not be put down.
"In that agreement the track has said that
they will keep the dogs here until they're all
placed safely through adoption agencies.
So I think those adoptions will be checked out by our department
and we'll make sure that they're going on properly."
Ten-year-old Louis came to find a dog to take home.
"I like Greyhounds because they're fast
and they're pretty."
But what's a former race dog like as a house pet?
Pam Nemeth knows firsthand.
She has three adopted race Greyhounds at home.
"A lot of people say they're really cat-like.
They'll take a couple of laps in the yard, toss the
toy around a little bit and then they need a six
or eight hour nap, really."
Many of them are even friendly living with cats
and in this case, ferrets.
But before the Greyhounds are adopted out,
they are tested to see if they can be around other pets
and otherwise they're acclimated to family life.
Tought how to climb stairs, for example.
Greyhounds that will chase cats or aren't good with other dogs
will go to homes where there aren't any other pets.
"What happens if they can't be adopted?"
"No dog is unadoptable."
For the most part, the dogs are described as eager to please
and hungry for attention after a life of kennels and racing.
And if these dogs are any indication,
they're going to have to go back way into the
creature comforts of home.
As one trainer put it, when their racing days are over,
Greyhounds are 45 mile an hour couch potatoes.
"I'm tired, I was on the yard for a while."
The Department of Administration says when the other dog tracks
closed in Wisconsin, most of the Greyhounds transferred
to other tracks in the state.
State law requires the dogs to go to a track, a farm,
back to the owner, or an adoption program.
You can find more information about adopting Greyhounds
by visiting our website at www.wpt.org/inwisconsin.
Geneva Lakes is expected to remain open until
the end of the year for simulcast races.
Its kennels will also stay open to house the
dogs awaiting adoption.
We leave you now to enjoy a little nostalgia on the
state's first designated rustic road.
It's in Taylor County.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
See you next time.
[Music]
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people of
Alliance Energy, who bring safe, reliable, and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods,
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliance Energy, offering energy-saving ideas on the web.
UW Health, providing specialty and primary care for all
ages throughout Wisconsin.
Information on UW Health Physicians and Clinics
and on University of Wisconsin Hospital is
available on the web.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, providing
the people of Wisconsin with the knowledge and
skills they'll need for the economy of tomorrow.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, Communities First.
[Music]