Pubdate: Fri, 13 Jul 2001
Source: Fresno Bee, The (CA)
Copyright: 2001 The Fresno Bee
Contact:  http://www.fresnobee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/161
Author: David Whitney
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

STATE OCCUPIES METH EPICENTER

80% to 85% of total meth supply comes from California, Congress is told.

WASHINGTON -- Methamphetamine production is so rampant in California 
that the street price of the highly addictive stimulant is running at 
25% of the national average, and dealers are marketing packets of the 
drug to elementary school students for as little as $5 and $10, 
witnesses said at a House hearing Thursday.

"California is completely flooded with methamphetamine," Ron Brooks, 
chairman of the National Narcotic Officers Associations Coalition, 
told the House Government Reform Committee's drug policy panel. "It 
is cheap. We're seeing it in junior high schools and upper grade 
schools."

The grim national assessment of the drug's spread targeted California 
as the chief production epicenter.

Even $10 worth of meth can produce a powerful high, said Fresno 
County Sheriff's Department Sgt. Rick Pursell.

"The price has gone way down," he said. "It used to cost a couple 
thousand for an ounce. Now, you can get an ounce for about $350."

Joseph D. Keefe, chief of operations for the Drug Enforcement 
Administration, said that between 80% and 85% of the drug's total 
production comes from California "super labs" operated by tightly 
knit Mexican drug trafficking cartels.

Methamphetamine, though illegal, is distilled from commonly available 
chemicals used in agriculture and nonprescription drugs. That makes 
it easy to produce the drug, although the byproducts are dangerous 
and toxic, and typically illegally dumped.

The drug sells nationally for about $100 a gram, but its abundance in 
California has pushed prices down to as little as $20 a gram.

Methamphetamine is cheaper in the Valley because it is produced 
locally, but meth producers have been leaving the Valley for greener 
pastures. A price around the Valley can range between $5,000 and 
$7,000 per pound, but on the East Coast the pound price is about 
$20,000.

"We are starting to displace some of these organizations and groups 
into Northern California and they are starting to impact Oregon and 
Washington," said Robert Pennal, special agent supervisor for the 
state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement and commander of the Fresno 
Methamphetamine Task Force. "We still have a serious problem because 
we are processing so many hazardous dump sites, a direct indicator of 
large-scale meth activity."

Pennal said his agency has closed fewer meth labs this year than last 
year because the cartels have moved away. "They are also getting 
better and better at hiding these things," Pennal said. "The more we 
take them off, the more they learn about us, and they are constantly 
changing things."

It takes little money to produce a serious high from methamphetamine.

"Twenty dollars can buy enough to stay high all day," said Henry 
Serrano, police chief in Citrus Heights, a Sacramento suburb.

Serrano said Sacramento County has the highest rate of 
methamphetamine-related hospitalizations in the state.

Citrus Heights also has one of the most aggressive programs in the 
country to combat drug use, and Rep. Doug Ose, a Sacramento 
Republican who sits on the House panel, cited it as one of the few 
encouraging developments in the escalating battle against the drug.

Serrano said the program involves training police to better recognize 
people who are high on drugs, collaborating with the psychiatry 
department at University of California at Davis on an effective drug 
education program, getting drug education materials to users, and 
instituting measures to protect children and elderly people living 
with drug-addicted caretakers.

Serrano said that the most effective preventative tool Citrus Heights 
has found so far is to show young students "before and after" 
pictures of addicts, who typically age quickly, are gaunt and suffer 
disfiguring dental and skin problems.

Said Pennal: "It is such a powerful central nervous system stimulant 
that it's very difficult to have someone who goes into treatment get 
off the drug the first time."

Brooks said that he has been disturbed by the number of children 
caught in the methamphetamine crisis. He said 795 children were found 
inside labs raided in 1999, and 647 children were found last year.

In 1997, a California congressional delegation obtained $18.2 million 
for a two-year federal law enforcement program to combat 
methamphetamine production, boosting total spending to fight the 
drug's production to more than $150 million a year.

So deep is the concern in Congress about the spread of the drug that 
more than 60 members have formed a House caucus to address 
methamphetamine enforcement and prevention funding issues.

The scope of the meth problem was detailed in an 18-page special 
section published last year in The Bee newspapers in Fresno, 
Sacramento and Modesto. Ose added the report to the House hearing 
record Thursday.
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MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe