By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
Methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant that for years was a concern in a few Western states, now is being made nationwide in clandestine labs that are creating environmental hazards and other problems in residential areas.
California, where methamphetamine first became popular as a recreational drug in the late 1980s, continues to be the state hit hardest by “meth,” or “speed.” In the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, authorities raided 1,262 meth labs in California, more than double the total from the same period seven years earlier.
Now, authorities are finding meth labs in new places: neighborhoods throughout the Midwest and the East, where labs packed with the toxic chemicals used to make the drug have been found in apartment buildings, duplexes and abandoned buses. In Tennessee, two siblings recently set up a lab in their grandmother’s retirement-home apartment while she was in the hospital.
“It looks almost like a wildfire moving east,” says Dan Salter, an agent at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s training academy in Quantico, Va. Salter teaches law enforcement officers how to recognize and shut down meth labs, which can emit harmful fumes and must be dismantled carefully to avoid chemical explosions.
Since the mid-1990s, meth has become particularly popular among young adults and teenagers seeking cheaper alternatives to cocaine, heroin and marijuana. Those drugs usually have attracted more attention from law enforcement.
Meth costs $5 to $15 a dose. It can be made into a pill, a liquid that can be injected, a powder that can be snorted or a clumpy or rock-like crystal whose fumes can be inhaled. It is a mix of chemicals found in household products and fertilizers, and in over-the-counter medicines.
Methamphetamine’s move east has been driven in part, authorities say, by the availability of recipes on Web sites that describe ways to cook chemicals to make the drug.
Missouri, because of its central location and rural landscape where labs can be hidden easily, has become the second front in what officials describe as an explosion of meth use across America.
In fiscal 2002, local police and U.S. agents shut down 1,039 labs in Missouri, 321 in Illinois, 89 in Florida and 85 in Georgia. Seven years earlier, officials had reported finding 29 labs in Missouri and two each in Illinois, Florida and Georgia.
Meth has left a trail of addiction in many areas and has led some officials to take action:
Oklahoma City officials have created an “endangered children’s” program that gives medical care and other help to kids who are found living in homes that have been turned into meth labs by their addicted parents. Continued exposure to toxic fumes from such labs can cause fatal burns to the lungs, damage the liver and spleen, and lead to learning disabilities, health specialists say.
Last year, Oklahoma City officials put 23 children who were found in meth labs into protective custody at a center for abused children. Twenty-two tested positive for exposure to toxic chemicals.
In Cookeville, Tenn., about 80 miles east of Nashville, the City Council last month passed an ordinance that bans drug stores from selling a customer more than 100 tablets of the decongestant pseudoephedrine, a common ingredient in meth recipes. The law also requires businesses to keep non-prescription forms of pseudoephedrine behind the counter or within 6 feet of the cash register, and it requires purchasers to sign a register.
“The methamphetamine problem here is terrible,” says Ricky Shelton, a Cookeville council member who proposed the measure. “There are children in foster care, people dying, chemicals in the environment.”
He said 54 children in a four-county area that includes Cookeville have been put in foster care during the past two years because their parents were caught cooking meth in their homes.
Georgia has imposed similar limits on pseudoephedrine purchases. Several cities across the nation are considering such laws.
Illinois, which borders Missouri but has had fewer problems with methamphetamine, has begun issuing bulletins to farmers and fertilizer suppliers urging them to guard anhydrous ammonia. The chemical compound is used mostly as a fertilizer but also is a key ingredient in meth.
Illegal drug makers in Illinois and elsewhere have stolen anhydrous ammonia, which is stored as a liquid in pressurized tanks but becomes a toxic gas when released. Inhaling the ammonia can cause fatal damage to the lungs, says Bob Aherin, an agricultural safety professor at the University of Illinois.
“Drug users trying to make meth can be a danger to themselves and others,” Aherin says. When they break a hose or a valve while trying to siphon the liquid, he says, anyone downwind can be harmed if the chemical is released.
Two years ago, Indiana’s Legislature made it a felony to dump waste from controlled substances, largely because of concerns about pollution from these meth labs.
Chemicals from labs have been dumped in streams and in wooded areas, where the chemicals have seeped into the soil and contaminated water sources.
Meth cooks, trying to avoid cops, often leave behind harmful chemicals or residue. A meth producer might check into a motel, cook a batch and leave the next day, the DEA’s Salter says. “Then someone (else) checks in, and the kids crawl on the carpet and get burned from the chemicals.”
Easy to get, simple to make
Methamphetamine stimulates the central nervous system. After feeling an initial rush and a sense of well-being, people on meth may be hyperactive, lose their appetites and be unable to sleep. The effects can last up to eight hours.
The drug is simple to make, requiring easy-to-get ingredients and rudimentary chemistry. When police find a meth lab, they don chemical suits and gas masks to protect themselves from fumes.
DEA officials estimate that for each pound of meth produced, a lab operator winds up with 6 pounds of toxic waste, including leftover chemicals such as anhydrous ammonia and lye, and solid meth residue.
Cleaning up a lab costs an average of $3,280, the DEA says. It usually involves removing debris, testing soil and neutralizing chemicals. Larger labs have cost up to $100,000 to shut down. Most of the money goes to local cleanup companies through federal grants. Cleaning up meth labs cost the U.S. government about $24 million in 2002, the DEA says.
In fiscal 2002, the DEA reported more than 9,000 lab raids, up from just more than 800 in 1995.
“Methamphetamine is on a bigger scale than ever before,” says Sheriff Lane Carter of Moore County in central North Carolina, which recently increased its narcotics unit from two to five people because of the local meth problem. “It’s cheap to make. It doesn’t have to be transported across the (U.S.) border.”
Meth began popping up in North Carolina about two years ago, officials there say. Last year, 34 labs were found in the state.
This year, “we’re at a pace that will double” that, says Dave Gaddis, the DEA’s assistant special agent in charge for North Carolina. “It started in the western part of the state, and it’s migrating east.”
Some clever, some desperate
This summer, signs of the rising demand for meth have been particularly evident in Tennessee.
Within 48 hours last month, authorities in rural Anderson County, about 30 miles north of Knoxville, shut down three labs. The third bust was the county’s 22nd of the year. Through June 3, Tennessee officials had shut down 305 labs. In all of last year, there were 387 lab raids in Tennessee.
The Anderson County busts, in which four people were arrested on drug charges, reflected the various methods some clever, some desperate that lab operators use. Many operators, authorities say, are addicts who make and sell the drug to feed their habits.
One of the cases involved a local retirement home, where two grandchildren of a resident set up a lab while she was in the hospital. The woman’s neighbors knew about the lab but were too terrified to report it, Chief Deputy Sheriff Lewis Ridenour says.
In another case, a suspect allegedly ran a lab from his car’s trunk. Deputies closed a road for 17 hours while the chemicals were removed. Another bust occurred in a duplex near eight other homes.
“It’s a huge health hazard,” Ridenour says. Labs “can explode. A child, or anyone, can come in contact with toxic materials.”
While law enforcement officers raid labs, anti-drug groups and government officials taken aback by meth’s impact are focusing on prevention. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America is testing a campaign in Missouri and Phoenix that warns of the dangers of using meth. In commercials, doctors describe the risks meth can pose to users and their kids.
Illinois lawmakers passed two anti-meth laws in May. One allows judges to double the maximum sentence and fine for those convicted of meth crimes done in the presence of children. The other requires convicted meth makers and users to pay for cleanups.
Because of Illinois’ advisories on ammonia, many fertilizer dealers have built fences and installed motion detectors around their tanks, Aherin says. Some have placed locks on the tanks’ valves.
Officials in Illinois have asked retailers to put medicines containing pseudoephedrine behind the counter and to limit the number of packages per customer. Illinois retailers aren’t required to do so, but “we have found a great willingness from the Wal-Marts and Kmarts and Walgreen’s and 7-Elevens” to cooperate, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan says. “People are beginning to realize how dangerous meth is.”
There has been some opposition to limiting consumers’ access to pseudoephedrine, which is in Sudafed and other popular medicines. In Tennessee, a plan similar to Cookesville’s failed in the Legislature last month. Retail groups have led the resistance.
“I’m not convinced that limiting consumer access is the best way to combat the problem,” says Nancy Bukar of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, which represents makers and suppliers of over-the-counter medicines.
Purchase limits merely inconvenience legitimate consumers, she says, adding that those bent on finding meth ingredients go from store to store collecting packages, a practice authorities call “smurfing.”
Meanwhile, officials are seeing more “ice,” the potent form of meth that resembles rock salt. “It’s akin to crack,” says Mike Furgason, special agent in charge of the DEA’s Atlanta division, which includes Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas. “They are breeding a more addicted customer.”