Pubdate: Wed, 28 Dec 2005
Source: Gadsden Times, The (AL)
Copyright: 2005 The Gadsden Times
Contact:  http://www.gadsdentimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1203
Author: Lisa Rogers, staff writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/super+labs

METH LABS DECLINE; PROBLEM REMAINS

Officials: Sinus Medication Law Making Difference

A state law that regulates the sale of sinus medications has made a
big difference in the number of crystal methamphetamine labs found
since it went into effect July 1.

"I haven't seen one law that has made as big a difference where crime
is concerned," Etowah County District Attorney Jimmie Harp said.

The labs have all but dried up and the number of people stealing the
ingredients needed to make meth has gone down.

But don't be deceived by that bit of good news. Meth is still a big
problem in Northeast Alabama, quickly becoming the most abused
substance in Etowah County, said Rob Savage, commander of the Etowah
County Drug Enforcement Unit.

"If it hasn't passed crack as the No. 1 abused substance in Etowah
County, it will in the coming months," Savage said.

Addicts now are stealing more chainsaws, tools, just anything to make
a few bucks so they can buy their next hit of meth. The meth is
imported and usually in a purer form known as ice because of its
crystal-like appearance.

Now a liquid form of meth has been seen in this area. Drug agents in
Marshall County found the liquid version of the drug in early December.

"It's extremely new," Savage said. The brown, syrupy liquid has not
been found in Etowah County, even though agents assisted in the
Marshall County case.

"What we're being told is the potency is greater than ice," Savage
said. "That's a little concerning. It's going to be harder to identify
because it can be concealed more easily. They say it looks like maple
syrup."

Meth is usually manufactured in super labs in Mexico, where making the
drug is tolerated. It's cheaper to import than cocaine, which makes it
easier to get.

It's more lucrative for drug cartels because it is made cheaper than
buying the coca to process for cocaine, Savage said.

Those labs, however, are not the mom-and-pop labs that were springing
up in barns, houses, motel rooms and car trunks.

"They're much more sophisticated labs," he said of the super labs.
"You don't see the Pyrex and glass jars like in the small labs here.
They use beakers and flasks and it is an actual laboratory." In the
super labs, the meth goes through an additional step, which increases
the purity by at least 20 percent, Savage said.

A pound of meth produced in a super lab for $250 is sold at wholesale
value for between $8,000 and $10,000, Savage said. If that same pound
is sold on the street by the gram, it would be worth about $44,800.
The going street price is $100 a gram, he said. Drug dealers are
making a huge profit, feeding the frenzy that has consumed communities
across the nation.

Crystal meth has been around for years, mostly made in California. It
was called "crank" by the bikers of the 1960s and 1970s and got its
name because bikers hid the drug in the bike's crank case.

By the mid-1990s, more and more meth was being imported to Alabama and
across the United States. By the last part of the decade, the recipe
to make the drug at home started to circulate on the Internet and
among users.

By then, users were addicted and the small labs only netted enough for
their use and a few of their friends. Someone could take the main
ingredients to a friend who cooked them in exchange for some of the
finished product.

"Typically, mom-and-pop labs came from people who were already
addicted and had run out of every opportunity to get imported meth,"
Savage said. "I can count on one hand those who made money making
meth. They made it to feed their own addiction."

Most of the time, one cooking would produce enough to keep the cook
and friends high for a couple of days.

Occasionally, when someone was arrested, enough meth was found to
make

a charge stick for trafficking or selling the drug, but mostly someone
making the drug in a lab at home could only be charged with the less
serious offense of possession.

A law passed in 2001 created criminal charges for manufacturing the
drug and for possession of chemicals needed to make the drug. However,
the number of labs continued to grow, clogging the court system with
people charged with the more serious crime of manufacturing meth.

Meth labs are dangerous, mainly because of the methods to make the
drug require the use of toxic and volatile chemicals.

"Every ingredient is potentially fatal," Savage said of the list of
ingredients that include items like Red Devil lye and muriatic acid.

"I think we'd have fewer people using meth if they knew what the stuff
was made out of before they got addicted," Savage said. "The average
person isn't going to put a needle into a bottle of muriatic acid and
then inject it into their body."

