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The Meth Monster

Combatting the homemade drug methamphetamine is proving to be a difficult and costly job for law enforcement agencies in many states.

Bill Hardin, drug director in the Arkansas governor's office, doesn't mince words. "We're in an epidemic condition with this," he says. "It's devastating local law enforcement budgets." Hardin isn't referring to heroin or cocaine or marijuana. The main drug of choice these days in Arkansas is methamphetamine.

The manufacture and use of "meth" or "crank," as the synthetic drug is known on the street, has skyrocketed in Arkansas during the past five years. In 1994, law enforcement officers there got about 25 reports about the existence of methamphetamine labs where people "cook" the drug. In 1997, there were 444 such reports. By mid-November of last year, more than 500. "It is our main criminal activity in Arkansas at this time," Hardin says.

The problem is hardly confined to Arkansas. Since meth first came on the scene in California more than a decade ago, it has been spreading inexorably eastward. Prior to 1997, Illinois had no record of meth lab seizures; there weren't enough to warrant keeping track. Since then, however, the state has taken action against more than 100. Missouri state police raided 524 clandestine labs between January and October of last year. "We're second only to California," says Tom Taylor, a lieutenant with the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

While the drug is not yet commonly found in the East, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy sees indications that it's headed that way. Realizing that they are facing a drug trade with dangers like no other, many states are strengthening laws and lengthening punishments in order to fight back.

Although a pure form of meth comes from Mexico, users don't have to wait on a foreign connection. Anyone with a recipe, which is not difficult to find on the Internet, can produce it. "It's like making a cake," says Walter Allen III, special agent in charge at the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement in California's Department of Justice. "It's really simple." For less than $100, a manufacturer can produce about $2,000 worth of meth.

Meth is concocted from a variety of legal ingredients that are easy to obtain, including battery acid, drain cleaner, lye, lantern fuel, antifreeze, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, ethyl ether or red phosphorus, which can be found in matchstick tips. The high comes from the essential ingredient, ephedrine, a substance that can be extracted from over-the-counter cold medicines.

Another key component is typically found on Midwestern farms. Meth makers have been caught sneaking up to the nozzles on large tanks that hold anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer, to transfer the chemical into small butane bottles or emptied fire extinguishers. If done carelessly, the hazardous substance can spill or the tank can blow up, releasing deadly fumes.

Usually meth is cooked up crudely in kitchens, garages, motels, trailers or trucks, generally somewhere out in the sticks. In more densely populated places, meth makers are at much greater risk of being discovered because the cooking process has a strong and awful smell, similar to cat urine or nail polish remover.

All of these factors have facilitated meth manufacturing and use throughout rural areas that don't typically get bowled over by "urban" drugs. Crack cocaine can, of course, be found in a few pockets in Little Rock. But methamphetamine has spread to 75 counties in Arkansas.

For law enforcement, it's trouble from start to finish. Not surprisingly, meth labs are much easier for manufacturers to set up than they are for state officials to close down. In fact, cleaning up a lab is similar to responding to a hazardous chemical spill.

Each pound of meth generates five to six pounds of toxic waste. State workers need training and equipment to do a proper clean-up. And they must find a place to dispose of the hazardous materials. It usually costs from $5,000 to $10,000 each time, but there have been much more expensive clean-ups, too. Although that money comes from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, state crime lab personnel do the work. They're the same people who must also respond to homicides, rapes and other serious crimes.

With some 500 meth labs uncovered last year in Arkansas, "it's completely overwhelmed the state crime lab," says Hardin. Because the state is short of money and manpower to attack the problem, it has turned for help to the 20 local drug task forces made up of local law enforcement personnel. Still, it's not enough.

The Midwest is now experiencing what California has been dealing with since the late 1980s, when meth manufacture and use started to proliferate with outlaw biker gangs. "Southern California is basically known as the meth capital of the world," Allen says. "The jailhouse recipe has flourished to the point where everyone and his mother makes it."

Of the more than 3,200 labs found nationwide in 1998, 55 percent were in California. Of those, 71 percent were in the four Southern California counties of Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino. "In the last seven years, it has almost gotten out of hand," Allen says.

States are trying to clamp down on its spread by tightening laws and toughening penalties, educating the public about the dangers, training social workers, educators and other professionals to identify users, and expanding treatment availability.

On the surface, some laws can seem odd. In California, no matter how bad their sniffles or congestion, residents cannot readily stock up on certain types of cold medicine. Governor Gray Davis signed a statewide measure last fall that limits the amount of these drugs that can be purchased to two packages per buyer per day.

Law enforcement officers know it won't stop the lawbreakers but it is likely to slow them down. "We're able to ride herd on individuals who buy bulk quantities of cold medicine, so we won't have the typical Beavis and Butt-Head labs popping up in communities," says Allen. Although pleased with the passage of the cold medicine law, he would like to see the state pass much stiffer punishments for meth cookers. "I'd like to see all these people get hammered for all the devastation they create," he adds.

Arkansas has been cracking down with harsher penalties. Last year, the state not only made possessing the ingredients for meth with the intent to "manufacture" the drug a felony, it also required that a person convicted for the offense must serve at least 70 percent of his sentence. The 70-percent rule was created for crimes such as murder, rape and aggravated robbery. Meth is the only drug that falls under the requirement.

Other provisions prohibit possession of anhydrous ammonia in containers that don't comply with federal regulations and authorize Arkansas counties to form multi-jurisdictional drug enforcement groups with county agencies in neighboring states. "We can move freely across state lines, just as freely as the drug manufacturers do," says Hardin. Arkansas also is directing federal money for the next two years to train drug task force officers and provide symposiums around the state on methamphetamine use.

States without stringent laws have found that when adjoining states crack down, meth manufacturers scurry like rats across state lines. When Missouri got tough in 1998, passing laws enabling officers to make more meth arrests, meth makers near state borders moved into Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Last year, in response, Illinois increased prison time for manufacturing, delivering or possessing meth with intent to distribute it. The state also made it a misdemeanor to tamper with anhydrous ammonia equipment, containers or storage facilities.

Although the increasing number of meth lab seizures makes it seem as though the problem has been getting worse and worse, it may be that the problem has been bad for quite awhile but states did not recognize it. If a state finds 10 labs one year and 50 labs the next, it doesn't necessarily mean the problem has gotten five times worse, explains Missouri's Taylor. "They were probably out there before, but since we weren't focusing on them we didn't find them," he says.

In addition to dealing with the labs, states also must grapple with the consequences of thousands of people who are hooked on meth. Used predominantly by white teens and young adults, meth is known as the "poor man's cocaine" since it is more accessible and less expensive than cocaine. Sold in pill, capsule, powder or chunk form, meth can be smoked, snorted, injected or swallowed and provides a longer-lasting high than other drugs.

Because meth alleviates fatigue and produces feelings of mental alertness, some people use it to work longer hours. It's also popular among women, who take it as an appetite suppressant.

Meth is the most addictive of all drugs. Users get a rush when they take it but quickly develop a tolerance. Then they have to up the ante, taking more for it to work. The stimulation from meth leads to sleep difficulty and psychological problems for users. Nerve endings die, creating sensations like bugs crawling under the skin. Users can become violent or paranoid and commit serious crimes.

Yet in a five-city study of meth users, only 28 percent ever tried to get treatment for their addiction. Most said they didn't bother because they perceived that they had control over their drug use. "We're only beginning to see the impact of the meth monster," says Hardin. "What in the world are we going to do with all these people?"

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