Pubdate: Tue, 24 Jan 2006
Source: News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)
Copyright: 2006 The News and Observer Publishing Company
Contact: https://miva.nando.com/contact-us/letter-editor.html
Website: http://www.news-observer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/304
Author: Kate Zernike, The New York Times
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

Trafficking replaces home meth labs in Iowa

In the seven months since Iowa passed its law restricting cold 
medicines used to make methamphetamine, busts of homemade meth labs 
have dropped from 120 a month to just 20.

But the state's drug policy director, Marvin Van Haaften, like 
officials in other states that have passed similar restrictions, is 
now worried about a new problem: The drop in home-cooked meth has 
been met by a new flood of crystal methamphetamine coming largely from Mexico.

Sometimes called ice, crystal methamphetamine is far purer, and 
therefore even more highly addictive, than powdered home-cooked meth, 
a shift that treatment providers say has led to greater risk of 
overdose. And because crystal methamphetamine costs more, police say 
thefts are increasing, as people who once cooked meth at home now 
have to buy it.

The University of Iowa Burn Center, which in 2004 spent $2.8 million 
treating people whose skin had been scorched off by the toxic 
chemicals used to make meth at home, says it now sees hardly any such 
cases. Treatment centers, on the other hand, say they are treating 
just as many or more meth addicts.

As Congress prepares to restrict the sale of pseudoephedrine, the 
cold medicine ingredient that is used to make methamphetamine, 
officials in Iowa and in other states caution that the laws fall far 
short of a solution to the epidemic of meth abuse.

Federal drug agents tend to describe ice as methamphetamine that is 
at least 90 percent pure. Officials in Iowa say much of their crystal 
methamphetamine is less pure -- "dirty ice," they call it. But either 
is far more potent than homemade powdered meth; a "good cook" yields 
a drug that is about 42 percent pure, but around 25 percent is more 
common. And in the four months after Iowa's law took effect, average 
purity went from 47 percent to 80 percent.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman