Pubdate: Fri, 07 Apr 2000
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2000 San Francisco Chronicle
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Forum: http://www.sfgate.com/conferences/
Author: Charlie Goodyear

ILLICIT METH LABS DEVELOP NEW SOURCE OF INGREDIENTS

Cold Pills Being Stolen From Pharmaceutical Firms

For drug traffickers, the thefts were the equivalent of strolling out the 
gates of Fort Knox with sacks full of gold. As many as 20 barrels of a 
common over-the-counter cold pill - coveted by those who can easily cook it 
into methamphetamine - vanished from a pharmaceutical plant in Vacaville 
before authorities caught on in 1998.

That same year, more than 4 million similar pills - enough to produce half 
a ton of pure meth - were stolen from a health-products company outside Los 
Angeles in a still-unsolved heist.

Both cases received almost no attention publicly, but privately drug war 
officials were worried.

Thanks to the 1996 Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act, illicit 
chemists are no longer able to buy the pills in bulk from so-called 
"rogue'" pseudoephedrine dealers or over the counter at local drug stores. 
Instead they are going to a larger and in some ways easier target: drug 
companies where large supplies of the pills may be largely unsecured.

Methamphetamine, often called the poor man's cocaine, has been the nation's 
fastest-growing drug problem during the past 10 years. In California, 
police raided more than 1,000 meth laboratories in 1998. And in recent 
years a powerful recipe for cooking pseudoephedrine into meth has become 
easily available on the Internet and in bookstores.

Because pseudoephedrine is an over-the-counter medication, companies that 
handle it are not subject to federal Drug Enforcement Administration 
inspections or background checks, and federal authorities do not have a say 
about security as they would with controlled substances such as 
prescription drugs.

"The whole crux of the matter goes back to the fact that these are not 
controlled substances and the fact that the chemical industry has fought 
this tooth and toenail to stop the control of this," said William Davis, a 
drug diversion officer in the Sacramento office of the DEA.

"There are very minimal, if any, security requirements," Davis said. "There 
are minimal record-keeping requirements. The whole issue could be taken 
care of by making it a controlled drug."

LOOSE SECURITY AT PLANT

In 1998, pseudoephedrine was apparently not under much control at the large 
plant in Vacaville operated by drug giant Alza Corp. The plant, the 
second-largest private employer in Vacaville, with more than 500 workers, 
is the company's only site where pseudoephedrine is manufactured into cold 
remedy tablets.

The company had been reporting to authorities thefts of large quantities of 
the drug. During a joint DEA- Vacaville police undercover operation, 
assisted by private detectives hired by Alza, officers learned that at 
least two men, one a former company employee, the other still working at 
the plant in the hazardous waste division, were moving the drugs out of the 
plant and selling them to a variety of meth manufacturers in the Bay Area.

The pills contained pseudoephedrine, a chemical cousin of meth just a few 
molecules different from the illegal drug. The pills stolen in Vacaville - 
188-milligram tablets of Ephidac 24 - were showing up at drug labs in 
Solano, Sacramento, Contra Costa and San Joaquin counties as late as last 
summer.

Each barrel was enough to make as much as 80 pounds of pure meth, although 
authorities do not know how much was ultimately converted into street drugs.

According to police reports obtained by The Chronicle, as many as 20 
barrels were stolen and sold to clandestine chemists for $100,000 to 
$150,000 each.

"From what I understand, before that investigation was under way, security 
was so lax, it was difficult to even tell you how much was being stolen," 
said DEA agent Ed Kittrell, who worked the case.

RAMPANT THEFT

Kittrell and his fellow investigators soon learned that theft was rampant 
in the plant. Although Alza issued coveralls without pockets to employees 
to discourage theft, workers were filling their gloves with pills and even 
used their lunch boxes to scoop the tablets out of bins, he said.

The thieves were also reportedly taking pills that had been incorrectly 
labeled and were slated for destruction.

"Alza was destroying this stuff almost like trash, and people were just 
pulling pills out of the compactor,'" Kittrell said. "When the company 
learned about it, they were appalled that their people who worked there 
stole this stuff."

Suspects Derrick Williams, who had been fired from Alza that same year for 
disciplinary problems, and Thomas Ross, who still worked at the plant, were 
arrested in December 1998 after authorities learned that the two men were 
working together to move pseudoephedrine out of the plant.

PLEA BARGAIN

Williams, who said he became addicted to meth before he was fired, agreed 
to help prosecutors and testified against Ross - whose case is still 
pending - in return for a 10-year federal prison term.

In an interview earlier this year at the Sacramento County Jail, Williams 
said he had recruited Ross to help him take pseudoephedrine out of the 
plant and admitted stealing at least six barrels of the drug in the summer 
of 1998.

Williams acted as the middleman, receiving just a few thousand dollars as 
he set up buys for the valuable tablets. Most of it was apparently sold to 
a Richmond motorcycle gang.

The thefts took place in the middle of the day with Williams coming to the 
plant and loading the barrels into his pickup out of a smaller warehouse 
nearby. Security was almost nonexistent.

"They put security cameras in in 1995, but it was a joke," Williams said. 
"The security guards used to sleep on the job. It wasn't clear if all the 
cameras worked. As far as I'm concerned, there was easy access to a lot of 
stuff."

Vacaville police Detective Nathan Benevides said he also is not sure how 
much was stolen from Alza.

"I know what was reported to our department was less than what was taken," 
he said. "From what was told to me by Mr. Ross and Derrick Williams, it 
seemed to be more than what was reported to the police, and that concerned us."

Along with the drugs, Williams said, tools, computers and other equipment 
routinely disappeared. In waste disposal, no proper system was in place to 
track which materials were to be destroyed. "They just depended on us to 
move the stuff out," Williams said.

ADVANCE WARNING OF TESTS

And although annual drug tests were required for employees, they were not a 
problem for Williams, who said he always knew a few days ahead when he 
would be tested and never tested positive for meth while working for Alza. 
His bosses were apparently unaware of what a lucrative business ripping off 
the pills was.

"I just don't think management knew what this stuff could be used for," 
Williams said.

Last year, drug officers began finding some of the stolen pills or meth 
believed to have been made from them. Three pounds of the finished drug was 
found at a lab in Suisun City. Nine pounds of pseudoephedrine was located 
in Sacramento. Last August, police in Stockton recovered 54 pounds of pure 
pseudoephedrine stolen from Alza, Kittrell said.

There have been no reports of further thefts in Vacaville, but the 1998 
case was so troubling that the DEA and Alza remain concerned that the plant 
will be singled out again by meth makers.

SECURITY TOUGHENED UP

Janne Whissel, vice president for operations at Alza, said security has 
been significantly improved at the Vacaville plant during the past three 
years to the point that pseudoephedrine is now handled as carefully as any 
drug on the DEA's schedule of controlled substances.

"We have taken it upon ourselves to voluntarily treat pseudoephedrine as if 
it were a (controlled) drug," Whissel said. Police agree that Alza's 
security has gotten much better.

But Whissel disputed police reports that Alza employees were stealing the 
drug using their gloves or lunch boxes. She said the company discovered 
that several security cameras had been tampered with, but Whissel rejected 
claims that as many as 20 barrels of pseudoephedrine were stolen.

"We don't believe that 20 barrels were taken," she said. "There's a problem 
with talking about barrels. Barrels can be filled with all sorts of things."

But while the company says it treats pseudoephedrine as a serious drug, 
Alza and the rest of the pharmaceutical industry are not ready to concede 
that it should be subject to federal controls - a move that would require 
consumers to get a doctor's prescription for a common cold pill.

OTHER FIRMS VICTIMIZED

Alza is just one of a growing list of companies that have become easy prey 
for illegal drug makers, including Leiner Health Products of Carson (Los 
Angeles County), which lost more than 4 million pills in October 1998.

"There's definitely a market for it," said Ron Gravitt, the special agent 
in charge of clandestine drug labs for the state Bureau of Narcotics 
Enforcement. "There's probably more diverted from the manufacturing 
companies than we actually realize.

"Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical manufacturers aren't regulated by us. We 
don't have any knowledge of what their security procedures are."

According to Leiner, investigators could not identify any employee who 
might have been responsible for the missing drugs, which were reported to 
the DEA. The case is still unsolved.

Like Alza, Leiner improved its security, including DEA-approved storage 
facilities and restricted access to pseudoephedrine.

Warner-Lambert, the New Jersey company that markets the best-selling cold 
remedy Sudafed, says it has not had security problems with pseudoephedrine.

But the company has been concerned enough about its product being used for 
meth manufacturing that, according to some reports, it has considered 
introducing additives into the tablets that would make them harder to cook 
into meth. The DEA will not comment on what is being done in the laboratory 
to try to prevent cold pills from being turned into illicit drugs.

OTHER NECESSARY CHEMICALS

Anti-drug officials say the attempt to control the chemicals that are used 
to convert pseudoephedrine into meth - substances typically used in 
agriculture or manufacturing - is succeeding.

The purity of the drug that makes it to the street has dropped from 60 
percent a few years ago to about 27 percent now.

That illicit chemists are turning to outright theft is a sign the supply of 
pseudoephedrine is drying up.

"No chemicals equals no drugs," said DEA Special Agent Guy Hargreaves, 
based in Washington, D.C. "Aside from marijuana, methamphetamine is the 
only widely abused drug that people can make themselves. We're seeing more 
thefts, and to me that tells me these controls are working."

But without better security for guarding pseudoephedrine, the pills will 
continue to show up at thousands of small to medium-sized meth labs found 
each year in California and around the nation. Police in Fresno recovered 
40 cases of the drug - 144,000 pills - at a bust just last week.

And in 1997 alone, enough pseudoephedrine was "diverted" - either stolen or 
illegally purchased - to make 29 tons of meth, according to the DEA.

Officials say that for every business like Alza or Leiner that learns its 
lesson, many other companies remain unaware that these chemicals are highly 
prized by illicit drug makers.

"Ignorance is bliss, that's the best defense in the world at the 
companies," said Davis, the Sacramento DEA officer. "For the criminals, 
it's a gold mine."
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