Carol Gutchewsky, a social worker in western Iowa, studied ongoing child welfare cases in the Iowa Department of Human Services' (DHS) Council Bluffs Service Delivery Area, were many social workers were actually reporting an increase in child abuse cases involving known meth use.

The official state figures are lower than Gutchewsky's, because the state includes only the manufacturing or possession of meth in the presence of a child or the presence of the drug in the child's system, while the Gutchewsky's study also counted parents who were arrested for meth use and had positive drug tests.

"When looked at strictly categorically, the (state) abuse findings can minimize the extent of drug involvement," wrote Gutchewsky in her study. "There's lots of drug activity hidden behind or within all of Iowa's categories of child abuse."

After six months of enforcement of a new law restricting the sale of pseudoephedrine, the number of meth lab busts reduced by over 80 percent, said Dale Woolery, a spokesman for the Governor's Office of Drug Control Policy.

"I think you have to conclude that the efforts by legislators last spring to make it more difficult to have homegrown shops... while beneficial, has not significantly slowed the supply of this drug," said Roger Munns, a spokesman for the DHS.

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