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Seventy-three days without methamphetamine.

The accomplishment drives a pilot program outside Camarillo that leaders say could begin to fill Ventura County's need for a residential treatment program to help teens addicted to meth and other substances.

Launched earlier this year at the Casa Pacifica center for abused and neglected kids, the treatment includes counseling on what makes users use, peer pressure to stay clean and random drug tests for 16 youths already at the center.

One of the clients, a teenage girl, had been using methamphetamine every day for 2 1/2 years. Now she's been clean for more than two months.

"Meth is highly addictive," said Vicki Edwards, the program's leader, claiming the drug carries a more powerful hold than cocaine. "Here this girl, she even had a hospitalization because so many other things were beginning to surface for her, and still she did not use."

The pilot program is designed to serve as a model for a center that would become the only inpatient treatment center for children in Ventura County. At first, the focus would be on people already at the center, but it would eventually be open to outside clients as well.

The need for such programs is huge, said Kathy Back, who works at the county's juvenile justice center planning programs like aftercare treatment for youths trying to stay clean.

"For deep-end kids who need everyday contact, there's nothing that meets their needs," she said. "We're just losing kids because we don't have the proper interventions for them."

Casa Pacifica has already been rejected for a federal grant that would have provided $1 million over five years. Officials are talking with county leaders about the possibility of partnerships and are looking for outside funding resources. They worry a program with barely enough money to open might not be much better than no treatment at all.

Meth use among adolescents is hard to measure, but in the 2006 California Healthy Kids Survey, about 5 percent of high school freshmen in Ventura County public schools said they had tried the drug. That rose to about 7 percent for juniors.

Last year, about 321 youths were treated for drug and alcohol abuse in county outpatient centers. About 12 percent said methamphetamine is their drug of choice. County officials say they're working on bringing more meth prevention programs into schools.

"Treatment providers pull people out of the river after they fall in," said county drug and alcohol program manager Patrick Zarate. "We're trying to keep them from falling in in the first place."

Several county agencies are working on a sober classroom project that could be started as soon as June. Counseling and other treatment would be added to the curriculum of a county school for about 25 kids, addicted to meth and other substances, who are already in the juvenile court system.

"If you're privately insured you can probably find things," Back said. "We're really concerned about the kids that don't have that."