Pubdate: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 Source: Bristol Herald Courier (VA) Copyright: 2002 Bristol Herald Courier Contact: http://www.bristolnews.com/contact.html Website: http://www.bristolnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1211 Author: Andrea Hopkins Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) METH A RECIPE FOR TROUBLE By now, just about everyone has heard about the abuse of a little pill called OxyContin. But another drug has been creeping stealthily into the region's small towns, mountain valleys and pastoral farms, and with little fanfare. It is methamphetamine -- a manmade super stimulant cooked up in illegal laboratories in homes, barns and garages. It leaves behind enough toxic waste to sicken neighbors and poison the environment for years. Users refer to it as crank, speed, meth, ice or crystal meth. "Methamphetamine and oxycodone are our two biggest drug enforcement problems," said Eric Hurt, a federal prosecutor in Abingdon. "The meth problem is just as bad as Oxy. It's just not on the radar." Hurt should know. Since 1999, he has spent all of his time helping local investigators and federal agents fight the drug war in Southwest Virginia and neighboring areas of East Tennessee. In that time, he said, he has seen an alarming rise in the number of illegal methamphetamine laboratories, called clandestine or "clan" labs by law enforcement. Agents have found illegal labs in Bristol and Bluff City on the Tennessee side and all across Southwest Virginia -- including Grayson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Smyth and Washington counties and the city of Bristol. "Over the last year and a half, we have seen a significant rise in the number of meth labs," Hurt said. In less than two years, five significant methamphetamine operations have been prosecuted in federal court in Abingdon, he said. Some of those operations involved multiple lab sites or labs that were moved from one location to another. About 25 people have been prosecuted and another 100 meth users or low-level dealers have been federal witnesses, he said. A decade ago, most of the methamphetamine on the region's streets would have come from the West Coast or the Southwest -- brought here by long-haul truckers or motorcycle gangs. Now, it is a home-grown problem as illegal drug laboratories sprout like weeds across the region. Hurt said he believes he knows why the laboratories have made their way to the mountains. "Meth can be produced pretty easily and cheaply," he said. "What you need is a well-ventilated shed and a good recipe. The product here is pretty potent because of the recipe they use." The "recipe" needed to make methamphetamine is as close as the Internet, where a number of Web sites provide detailed plans for making the drug. Others have learned to make it from "cooks" who moved here from California or Texas, Hurt said. This region has another attribute that makes it attractive to the amateur chemists who seek to set up drug laboratories -- wide-open spaces. Although labs can be found anywhere, they usually are in rural locations with few neighbors and little likelihood of accidental discovery, Hurt said. "If you are cooking meth in a neighborhood, everybody knows it because of the horrible smell," he said. "This area is particularly suited for meth production because of the large expanses of countryside." Labs around the region have been found in farmhouses, city trailer parks, sheds and homes. Small lab operations even may be set up out in the woods, Hurt said. "Unless we hear about it from an informant, it's difficult to find," he said. "A lot of cases have started with the chance finding of a disassembled lab." It is a problem that is not limited to this region. In Tennessee, a state and federal law enforcement task force was formed solely to fight methamphetamine. The head of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration even came to the state to discuss the problem in closed-door sessions last week in Nashville. The task force, now concentrated in Southeast Tennessee and the Cumberland Plateau, could be extended to Northeast Tennessee soon, said Sullivan County District Attorney General Greeley Wells. "There is no question this is a growth area for the meth problem," he said. "The number of labs discovered each year has gone sky high." The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation keeps track of the number of illegal laboratories found in the state each year. One hundred two of them were dismantled by law enforcement agents in 1999. That number inched upward to 168 in 2000. Last year, it skyrocketed -- with 353 laboratories busted by police. While most of those have been clustered in other parts of the state, Sullivan County and surrounding areas could be next, Wells said. Thus far, just a few illegal labs have been found in Northeast Tennessee. "I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen at any time," Wells said. "Given the speed it moved from the Mississippi River to the Cumberland Plateau, I have been expecting it for the past two years." Another problem for local police and prosecutors in Tennessee is that the meth problem has developed so rapidly state law has not kept pace, Wells said. Unless a raid turns up a sizable quantity of finished methamphetamine -- sold on the street as a powder or crystals -- little punishment is available under state law. "Unless there is meth found at a lab, it is a misdemeanor in Tennessee," Wells said. "There have been efforts over the last several years to raise the punishment, ... but it has proved impossible to do because of the fiscal notes attached to the bills." Proposed legislation would make it a felony to operate a drug lab; to possess the ingredients, or precursor chemicals, needed to make the drug; and to knowingly expose a child to a drug lab. Another measure would stiffen penalties for manufacturing the drug while possessing a gun or if the toxic byproducts were dumped illegally. At least one of the bills -- that dealing with endangering a child -- likely will become law, said state Rep. Jason Mumpower, R-Bristol. "The purpose is to keep children safe whose parents are involved in the manufacture of this dangerous drug," he said. "You look the chemicals they use, the solvents, the danger from fire and explosion. ... "This will make it easier for the Department of Children's Services to remove children in these situations." For now, most meth lab cases are prosecuted in federal court, where stiff penalties already await violators. "The federal guidelines for meth kick in at 50 grams. That's a mandatory five-year sentence," said Hurt, the federal prosecutor. "For 500 grams, it's 10 years to life." Another big difference between federal and state laws where illegal labs are concerned is that in state court, punishment is based on the amount of drugs seized at the time of the raid. Federal sentences can be based on what is called "historic drug weight," which takes into account the entire amount of drugs prosecutors can prove was produced in an illegal laboratory. The scourge of methamphetamine is not limited to the lives ruined by its use. The process used to brew the stimulant leaves behind plenty of poison, according to authorities. The main ingredient of the illicit drug is a common cold remedy -- ephedrine or pseudoephedrine. But to turn cold pills into meth requires the use of a plethora of dangerous solvents and other ingredients, including lye, drain cleaner, red phosphorous, lithium strips from camera batteries, iodine, ether and a farm fertilizer called anhydrous ammonia. In some cases, the brew is cooked on hot plates and stoves -- presenting a very real threat of explosion. "A lot of labs are found when there is a fire," Hurt said. "We have a large number of trailer fires, and I'm sure some are related to the manufacture of methamphetamine. The trailer burns down and they call it a cooking fire." Every pound of methamphetamine produced leaves behind six pounds of toxic sludge -- much of which is dumped illegally on the ground where it can leach into groundwater and wells and cause a host of problems, authorities said. Meth labs must be cleaned up by trained contractors in special protective suits, and the cost can run into the thousands of dollars, Hurt said. "Normally, the federal government is very interested in seizing assets," he said. "But we don't usually seize meth properties. There are so many (Environmental Protection Agency) issues, it's not worth it." Hurt, like others in law enforcement across the South, said he fears the problem will get worse before it gets better. "There is a 100 percent likelihood there are people cooking meth today as we speak that we don't know about yet," he said. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth