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How Meth Became Such A Problem Here
Pubdate: Wed, 20 Jul 2005
Source: Smyth County News & Messenger (VA)
Copyright: The Smyth County News & Messenger 2005
Contact: http://www.smythnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2090
Author: Lee Ann Prescott, Staff writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
HOW METH BECAME SUCH A PROBLEM HERE
Part Two Of A Five-Part Series
Amateur chemists cook methamphetamine in home labs, mobile labs, and
temporary outdoor labs at campgrounds or in remote, unpopulated areas.
Law enforcement officers found Smyth County's first lab in Sugar Grove
during the late 1990s.
Since then, police have turned up local labs in apartments, vehicles,
mobile homes, garages, basements and outdoor settings.
Cooks in other states have become highly creative in an effort to hide
their labs. A Kentucky cook made meth in a cave; in California, a meth
maker buried a school bus to use as a lab, with an access built under
the doghouse.
In Chilhowie, a meth cook used a hotel room as a lab for a year before
he was caught.
Kris Payne, a substance abuse counselor with Mt. Rogers Mental
Health/Transitions in Marion, has a theory about why Virginia's meth
labs end up in the nooks and crannies of the Appalachian Mountains.
"[Urban] people who are into stimulants are smoking crack cocaine, and
the people into opiates are using heroin because it's so available.
Very seldom do you see anyone there using OxyContin; they're all
heroin addicts," he said. "What makes this part of the country and
this part of the state so attractive to this problem is it's so rural.
You don't see meth labs, not many, in downtown Richmond or D.C.
because you'd smell it."
According to an April 2002 Intelligence brief from the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Agency, methamphetamine is traditionally a drug associated
with white, male, blue-collar workers.
It attracts people who work in occupations that demand long hours,
mental alertness and physical endurance, including long-haul truckers
and swing-shift factory employees.
"Meth has become the most dangerous drug problem of small-town
America," the April 2002 DEA brief said. "Traffickers make and
distribute the drug in some of our country's most rural areas.
One of the reasons meth is such a threat in rural America is because
it is cheap and easy to make. Drugs that can be bought over the
counter at local stores are mixed with other common ingredients to
make meth. Small labs to cook the drug can be set up on tables in
kitchens, countertops, garages or just about anywhere."
The first man to make amphetamine was a German chemist named L.
Edeleano, according to information available through Narconon
International. Edeleano synthesized amphetamine on Jan. 18, 1887. The
drug's original name was "phenylisopropylamine" and it had no purpose
or medical use.
In 1919, Japanese chemists discovered methamphetamine, a more potent
and easy-to-make version.
During the 1920s, some physicians explored amphetamine as a treatment
for depression and nasal decongestion. The following decade, drug
companies began marketing amphetamines as Benzedrine. Street slang
later turned this name into "Bennies."
Benzedrine was available as an over-the-counter inhaler for treating
nasal congestion. In 1937, amphetamine tablets became available by
prescription. Doctors prescribed the tablets to treat several
different conditions, including narcolepsy, Parkinson's disease,
depression and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children.
Drug makers promoted amphetamines as non-addictive during the 1930s
and 1940s. When narcolepsy patients using the drug began reporting
weight loss, doctors realized amphetamines had yet another use.
World War II sent the world's soldiers into strenuous battles, and
military leaders began distributing amphetamines to the troops.
They found the "pep pills" kept soldiers fighting longer.
During the second year of the war, 1942, Dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine,
later called "Dexies") and methamphetamine (Methedrine) became widely
available.
In addition to providing the drug to its soldiers, Japan produced
large volumes of methamphetamine for use by war-industry factory
workers to keep them working longer hours and increasing output.
When WWII came to a close, Japan found itself with a tremendous supply
of methamphetamine. Japanese pharmaceutical companies began selling
the leftover methamphetamine tablets to the general public without
prescriptions. During the years following the war, Japan developed an
epidemic of methamphetamine abuse.
In America during the 1950s, "pep pills" developed common usage among
long-distance truck drivers, students, athletes and the thousands of
veterans who had come home from the war with amphetamine habits.
New users took the drug for weight control and for treating mild
depression. In the 1960s, doctors in San Francisco began prescribing
amphetamine injections in a misguided attempt to treat heroin addiction.
Soon, San Francisco pharmacies were selling injectable amphetamines
without prescriptions.
While American civilians used amphetamines at home to lose weight,
stay awake and fight depression, American soldiers in Vietnam were
receiving methamphetamine to help them endure the stress of battle,
much as their fathers did in World War II -- with one important
difference. During the Vietnam War, American soldiers consumed more
methamphetamine than WWII soldiers did. With one war lasting far
longer than the other, the drug use increase might seem reasonable;
but American soldiers in Vietnam used more meth than the entire
world's WWII military forces during 1941 -- 1945.
"At low doses the drug can block hunger, focus attention, steady the
heart and boost endurance," according to information provided through
the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. "That's why virtually
every major military power this century has tried giving
methamphetamine or amphetamines to its soldiers in battle.
But try to tell a battle-weary soldier not to take too much of a good
thing.
They ended up with troops confused, making bad decisions and going
psychotic."
While soldiers built addictions from military-issue drugs, San
Francisco pharmacies continued to sell injectable "speed" without
prescriptions stateside.
Use of the drug increased due to availability.
Beginning in 1962, law enforcement began fighting amphetamine and
methamphetamine abuse.
The Drug Abuse Control Act of 1965 restricted access to some drugs in
an attempt to shut down growing recreational drug use among America's
young people.
The U.S. Drug Abuse Regulation and Control Act of 1970 established
schedules I through V, identifying Schedule I controlled substances as
illegal drugs with no medicinal value.
Schedule II controlled substances were deemed to have potential
medical value, but only under highly restricted, prescribed
guidelines. Other drugs were divided accordingly, down to Schedule V
controlled substances, the least regulated of the drugs.
Methamphetamine became a Schedule II controlled substance.
The 1970 federal drug regulation act restricted legal production of
injectable methamphetamine, which initially cut its use drastically.
Drug companies took their products off the public market and limited
distribution to hospitals.
Without availability of the previously legal drug, illegal
crystal-methamphetamine labs began to appear around the San Francisco
Bay Area.
Motorcycle gangs began using the "P-2-P" (phenyl-2-propanone, or
three-day) method for clandestine production of methamphetamine. Law
makers tried to fight clandestine meth labs by making P-2-P illegal to
possess or purchase in the United States, but according to information
from the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, international
drug cartels still have access to the ingredient, particularly for
manufacture in Mexico. Mexican-produced methamphetamine continues to
gain widespread distribution in the U.S., and in Virginia, is
primarily available in the Shenandoah Valley.
Although motorcycle gangs had used the P-2-P method during the years
they controlled the methamphetamine trade after the 1970 Drug Act, two
revolutions changed the meth business in the following 20 years.
First, cooks discovered the P-2-P restriction forced them to create
new recipes to get the drug, using different ingredients and smaller
manufacturing laboratories. Ephedrine reduction manufacture became
common.
This process extracts ephedrine, or pseudoephedrine, from
over-the-counter medicines for colds (for example, Sudafed), either
through the "Nazi" method, using lithium strips from batteries and
anhydrous ammonia, or the "Red P" method, using red phosphorous and
iodine.
The second revolution took meth production out of the hands of bikers
and put it directly into the hands of motivated addicts.
The information age brought a worldwide communication network to
remote rural areas, offering meth recipes to anyone with use of a
computer and Internet service.
While cocaine and crack abuse grew during the 1980s, people in rural,
impoverished areas had little access to these drugs, and little money
to spend buying the high-dollar substances. Instead, they learned how
to collect legal ingredients from farm supply stores, discount shops
and pharmacies, and cook their own methamphetamine. The process was
far cheaper than buying cocaine, the high lasted far longer and police
could do nothing about finding a garage full of methamphetamine
precursors because all the ingredients were legal to purchase or possess.
"This is the new millennium equivalent to moonshine, what we're
dealing with here now," said Joe Jones, a substance abuse counselor
with The Laurels treatment center in Lebanon. "With all these drugs,
they've had a second coming and they're better than they were 25, 30
years ago. Crystal meth is one of them, better medicine, better skills
to make it with, a lot stronger than it was 25, 30 years ago."
Jones said methamphetamine earned one of its street nicknames,
"crank," because motorcycle gang members frequently transported the
drug in the crankcases of their bikes.
"Now it's anybody," he said. "We can have somebody that's well-off to
somebody that's just a junior chemist at home and can make this stuff. You
can make batches of it quick, you can get rid of it quick. It's a very
powerful drug."
The new meth recipes let users "make it in such a short period of
time. It takes just a few hours to cook it. You don't need much space.
You could do it in your kitchen, [or] apartment," Jones said. "The
profit margin's pretty good. You've got $30 or $50 in it, get it made
in a day and get it back on the street.
Usually you have multiple labs, multiple people making
it."
Legitimate U.S. drug suppliers continue to produce legal
methamphetamine under the trade name Desoxyn, but the legal
manufacture does not present an environmental hazard to those nearby,
as clandestine meth labs do. o
The powerful pull of meth
Addicts have astonished police with extreme methods of staying
high.
Once in a while, highly creative methamphetamine addicts skip the drug
manufacturing process entirely. Instead of risking arrest by
purchasing meth from a dealer, or risking toxic cooking fumes,
chemical burns or explosions from manufacturing the drug, some meth
addicts collect and hoard their urine to recapture the drug residue.
According to information from the Virginia Department of Emergency
Management, humans pass used methamphetamine out of the body in urine,
filtering many of the impurities from the drug through metabolism.
Addicts have found they can save their urine and reduce the liquid to
collect the drug and use it again.
When original methamphetamine is not available, some addicts will
purchase another user's drug-saturated urine, usually spending $5 per
gallon. When addicts who work as long-haul truck drivers find
themselves without a meth source while traveling, they have an
efficient solution: drivers can collect their own urine in a jug
without making rest stops.
Without spare time to stop and reduce the liquid to dry drug form,
heavily addicted long-haul truckers sometimes resort to sipping the
urine to get the filtered methamphetamine back into their systems,
stay awake, and keep driving.
Joe Jones, a Certified Substance Abuse Counselor with The Laurels
substance abuse treatment center in Lebanon, said he knows addicts
sometimes resort to the urine process when other forms of meth are not
available.
"It's kind of like -- refried," he said, wincing. "But when you look
at that cooking list -- whoa!" he said, referring to the combination
of toxic ingredients meth cooks use to make the drug.
"A couple of people have bragged about how good their recipe is," said
Lloyd Sheets, program manager for The Laurels. "One guy made $60,000 a
year [in his job], but got in trouble with his boss. ... He managed a
substantial business and his boss caught him [using meth]. He was
going to go back and negotiate with his boss, and say, I'll do
this work for you for $40,000 a year instead of $60,000 if you won't
fire me.' But the guy was bragging to us about this special recipe that it
was the best stuff around. … Another guy bragged a few years ago about
stealing the recipe from some bikers."
According to the July 2004 issue of "Law Enforcement News" published
by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY, "Oklahoma ranks
third in the nation in lab seizures, behind Missouri and California,
but it is first in labs per capita, according to the state narcotics
bureau." The LEN quoted Mark Woodward, a spokesman for the Oklahoma
Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
"In roughly a decade, the number of labs seized in Oklahoma has
skyrocketed by an astonishing 12,000 percent," Woodward said. "Some
1,300 labs were dismantled last year, up from 1,235 in 2002, and 10 in
1994, when the recipe for making the drug using pseudoephedrine surfaced."
Oklahoma has shown other states how fast the meth problem can grow.
Virginia is learning the lesson the hard way. In 1996, Virginia police
found one clandestine meth lab in the state.
Last year, they found 34. This year, the police had busted 34 meth
labs by early May. The lab locations appear to follow the Interstate
81 corridor in an eastbound path. Virginia's highest concentrations of
labs have been in Smyth and Washington counties, with Wythe County
following close behind.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin