Granite Falls scrutinized as 'methtown'

GRANITE FALLS — The town is busy planning its centennial celebration, the tiny police force just moved into new digs, and a four-block stretch of the main drag is about to be torn up.

But this isn't what has residents of "the gateway to the Mountain Loop Highway" buzzing from City Hall to the Red Apple Market. Tongues are wagging — and a few fingers are being pointed — over a recent Rolling Stone magazine article that focused much of its examination of the national methamphetamine problem on Granite Falls.

The author, Paul Solotaroff, is blunt about what he found when he visited Snohomish County in September and spent much of his time learning about methamphetamine use in Granite Falls.

"When we speak of the drug plagues of the last half-century — heroin, the poisoner of postwar Harlem; crack, the deathblow to countless downtowns — what comes to mind first is the chaos they've wrought, the derangement of public and private life," Solotaroff wrote.

"Now those rules are void; meth has rewritten the book. As the first epidemic born on our soil, it is seeding the ground for future plagues while confounding cops and drug czars."

Much of the article centers on Granite Falls, although it points out the focus could well have been on any number of communities throughout the country that are struggling with meth. And meth busts in Snohomish County last year trailed those in King and Pierce counties.

Still, this city of 2,764 is where Solotaroff chose to spend much of his time, doing such things as accompanying Police Chief Chuck Allen and a dozen other cops on drug raids.

He writes that the city has been dubbed "methtown" or "cranktown," the latter referring to a common nickname for methamphetamine.

"In the five years since methamphetamine entrenched itself in this former logging town north of Seattle, Allen's work life has consisted of responding to one outrage after another, each more numbing than the last," the article explained.

"Like no drug before it — not crack, coke, Ecstasy or smack — meth has so swamped this rural community that it has largely come to define it."

The article comes to a somewhat-laudatory conclusion about the community.

"When a town is confronted by a social ill, it usually conducts itself in one of two ways," Solotaroff wrote. "Paralyzed by shame, it denies the problem until the moment to effectively act is lost, or it comes together with candor and grace to meet the crisis head-on. After a timid start, Granite Falls did the latter, shucking its down-home modesty to admit it was swamped by drugs."

The question now, of course, is what effect the national attention will have on Granite Falls.

If nothing else, it's inspired a meeting tonight to discuss the Rolling Stone article and methamphetamine. When a similar meeting was held in November with a national anti-drug speaker, Milton Creagh, more than 400 parents and students showed up.

Beyond that, reactions to the fresh scrutiny are mixed.

"It was no surprise, really," Allen said. "I thought Paul did a good job of laying out the problem just the way he said he would."

As far as responses, Allen said there have been few from the city itself.

"There's been lots of media response," he said, including discussions on talk radio and visits by TV crews, but little from citizens.

Allen said he did wonder if the article was a little overstated, noting none of the accompanying photographs of drug busts were taken in Granite Falls; all the photographed arrests occurred in places such as Arlington and Monroe.

"The whole town certainly isn't using meth," Allen said.

That view is seconded by Pat Slack, commander of the Snohomish Regional Drug Task Force.

"Yeah, it's here," he said of meth use in Granite Falls. "It's not the meth capital."

Slack said he hasn't read the Rolling Stone article and doesn't intend to.

"I don't direct my manpower by what's written in an article," he said. "To be polite, this thing has been blown all out of proportion."

Granite Falls Mayor Floyd "Butch" DeRosia also said he thought the article was good but that some of the implications were troubling.

DeRosia said he, too, was bothered by the photographs, which seemed to show drug activity in Granite Falls, yet actually were taken elsewhere. And of the 91 meth busts in Snohomish County last year, he said, just one took place inside Granite Falls.

He notes that much of the area's meth problem comes from territory outside the city that is in unincorporated Snohomish County and is essentially unpatrolled because of its vast size.

Still, he noted, "we're the last place on the road, and it all comes down here," as meth producers come into the town from labs being run farther east on the Mountain Loop Highway.

DeRosia stressed the community's extensive anti-meth actions, including forming the Granite Falls Community Coalition and distributing information such as guides to detecting meth use.

"We're the community that's doing something about it," he said, echoing the article.

To Bridgette Perrigoue, a school psychologist who's quoted in the Rolling Stone article, the report has strengths and weaknesses.

"I thought Paul did a really good job of getting across this is a societal problem," said Perrigoue. "People are becoming educated, I guess."

But she wonders about the effect of the story.

"I hate to see people hanging their heads," she said, since the city and school district have taken extensive steps to battle meth use.

"I don't think it made some members of our school staff very happy, or parents in our community," said Perrigoue, since much of the article discussed meth use in the high school.

At the Granite Falls Red Apple Market, Mike Trask, who's owned the business for four years, said he's taken items that could be used to make meth off the shelves, partly as a response to the story.

"Well, I thought the article portrayed it pretty well," he said. "A lot of people thought it really downgraded the town, but I didn't think that."

Starr Irvin, a Red Apple checker, said she asked her daughter, Cassie, a Granite Falls High student, about the story.

"I asked her if she'd heard anything about meth labs, and she said no," Irvin said. "She hadn't been approached to buy meth or anything. It's a good city. It has a lot of good things. It's a good community."

Peyton Whitely: 206-464-2259 or pwhitely@seattletimes.com.