Pubdate: Tue, 01 Jul 2003
Source: The Southeast Missourian (MO)
Copyright: 2003, Southeast Missourian
Contact: http://www.semissourian.com/opinion/speakout/submit/
Website: http://www.semissourian.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1322
Author: Robert E. Pierre, Washington Post
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

STATE RENEWS EFFORTS TO REDUCE METH LABS, USERS

ST. CLAIR, Mo. -- For five hours, the two men escaped notice as they bought 
up blister packs of decongestant pills, two at a time, at stores across 
suburban St. Louis. But at their last stop -- the 19th of the day -- a 
suspicious security guard alerted police.

Pulled over 30 miles later in this town of 4,500, the men were soon in 
handcuffs for having enough pills to make about an ounce of 
methamphetamine, the illegal and highly addictive stimulant that is better 
known as crank, crystal or just plain meth.

Their ages, 63 and 50, didn't surprise detective Travis Blankenship. The 
drug has ravaged the state for more than a decade, ensnaring young and old, 
businessmen, housewives and families.

"It used to be big news to find a meth cook," said Blankenship of the 
Franklin County police as he sifted through the bag filled with 38 boxes of 
pills. "Now everybody is cooking meth."

Missouri has led the country for the past two years in the number of 
clandestine labs shut down by police. The state also is renewing efforts to 
clamp down on access to Sudafed and other pseudoephedrine-based products, 
which are prized by meth cooks because they can be easily transformed into 
the illicit street drug.

Three communities since December have ordered that stores keep all 
decongestants with pseudoephedrine as the sole active ingredient behind the 
counter or in locked cases. And the Missouri Legislature last month passed 
the nation's most stringent such law, limiting sales of the medicine to two 
packages per person and requiring that the packages be placed near the 
checkout counter to prevent theft.

Taking a back seat

Drug companies protested that the laws are a hardship on chronic allergy 
sufferers. Convenience store owners balked at the government's telling them 
how to allocate prime retail space. But with jails clogged and the meth 
problem as bad as ever, lawmakers said drug company profits and convenience 
had to take a back seat.

"It's just a terrible drug," said state Sen. Anita Yeckel, who got involved 
with the issue a few years ago after meeting a young sheriff whose lungs 
were damaged after he accidentally inhaled toxic fumes from a discarded 
lab. "I don't know of any drug that's as addictive. There are a lot of 
parents who think this is like cocaine or marijuana. This is worse."

First imported to the region by truckers from large West Coast labs, meth 
took off in the Midwest and later the Southeast in the mid-1990s when 
locals began making their own. Illicit manufacturers using home recipes 
could make the drug cheaply and did not need a middleman to sell to users. 
That left police without a big boss or a cohesive organization to target. 
Instead, they had to hunt down dealers and users one at a time.

"It literally spread like contact dermatitis," said Dwayne Nichols, a 
30-year veteran of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 
who now administers federal money that targets high-activity drug areas 
throughout the state. "It's like trying to fight a water balloon -- you 
fight it and it goes somewhere else." The state's rural areas were 
particularly hard hit. Cooks set up in cheap hotel rooms, back yards and 
deserted roadsides, and had plenty of woods in which to hide stashes. There 
was also easy access to anhydrous ammonia, a farm fertilizer that is a key 
ingredient for meth.

All-consuming hunt

The hunt can be all-consuming. If Dennis Fowler, a sheriff's deputy in 
Stoddard County in Southeast Missouri, isn't staking out a farm or co-op 
for fertilizer thieves, he's making arrests with a statewide task force or 
visiting local stores, reminding them to keep their eyes open.

"Any pill-buying lately?" Fowler asked the clerk at Dollar Discount in 
Bloomfield, Mo.

"Not since last week," the woman responded.

"Well, give us a call if they come in, and tell us which way they're 
going," said Fowler, as he left for the next stop.

A short time later, at the trailer of one of Fowler's informants, a man who 
said he has been a sometime user of meth for a decade explained the drug's 
allure.

"It makes you feel like Superman," said the man, who did not want his name 
used. On binges, he would stay up for days or even weeks at a time, he 
said. While paranoia, also known as "geeking," is common, so are cravings.

"If they have to steal, they'll do it," the man said, sitting next to his 
wife, also a meth user, in their trailer. "Women will trade sex for drugs. 
People do what they have to."

A native of Stoddard County, Fowler said few families have escaped meth's 
wrath. He arrested his own sister and sent his brother-in-law to jail.

It's so destructive, said Associate Circuit Court Judge Joe Satterfield, 
that addicts must be protected from themselves. That is why he regularly 
sets bail of at least $100,000 in cash for those arrested on meth-related 
charges. It's the equivalent of having no bond at all because few can pay. 
It has prompted some experts to complain that he is misusing his authority 
and trampling on prisoners' rights, but Satterfield is unfazed by the 
criticism. He said he is tired of seeing people "bond out," only to be back 
before him the next week for the same offense.

"It's a tremendous burden on the system," he said. "They forget sex. They 
forget their kids. When they get out, they go do it again."

And as a result of Satterfield's tough stance, some just move to 
neighboring jurisdictions such as Butler County. The problem is so severe 
there that Poplar Bluff, Mo., the county's largest city, was named one of 
the state's 15 sites to dispose of hazardous waste collected from meth labs.

One prominent defense attorney in Poplar Bluff said that criminal cases 
account for 75 percent of his practice, and 75 percent of those are 
meth-related charges. One in four of the divorces he handles involves a 
case of the husband or wife using meth.

"Why they want to mix a bunch of poisons and inject is beyond me," said 
Daniel T. Moore, over a lunch of tacos with his best friend, police chief 
Danny Whiteley.

Whiteley catches them; Moore attempts to get them off. While they differ on 
whether enforcement methods are effective, they agree that the drug is a 
burden. "It's taken the criminal justice system and drowned it," Moore said.

And that's why the focus now is on keeping pills out of the hands of drug 
users.

In St. Peters, the first city to pass a pill ordinance, the measure was 
taken partly in response to the death last year of a grocery security guard 
who was smashed against a wall by a pickup truck driven by two people 
suspected of stealing decongestants.

The St. Louis County police department now has a full-time "pill diversion 
task force." It has teamed up with large retail chains and small stores to 
either gain access to their surveillance cameras or get clerks to tip them 
to suspicious purchases.

The task force -- which includes officers from the state highway patrol and 
neighboring departments -- has arrested people from as far away as 
Mississippi driving five hours to try to make purchases in anonymity. Last 
year, conducting surveillance twice a week, the group made 118 arrests and 
confiscated 60,000 pills.

Already this year, the task force has made 103 arrests and seized 36,000 
pills and six pounds of liquid pseudoephedrine pills that were already 
"soaking down" in preparation to make the drug. They also seized 21 labs, 
typically consisting of Pyrex dishes, lithium batteries, liquid ammonia and 
plenty of toxic sludge from the various chemical reactions.

Despite such numbers, police know they are not catching everyone. Still, 
they remain optimistic that something -- restricting access to pills, 
raiding labs, jailing cooks -- will work.

"As time progresses," said St. Louis County police detective Damon 
Kunnermann, "we're going to put the crunch down on people."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom