Pubdate: Sat, 12 May 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Evelyn Nieves
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methemphetamine)

DRUG LABS IN VALLEY HIDEOUTS FEED NATION'S HABIT

MADERA, Calif., May 12 - Along the country roads off Highway 99, it 
is plain to see why the Central Valley calls itself the nation's 
fruit basket. Rising from some of the richest soil in the world, 
disciplined rows of fig and almond trees give way to orange and lemon 
groves, cherry orchards and bushy lettuce and cabbage plants, as far 
as the eye can see.

But hidden away on this soil, in abandoned barns and falling-down 
farmhouses, hundreds, if not thousands, of laboratories are churning 
out illegal methamphetamine, the highly addictive stimulant that 
Barry R. McCaffrey, the former federal drug czar, has called "the 
worst drug that has ever hit America."

As a result, methamphetamine is likely to be one of the biggest 
challenges for President Bush's newly nominated drug czar, John P. 
Walters, and the man Mr. Bush selected to run the Drug Enforcement 
Administration, Representative Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas.

In the last few years, the Central Valley, particularly its 
heartland, has become so inundated with methamphetamine laboratories 
- - many of them run by Mexican crime families - that the Drug 
Enforcement Administration has labeled it a "source nation" for the 
drug. The valley's only competition, federal authorities say, is 
Southeast Asia, which produces and distributes the drug in pill form, 
mainly to Europe. Here the drug is produced as a powder, which users 
snort, inject or even slip into their coffee.

"It's been growing tremendously in the last five or six years," said 
Joe Keefe, chief of operations at the drug agency. "In 1996, we 
looked at methamphetamine trafficking by the Mexican nationals and 
had 60 investigations. In the last couple of months, we had over 
800." The organizations have also expanded their marketing all over 
the country, he said, such that methamphetamine produced in 
California can be bought on the street in Portland, Me.

Other states, particularly Washington, Missouri and Iowa, also have 
significant problems with methamphetamine laboratories, but 97 
percent of the "superlabs" that can be traced to Mexican drug 
operations are in California, law enforcement officials say. The 
state produces 80 percent of the drug found in this country, the 
officials say, 60 percent of it in the pastoral towns of the Central 
Valley stretching from Bakersfield to Sacramento.

Government officials consider methamphetamine the fastest-growing 
illegal drug in this country, in Canada and in parts of Europe, 
feeding an epidemic of addiction that they say rivals that of heroin 
and cocaine over the past few decades.

But the impact is felt acutely here as the clandestine laboratories 
poison the Central Valley's soil with byproducts and tax the combined 
resources of special squads from dozens of law enforcement agencies. 
Officials have also expressed particular concerns about children who 
live in or near the laboratories and are exposed to dangerous fumes.

In the last decade, officials say, methamphetamine production has 
surged in the state as a whole and in the Central Valley in 
particular. In 1999, 261 laboratories were seized in 9 of the 
valley's 17 counties, triple the 73 seized seven years before.

But the cartels, officials say, see the raids simply as the price of 
business. When a laboratory is raided or found accidentally - 
sometimes when the cooks blow up the building they are in - the 
operation simply finds another barn or house.

This makes the operations particularly hard to break, said William 
Ruzzamenti, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration 
and director of the Central Valley High Intensity Drug-Trafficking 
Area program. The Central Valley program, which began in January 
2000, operates four task forces from more than 50 federal, state and 
local law enforcement agencies that comb the valley for the 
laboratories.

They are relentlessly busy. Central Valley's methamphetamine task 
forces and other law enforcement agencies crack five laboratories a 
day in California. The amount they seize is only about a tenth of the 
methamphetamine produced, officials estimate.

The drug cartels out-finance the antidrug efforts many times over. 
The Central Valley task forces, for instance, receive $2.5 million a 
year in federal aid to fight the producers.

"We keep busting them," Mr. Ruzzamenti said. "But they keep setting up shop."

Methamphetamine, widely known as meth, crank and crystal, was once 
produced and sold solely by outlaw motorcycle gangs, drug officials 
say. In the 1960's and 70's, the gangs cooked the product in remote 
outposts in the California desert and distributed it themselves. 
Then, in the early 90's, as crack waned, Mexican crime families, 
primarily from Michoacan, who had been trafficking in cocaine from 
Colombia, discovered that they could make more money by creating 
their own product, which they would not have to smuggle to the United 
States.

In places like San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside and Los Angeles 
Counties, they began setting up the superlabs - those that produce at 
least 10 pounds a day, unlike the smaller, amateur laboratories run 
by drug users.

But aggressive law enforcement efforts began putting a crimp in the 
superlabs, and about four years ago, officials say, the cartels began 
moving operations north to the San Joaquin Valley, the wide-open 
section of the Central Valley.

Law enforcement officials say that shaking the superlab operations is 
particularly hard in the Central Valley because its vast, unpopulated 
stretches and ready access to interstate roads make it easy to hide 
and transport methamphetamine. Also, the valley's chronic 
high-unemployment rate makes recruiting workers, ignorant of the 
deadly risks of producing the drug, as easy as selling lemonade on a 
hot day.

"One of the tragedies of this business is that the crime families 
consider the work force a renewable resource," Mr. Ruzzamenti said. 
"When the workers get too sick from all the chemicals they've been 
ingesting to keep going, they just bring over or recruit others."

Any unassuming building can be a methamphetamine laboratory producing 
up to 100 pounds per 24-hour cooking cycle. Robert Pennal, commander 
of the Fresno Anti-Meth Task Force - which covers three of the most 
active counties, Madera, Fresno and Merced - has learned to look at 
every building in the middle of a field with a suspicious eye.

"They love buildings deep in a field, where they can look out and see 
who's coming," said Mr. Pennal, on a recent tour of Merced County. 
Last year, the task force raided 56 laboratories, 36 in Merced alone. 
And the majority, Mr. Pennal said, were superlabs run by Mexican 
syndicates.

To demonstrate the ordinariness of a superlab, Mr. Pennal drove to 
one his task force raided more than a year ago. The farmer who owns 
the land was unaware of the site until it was raided and was still 
awaiting word from the county health department on when he could tear 
the building down. But when Mr. Pennal pulled up to the property, he 
discovered new trash bags full of the ingredients used to produce 
methamphetamine, from gloves to denatured alcohol to Coleman cooking 
fuel.

The abandoned farmhouse had once again been used to produce the drug, 
perhaps even the day before.

Superlab operators will rent a farmhouse and work on the property for 
as long as a year without the farmer who owns the property even 
realizing it, Mr. Pennal said. The cartels either pay off a farm 
worker to act as a lookout or rent the farm worker's house as a 
laboratory, paying the worker to keep quiet.

Earlier this month, an almond and fig farmer in Madera County 
stumbled onto a laboratory in an abandoned house on his 600-acre 
farm. "I noticed the windows were boarded from the inside, so I just 
went inside," said the farmer, who refused to give his name for fear 
of retaliation from the cartels.

What he found was a laboratory in midcook, capable of producing 40 
pounds of methamphetamine a day. The drug is immediately cut once, 
often twice, for a yield of perhaps 80 to 120 pounds. On the street, 
its value would be $1 million to $2 million, depending on where it 
was sold. (Wholesale prices run from $4,500 to $8,000 a pound in 
California, $15,000 to $20,000 a pound on the East Coast, Mr. Pennal 
said.) The drug costs $1,300 to $1,800 a pound to produce, including 
labor and raw ingredients, an unpalatable assortment that can include 
crushed diet pills, nasal decongestants, even antifreeze.

Two people were arrested that day - a farm worker who lived next door 
in worker barracks who was suspected of having been hired to keep 
quiet and watch the laboratory, and a suspected laboratory employee 
found on the premises.

But just to remove the materials and catalog them took dozens of 
special agents, many of them outfitted with thousands of dollars 
worth of protective equipment. The ground around the Madera farm 
laboratory was white with the residue of methamphetamine byproducts.

"The farming situation being what it's been the last couple of 
years," said the farmer, "we're most worried about the hazardous 
materials and what it's going to do to the farm. If it costs a lot to 
clean, we just might give up the farm."

Officials say the laboratories create up to 10 pounds of waste for 
every pound of the drug. With an estimated output of well over 
100,000 pounds a year, that means a million pounds of waste is being 
produced, including chemicals like red phosphorous, hydrochloric acid 
and hydriodic acid. One of the most dangerous byproducts is 
phosphine, which scientists say is so toxic only a few molecules can 
be deadly.

When a laboratory is found, the state hires waste cleanup companies 
to remove the materials inside (at a cost to taxpayers of 
approximately $10 million a year). But the cost of cleaning 
contaminated soil and groundwater is the property owner's burden. 
More and more, said John Anderson, the sheriff of Madera County, 
where about a dozen superlabs were found last year, owners are 
abandoning their properties.

"One farmer was hit with a $600,000 cleanup bill and he let the farm 
go for back taxes," Mr. Anderson said. "Now the county has to foot 
the cleanup costs."

There are other costs as well. Child protection agencies here, 
flooded with cases of neglect and abuse, trace the majority of the 
cases to parents who use methamphetamine, which causes paranoia and 
violent outbursts in some users. In addition, the Central Valley task 
forces recently began testing children they find in or near 
methamphetamine laboratories, because fumes produced in the cooking 
of the drug can destroy lung tissue and induce chemical pneumonia. 
Every single child, said Mr. Ruzzamenti, the drug enforcement 
director, has tested positive for methamphetamine or a toxic 
byproducts.

"Methamphetamine is the most significant drug threat in this 
district," said John Vincent, the United States attorney for the 
Eastern District, which covers the Central Valley. "About 75 percent 
of the drug cases that we bring annually are methamphetamine cases."

The penalties for methamphetamine production are high. Possession of 
500 grams, just over a pound, commands a minimum mandatory sentence 
of 10 years in prison, and the higher the amount, the higher the 
sentence. A production line worker in a superlab - which employ five 
to six workers and a foreman - is liable on conviction to be 
sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.

But Mr. Vincent noted that most raids resulted in arrests of 
low-level workers - the renewable resources - and left the source 
untouched. "It is difficult to work your way up the chain for two 
reasons," he said. "Lab workers are kept ignorant and they fear 
retaliation."
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MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe