Columbia House knows a lot about marketing. The music distribution club ships 44 million orders and a lot of marketing material to more than 17 million members annually.

But the company hadn't always stressed its corporate culture to its own employees. That was, until the mid-1990s, when methamphetamine use in the Wabash Valley became more epidemic than isolated.

It was then the company made known its intolerance of drugs of any kind in its pre-hiring screening and in its incident-based testing after hiring.

"Years ago, we cracked down," said John Habets, vice president of human resources for Columbia House. "I'd never heard of [meth] until '95."

Today, incidents with meth among the company's 1,000 workers are rare, Habets said, involving one or two employees per year. And testing positive for methamphetamine and other drugs during the pre-hiring screen also is rare, less than 1 percent of applicants.

"It's really an exception," Habets said.

As with Columbia House, other companies in the Wabash Valley say they see meth as a potential hazard, but are not yet seeing the impact of the drug on their companies' finances, safety or productivity.

"We've got our eyes open, but we haven't had a problem with it," said Alcan Plant Manager Chris Koszewski of the plant's 210 employees. "It's a concern [for us] because it's a social concern for our community."

As with most manufacturers, Alcan has a counseling program supported by the company, and its union provides one as well. When problems arise, Koszewski said, alcohol abuse, rather than drugs, tends to be responsible.

Habets also said alcohol has been responsible for bad performance when problems occur. In some of those cases, employees found to be intoxicated also have tested positive for methamphetamine, Habets said.

Vigo County Drug Task Force Detective Greg Ferency said as many as half of meth users are unemployed.

"The worse the habit, the less likely they'll be employed," Ferency said.

And although white male, blue collar workers on long night shifts or swing shifts are attracted to meth's days-long energy streak, Ferency said, the drug is used by people at every point on the race and employment spectrum, including nurses, executives and emergency workers.

Carroll Vasbinder, administrative director at Discover Recovery, said he has assessed people of every kind at the treatment center since it opened in Terre Haute seven years ago. Since then, he has seen about 1,600 clients, as many as 60 percent of whom were meth users.

Addiction to meth progresses more quickly than with alcohol or marijuana, Vasbinder said. And it is popular among users age 25-40, he said.

"Once they become addicted, it can begin to affect their work in a month to six weeks," Vasbinder estimated. "They are very hyper. They may be very good workers."

Meth users can stay high, or "tweaking," for days at a time, without sleeping or eating. But once the high wears off, they crash for days at a time. Absenteeism is a concern for some companies in Edgar County, Ill., that have experienced problems in the work force, said Chris Patrick, owner of Zimmerly Ready Mix concrete company in Paris, and a board member of the Paris Economic Development Co., or PEDCO.

"It's an attendance issue," Patrick said. "It makes them great workers for a couple days and then they're gone a couple days."

Construction companies Patrick works with do random drug testing and still are seeing more marijuana use than anything, he said.

"I haven't seen the signs of [meth] being at the epidemic stage yet," he said.

Bill Treash, president of the Wabash Valley Central Labor Council, said companies have enacted more thorough drug-screening policies since the meth problem became apparent here.

"I think it's a concern for all the industrial and building trades," Treash said. "Ten years ago, we didn't know anything about meth labs."

Among the 635 employees at Applied Extrusion Technologies, the prospect of methamphetamine outpacing alcohol as the primary drug concern is still unclear, said Ken Baker, head of human resources at AET.

"I'm not saying we don't have drugs in our workplace, because we're in society," Baker said.

Employees who test positive for any drug have the option of rehabilitation, Baker said. But many times, workers will deny they need treatment.

"It's not usual that they will acknowledge they have a problem and take the rehabilitation seriously," Baker said. "We've been disappointed that it hasn't been more successful."

At Eli Lilly and Co.'s Clinton Laboratories, drug problems and all other life problems can be addressed through a confidential, toll-free hotline for employees. Lilly gets a report on the number of calls to the line, but no other details, said Dean Cooke, head of human resources at the Clinton plant.

And while the number of meth lab busts and arrests makes employers aware of the meth problem, all the executives who contributed to this story say the downward spiral that inevitably results from meth addiction isn't yet plaguing the Valley's factories and offices.

Meth use, they say, is still a hazy problem - unquestionably present, but not yet apparent.

"It's out there," Cooke said. "[But] we've not felt the impact."