Pubdate: Fri, 03 Jun 2005 Source: Jackson Sun News (TN) 6037264870 Copyright: 2005 The Jackson Sun Contact: http://www.jacksonsun.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1482 Author: Bill Poovey, Associated Press ANTI-METH CRUSADER TAKES NARCOTICS POST IN WASHINGTON CHATTANOOGA - A pioneer in East Tennessee's decade-long fight against addictive methamphetamine is moving to a Justice Department job that puts him on the front lines with international drug smugglers. Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Laymon of Chattanooga, who has prosecuted methamphetamine traffickers and people caught cooking the illegal stimulant, is joining the department's narcotics and dangerous drugs section in Washington. Laymon, 50, said the job he is starting June 11 could allow him to take aim at China and India, where the ephedra plant used to make ephedrine, an ingredient in some methamphetamine recipes, is grown. ''From a professional point of view, there is something satisfying about prosecuting cases at another level,'' Laymon said. He said major methamphetamine producers in Mexico are ''probably getting ephedrine directly from China and India.'' Will Pinkston, an aide to Gov. Phil Bredesen, said Laymon's change of jobs is a ''loss for the state of Tennessee, but it is a gain in the national drug war. Paul really helped influence and steer the development of anti-methamphetamine policy in Tennessee.'' Laymon has interviewed hundreds of meth users, and he prompted the governor to flinch in a meeting when he described it as an aphrodisiac and said: ''Who wouldn't want to use it? You lose weight and you have great sex.'' Pinkston said Laymon has been a ''great asset.'' ''A lot of people seek his advice, and he is always more than willing to help,'' Pinkston said. ''He is the one person, that if I could say, 'What one person has made a difference?' That one person is Paul Laymon,'' said Tom Farmer, a Hamilton County narcotics officer. Laymon said that since the first methamphetamine cases he handled when he started prosecuting drug offenders 11 years ago, the clandestine labs have spread from backwoods communities to the suburbs and cities. Laymon said when he started in 1994 ''nobody was talking about methamphetamine labs at all. It was mostly crack cocaine, cocaine powder and marijuana.'' He said the first case involved a father and son in Niota getting meth from a Cookeville source who was getting it from southern California. Records show Tennessee's 1,259 methamphetamine lab incidents in 2004 were by far the most in the Southeast and among the largest state counts nationally. In addition to prosecuting cases in court, Laymon has helped develop the federally funded East Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force. Laymon said East Tennessee became a hotbed of meth making after ''some truly visionary criminals'' in several rural Tennessee communities - Monteagle Mountain, Palmer and Lincoln County - recruited methamphetamine cooks from California. ''They realized there was a market for methamphetamine that wasn't being filled,'' said Laymon, who graduated from Furman University and the University of South Carolina Law School. ''That's probably why East Tennessee has such a big meth problem.'' He said those people brought meth to an area of East Tennessee with a ''culture of moonshine, marijuana and stolen cars.'' ''They all went to jail,'' said Laymon, who estimates he has prosecuted at least 300 defendants in meth cases. He said Tennessee's new law restricting sales of cold tablets containing pseudoephedrine should reduce the number of clandestine labs. ''Thousands of people are cooking,'' he said. ''They are cooking smaller quantities, in the cities and the suburbs.'' - --- MAP posted-by: Josh