Pubdate: Sun, 01 Jul 2001
Source: Winston-Salem Journal (NC)
Copyright: 2001 Piedmont Publishing Co. Inc.
Contact:  http://www.journalnow.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/504
Author: Deirdre Fernandes
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

NEW WAVE OF METHAMPHETAMINE USE ROLLS INTO REGION

Many Small Towns Aren't Equipped To Deal With Drug Resurgence

Gordon Jones lived for methampetamine.

If he was awake, he was high. Jones drank, smoked marijuana and 
dropped LSD. But his favorite was methampetamine.

He kept the windows of his apartment covered with aluminum foil so no 
one could see inside. He stored his belongings in a small cooler next 
to his bed in case he had to leave in a hurry.

He watched a friend lose an arm to a bad batch of meth and scanned 
the obituaries to see if any of his friends had died of overdoses.

And yet he continued to use the drug.

"It was cheaper than cocaine and the high was extremely powerful," 
said Jones, 40, adding that he's been off drugs for four years. "It 
was always the drug of choice.

"If I could just barely get by, I was OK," he said. "I was going 
through life planning to be dead young."

If the increasing number of methampetamine labs being discovered by 
investigators is any indication, stories such as Jones' will become 
more common. Methampetamine use has undergone a revival of sorts 
since the mid-1990s, steadily moving east from California through the 
Midwest.

In response, police in states such as Missouri and Michigan began 
heavily cracking down on clandestine labs and have seen the number of 
raids climb past 100 a year.

In North Carolina, the State Bureau of Investigation cleaned up and 
shut down seven methamphetamine labs in 1999, 11 in 2000 and 13 in 
the first six months of this year. Before 1999, the SBI responded to 
perhaps two or three sites a year, a number so low that the agency 
didn't bother to track the statistics.

So far this year, SBI cleanup crews have been summoned to 13 sites 
throughout North Carolina, from Erwin, a textile town in Harnett 
County near the Cape Fear River, to Wilkesboro in the northwestern 
corner of the state. Four labs have been raided in the Triad, three 
of them - including labs in Thomasville, Trinity and High Point - 
within the past 10 days.

"I think it's going to be as popular as it is in the rest of the 
United States," said Ken Razza, the clandestine lab unit coordinator 
for the SBI.

Last Monday, Thomasville police found a small meth lab at 214 Long 
St. in a low-crime neighborhood where elderly residents relax on 
their front stoops in the afternoon.

Authorities believe that for the past several months, Stephen Michael 
Kinney and Darlene Mangum Browning, the residents of the house, have 
been "cooking" meth in their basement and selling it to area 
drug-users a few grams at a time. Warrants have been issued for 
Kinney and Browning, but they had not been arrested as of last night.

That raid came on the same day that a lab was shut down in nearby 
Trinity; both raids came on the heels of another in High Point. 
Investigators believe the three operations were linked.

"I never knew there was one in town," said Capt. Ronnie Phillips, of 
the Thomasville Police Department.

Phillips remembers when crack cocaine first hit the streets of 
Thomasville in 1991 after a similar migration from the West. Now most 
of the drug-related arrests that local officers make are for crack 
cocaine.

"It takes a number of years for any drugs in the West to get to the 
East Coast. People are learning to manufacture (methamphetamine) but 
it is still in the introductory phase," Phillips said.

Thomasville, like many other small towns, is not yet equipped to deal 
with a resurgence of methampetamines. Most officers have only 
received minimal classroom training. Many have not seen firsthand how 
the drug is manufactured, and some were surprised that all the 
equipment at the Long Street meth lab fit in a cardboard box.

Even in larger cities such as Winston-Salem, police departments rely 
on the SBI to close down meth labs because it's one of the few 
agencies with the manpower and the money.

The cost, about $15,000 to clean up the toxic materials in a single 
small lab, could bankrupt some small police departments.

Still, because of the SBI's clandestine lab unit, police in North 
Carolina are better equipped to deal with methampetamines than their 
counterparts in neighboring states.

"We're equipped. We have the support of the agency," Razza said. "In 
comparison to Georgia, Virginia and South Carolina, none of them have 
this. They're working on a regional concept."

Over the years methamphetamine, a synthetic stimulant, has been in 
and out of vogue. It has appealed to a wide variety of groups, and 
developed a lexicon of its own.

Used by both the Allies and the Nazis in World War II to keep troops 
alert, methamphetamine was popular with truck drivers and bikers in 
the 1950s. In the 1960s it spread to hippies, who nicknamed it 
"speed." In the 1970s and 1980s, it moved to more rural areas and was 
referred to as "redneck cocaine." In its most recent resurgence in 
the 1990s, methamphetamines have found a following in young, white 
blue-collar workers.

Whether smoked, injected or snorted, the drug's appeal is simple, 
authorities say. It produces a sense of euphoria for several hours, 
increases the heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature.

It's cheap, easy to make and offers the user a longer high than cocaine.

Studies have found that methamphetamine destroys dopamine, a chemical 
in the brain that helps control movement and emotions. And after 
extended abuse, some addicts showed signs of early and mild 
Parkinson's disease.

"Methamphetamine is one of the most dangerous drugs to the brains," 
said Susan Rook, a former anchor at CNN and a spokeswoman for Step 
One, a drug treatment program in Winston-Salem. "It changes the 
chemical composition of the brain. Even if you don't get hooked, or 
you don't get busted ... you are doing irreparable damage to the 
neuropathways to the brain."

The dangers facing users are equaled by the threat to the community, 
law-enforcement officials say.

More than 20 years ago, meth labs were set up in barns and 
outbuildings in rural areas, said Bob Clark, a special agent with the 
SBI in charge of the Piedmont district. Sophisticated equipment and 
large-scale manufacturers were the norm; large labs needed to be in 
isolated areas because the chemicals used to make methampetamine 
produce a strong odor.

Now, though, meth users are setting up their own labs - called 
kitchen top labs and box labs - in their homes and in their cars. 
Modern-day manufacturers avoid the odor problem by making smaller 
batches of the drug and "cooking" them at night when neighbors are 
asleep, Clark said.

Enabling the growth of these smaller labs is the accessibility of 
methamphetamine ingredients and recipes available on the Internet.

The cost of the drug on the streets is comparable to crack cocaine, 
but $25 worth of meth can keep a person high for about six hours, 
while crack wears off in about 30 minutes, investigators say. With an 
initial investment of about $350, a dealer can cook about an ounce of 
meth and sell it for about $1,500.

"With these smaller operations they can walk into the hardware store, 
or Home Depot, or Lowe's and walk out with what they need," Clark 
said.

Across the country, investigators have also found guns and booby-trap 
bombs after they entered methamphetamine labs because of the paranoia 
the drug inspires.

Most meth cooks aren't well trained, Razza said. Explosions and fires 
are common because of the chemicals are hazardous. For example, if 
red phosphorous - an ingredient in methamphetamine that is found in 
matches - is overheated, it can turn into the more dangerous white 
phosphorous, which is used in military explosives.

Even more worrisome are the effects of increased availability. Some 
substance-abuse counselors fear that it won't be long before 
teen-agers discover methamphetamine as the follow-up to the club drug 
Ecstasy, which is a cross between a hallucinogen and a stimulant.

"What you end up having is dead children walking around," Rook said. 
"With meth it's quickly addictive, highly dangerous and the real 
damage of the stuff is that these kids try it on a lark. When the 
availability of the drug increases, you will see more and more kids 
using the drug."

Though they have evidence of increasing methampetamine use, 
law-enforcement officials may have a hard time keeping pace.

Police don't always realize that they've hit on a meth lab when they 
search a house because they expect a chemistry lab, not simple 
household products, Razza said. And fire officials can't always tell 
if a house fire was caused by a meth experiment because they haven't 
been trained to recognize the signs of a lab, he said.

Undercover cops are having trouble tapping into the methampetamine 
network, detectives in Thomasville said.

Unlike crack cocaine, which is sold openly on the street, 
methamphetamine is distributed among a circle of friends and 
acquaintances. Undercover agents haven't been able to make direct 
contact with distributors and are gathering most of their information 
third-hand from various tips and sources.

The SBI would like to help local police departments by offering 
training seminars, but the money to do so is just not available, 
Razza said. Plans for increased training were drawn up two years ago, 
but the need to spend state money for Hurricane Floyd relief and this 
year's budget crisis have slowed things down, he said.

"If everybody knew what they were doing we would be doing 300 labs a 
year," Razza said.

Later this year, the SBI plans on holding awareness classes across 
the state to educate law enforcement and community leaders about 
methamphetamine, Razza said.

"That way we'll deal with it before it overwhelms us," he said.
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MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe