Pubdate: Wed, 20 Jul 2005
Source: Union Democrat, The (Sonora, CA)
Copyright: 2005 Western Communications, Inc
Contact:  http://uniondemocrat.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/846
Author: Mike Morris
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?159 (Drug Courts)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

Series: Meth In The Mother Lode (Part 1c)

A USER'S TRAVELS GO DOWNHILL FAST

For years, Kevin Tammarine would travel the foothills in search of 
ingredients to make his next batch of methamphetamine.

To make an ounce of meth, he would have to get 30 boxes of cold medicine 
containing the drug pseudoephedrine.

That would require 15 stops at grocery and drug stores in cities like 
Sonora, Angels Camp and Jackson.

Legally, a person can buy three packs of pseudoephedrine products at once. 
To avoid suspicion, Tammarine bought only two. And he'd throw in items like 
paper towels and potato chips to camouflage the pills.

But after buying meth-making supplies at a Murphys store on Dec. 16, 2002, 
an employee tipped off the authorities that Tammarine was headed to Angels 
Camp, likely for more ingredients.

Sheriff's Lt. Eddie Ballard was waiting for Tammarine and his girlfriend in 
the parking lot of Longs Drug Store that rainy Sunday night.

Tammarine was arrested on charges of attempting to manufacture meth after 
Ballard searched Tammarine's truck and found ingredients for the drug along 
with marijuana and meth stuffed in a tennis shoe.

While getting handcuffed, Tammarine remembers telling Ballard, "Hey, I'm a 
drug addict and I need help."

Ballard suggested the Mountain Ranch man enroll in Calaveras County's Drug 
Court program.

And Tammarine did.

As the county's sixth Drug Court graduate, Tammarine continues to turn his 
life around. Some even consider him the poster boy of the program.

However, to this day he's still taking care of the wreckage his meth use 
has caused - replacing six missing teeth and paying $20,000 in back child 
support payments.

"It does eat at my conscience a bit - all the arguments I caused between 
husbands and wives, all the fights, all the crime. What was stolen to get a 
little sample of my poison," the 45-year-old carpenter said.

Drug 'lifestyle'

Tammarine grew up in San Diego County a self-described surfer kid, smoking 
pot with friends at the beach.

As a teen, he took speed tablets to increase his productivity while working 
for his father's landscaping business.

Tammarine dropped out of high school his senior year and moved to Santa 
Cruz, where he met his soon-to-be wife on a beach.

The pair married less than a year later in a small Scotts Valley vegetable 
garden.

On their wedding day, as he got dressed in drawstring pants and she in a 
simple cotton dress, they snorted a line of cocaine.

"Drugs were part of our lifestyle," he recalled.

They moved to Oregon for a few years and sold flowers on street corners, 
sometimes trading roses for pot with customers.

"I woke up with a cup of coffee and a joint for years and years and years," 
Tammarine said.

The couple then went to Mendocino County and worked odd jobs before moving 
to Calaveras County.

Tammarine, at age 25, and his wife moved to Angels Camp to be near his 
grandmother in Columbia and start up his own landscaping business.

Despite not knowing many people, Tammarine quickly became popular because 
he was growing a large amount of marijuana inside his two-bedroom home.

"That's when I started getting into the local drug culture of the 
foothills," he said. "We had tons of pot. So I'd say, 'Hey, you want to 
smoke a joint?' And they'd say, 'Hey, do you want to do a line (of meth)?'

"That's when I fell in love with the drug. It makes you feel like Superman 
for a while, but then it'll tear you up. There's no free ride."
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MAP posted-by: Beth