Pubdate: Sun, 23 Jan 2000
Source: Press-Enterprise (CA)
Copyright: 2000 The Press-Enterprise Company
Contact:  3512 Fourteenth Street Riverside, CA 92501
Website: http://www.inlandempireonline.com/
Author: Raymond Smith

METH IN THE MIDWEST

A Sinister Visitor Has Brought Unwelcome Changes To The Small Town Of 
Newton, Iowa

Newton, Iowa -- It is September in Newton, Iowa, and cornfields merge into 
the horizon, waiting for a combine's whirring blades. Toilet-paper 
streamers dangle like tinsel in front of high-school football players' 
homes during homecoming week.

Times are pretty good in Newton. Crop prices could be higher, but there is 
work for just about anyone who wants it in the hometown of the Maytag 
corporation.

But an intruder lurks beneath the All-American veneer.

Near the end of a dead-end street sits a small white house targeted by 
Jasper County deputies John Halferty and Eric Nation. A whiff of chemicals 
in the neighborhood sent investigators hunting for a clandestine 
methamphetamine lab.

Within two blocks, police have found at least seven homes where meth was 
being used, sold or manufactured.

Meth has changed the town of 15,000, bruised its innocence, Halferty lamented.

"I used to deliver papers on this block (but) . . . all my customers are 
gone," he said. "I have new ones."

Nation knocks on the door. A woman answers, her thin face dotted with red 
blemishes. Police call them "speed bumps," because they afflict long-time 
users. She consents to a search, but Halferty and Nation leave after the 
suspected lab eludes them.

Abuse of methamphetamine and other drugs tops the list of residents' 
concerns, Mayor David Aldridge said. Sometimes, though, the fears get blown 
out of proportion.

"I don't think we're going to hell in a handbasket," he said.

A few towns away in Altoona, customers new and old get a friendly, "Hi, 
dear," from Maggie Edwards, a part-time barmaid at Anthony's. A sign warns 
"You fight, you're barred." Walls are heavy with stock-car posters and 
racing schedules.

Times have indeed changed, Edwards agrees. Meth has seeped into the town, 
but other problems have surfaced as well. There have been drive-by 
shootings and a bomb threat at a local high school.

The invasion of small meth labs is one of the most difficult changes for 
some to accept. A few months back, police found a lab in an abandoned grain 
silo nearby, Edwards said.

"Middle of the day in the summer," she said, popping another beer for a 
customer.

Like most Midwest states with meth problems, Iowa's troubles involve users 
and small-time manufacturers. Police say 85 percent of the methamphetamine 
in the area comes from California.

In the Midwest, most meth makers favor a process dubbed the "Nazi" method, 
a name that some say harkens to Germany's use of amphetamine-based 
stimulants to keep soldiers alert during World War II. A key ingredient is 
anhydrous ammonia, a subzero liquid fertilizer.

Pressurized ammonia tanks holding 1,000 gallons or more are targets for 
thieves, who slip into fields and farm co-ops to siphon off enough caustic 
liquid to make their meth.

In nearby Mingo, a man yanked a hose from a tank and spilled ammonia over 
his arms, chest and groin. Police found him lying in bushes 50 feet from 
the tank.

Ammonia peeled skin from his arms, chest and penis and caused nerve damage, 
Halferty said. Three months later, police caught the same man stealing 
ammonia again.

"They just won't stop cooking," said Jim Wingo, a narcotics officer with 
the Missouri State Highway Patrol. "They're like Robocooks."

People who make meth are called cooks, even though the most common 
production method in the Midwest does not require a heat source.

The Nazi method takes an hour or two compared with the "red-P method," 
which requires red phosphorous and dominates production in California. The 
"red-P" recipe calls for a few different key ingredients and can take a day 
or two to make, agents say.

Both methods usually convert a decongestant called pseudoephedrine into its 
close chemical cousin, methamphetamine.

Midwest cooks use the Nazi method because it is simple and fast, said Jerry 
Nelson, an Iowa state narcotics agent. Anhydrous ammonia is readily 
available on farms, and the reaction activates when ingredients are simply 
dumped into a container. Hours of heating the mixture isn't required.

Some Nazi cooks make methamphetamine in ice chests. Others have been known 
to drive down the street, hanging an arm out the window, cooking meth in a 
plastic cup. Though the mixture is caustic, it does not eat through plastic.

The Nazi method's major drawback is that the chemical conversion yields 
less methamphetamine from each gram of pseudoephedrine, Nelson said.

As meth spread from California in the early 1990s, it arrived in Des Moines 
as a working-man's drug, Mayor Preston A. Daniels said.

Methamphetamine use crosses age, gender and racial boundaries. But the 
typical Iowa user is working-class, white and has a high-school education, 
Daniels said.

"You have the average good old boy who works hard and parties all weekend," 
he said. "Here comes the perfect drug. I can two-step my ass off and I can 
drink a half-case of beer and I'm good to go."

Users turn up everywhere, said Chuck Stocking, chief deputy in the Cass 
County, Iowa, sheriff's department.

Stocking said he gave his brother-in-law a warning after hearing rumors he 
was cooking meth. Later, he found his brother-in-law was still in business.

"I sent my brother-in-law to prison for cooking dope," he said.

The lure grips some at startlingly young ages.

Shane Stewart, 28, started using meth with his brothers and friends in Des 
Moines when he was 13. Already drinking alcohol and smoking pot, the jump 
to meth was almost inevitable, Stewart said.

"I enjoyed the paranoia. I enjoyed the delusions and illusions that came 
from it, to a point," he said, adding that he cannot fully explain that 
statement.

At times, when no one was speaking, Stewart heard imaginary conversations 
about people stealing his drugs.

"It's like your deepest fear is coming out," he said.

School ended for Stewart when he started meth. He moved out of his mother's 
home and started injecting the drug at 14. A year later, he moved in with a 
30-year-old woman.

Why was a 30-year-old woman interested in a 15-year-old boy?

"Because I sold dope," he said.

Physical and verbal abuse dominated the relationship.

"I know it wasn't normal, but that was the only life I experienced," he said.

On a drive to California one time, a friend smashed Stewart in the face 
with a beer bottle. Stewart doesn't know what sparked the argument.

He grabbed a pistol, aimed the barrel at his friend's head and pulled the 
trigger. He didn't know that a hitchhiker the friends had picked up had 
unloaded the gun.

"If there would have been bullets in it, he'd be dead," Stewart said of his 
friend.

After 12 years of drug abuse, Stewart entered a treatment program at the 
Powell Chemical Dependency Center in Des Moines three years ago. He says 
he's living clean now, but methamphetamine still has its claws in him.

During an interview with a reporter, as he started talking about needles 
and injecting methamphetamine, "I could feel the sweats coming on," he 
said, nervously rubbing his palms together.

Today, Stewart is married and has two stepchildren. He worked at the Powell 
center as an aide until recently and plans to seek a college degree and a 
career counseling people who still fight drugs' demons.

"Where else can I put ... years of using dope on a resume?" he asked.
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