It's not unusual to have an explosion or fire, with meth labs
suspected as the cause of many fires, especially those in rural areas.

A death of a man killed in an explosion and fire in Boaz last year was
linked to a meth lab.

With the passage of the pseudoephedrine law in July, the number of
labs has drastically decreased.

"We've seen the labs drop from five a month to nothing," Savage said.
"That's not to say they're not out there."

Labs, however, in their peak were more of a toxic-waste issue than a
meth issue, he said.

The labs are very expensive to dismantle and cleanup is very
dangerous, he said.

For law enforcement officers, labs are very labor intensive, said
Darrell Collins, commander of the DeKalb County Drug Task Force, which
was faced with one of the biggest problems in the state because of its
primarily rural landscape.

The average cost for cleanup is $10,000 because a Drug Enforcement
Agency-approved hazardous waste disposal team must dispose of the
chemicals, Collins said. It also costs more for labor for the agents
working the cases. At least two officers certified in the cleanup
process are required for work inside a building where a lab is found,
but two other certified officers are required to stay outside in case
something goes wrong, Collins said. Other officers provide security.

"A couple of years ago, we had agents going out a back door while
dismantling the lab and we had two people come running up with guns,"
he said. "They didn't want us to get their lab. It can be very dangerous."

In another lab in DeKalb County, the meth cooks were using the oven
for heat in the house and had an oven door open, Collins said. When
the agents raided the house, the people inside threw Coleman fuel at
the oven, hoping to scare the agents away.

Last year, 71 meth labs were seized in DeKalb County, Collins said.
This year, 41 labs have been seized. All but a couple of those were
before July 1, Collins said.

"We've seen a few labs since then, but nothing like the amount of
imported meth," Collins said. The law has helped, "but we're never
going to work ourselves out of a job."

Last month 3 pounds of ice were seized in DeKalb County and 9 pounds
of the drug were seized in Glencoe.

"The demand is there since the pseudoephedrine is not available for
their own (lab)," Collins said.

In all of Northeast Alabama, the number of trafficking meth cases has
increased dramatically since the pseudoephedrine regulation went into
effect and the number of labs has gone down, said Mark Hopwood,
director of the regional lab for the Alabama Department of Forensic
Sciences. The lab serves Etowah, Calhoun, DeKalb, Cherokee, Cleburne,
Randolph, Talladega, St. Clair and Blount counties. The drugs seized
in those counties during arrests are analyzed at the state lab in
Jacksonville. Hopwood and other employees at the lab are certified to
dismantle meth labs and often assist local task force agents when labs
are found. Hopwood said statistics compiled in a new system beginning
in September 2004 show that 13 labs were seized between then and July.

"We were doing that many in one month in 2003," he
said.

At a recent statewide meeting of lab directors, Hopwood said all the
labs in the state except Dothan reported a big decrease in the number
of labs. Dothan is near the Florida state line and Florida has not
enacted a law regulating the sell of pseudoephedrine, he said.

The meth is officially weighed at the lab so it can be determined if
the amount is enough for a trafficking case, indicative that the drug
will most likely be resold.

"With the reduction of labs, it frees up those same agents to focus on
the investigation of imported meth," Savage said.

It's still a big problem because of the addictive powers, Savage
said.

Some addicts first used crack cocaine but many turned to meth, Savage
said.

The feeling with the high is somewhat similar, but the high with meth
lasts longer and is said to be more intense, Savage said.

It's the side effects that are drastically different, he
said.

"We've seen the rapid destruction of the body, from the loss of tooth
enamel and open sores to weight loss," he said. "On the emotional
side, it seems to come on very rapidly."

Savage said at a town meeting a few years ago in Marshall County,
where he served as drug task force commander before taking the job in
Etowah County, a recovering addict spoke to the group of concerned
residents.

The woman in her early 20s told the group she had been addicted since
she was 19 years old. She had two children in the span of her
addiction. She had stolen from her parents and had her children taken
away. After a recovery period, she regained custody of her children,
but she had no place to go. She and her children were living out of
her car when her mother found her one day and gave her $100 to buy
something for her and the children to eat.

"She said she sat in her car for several hours and looked at that
money, asking herself, `Do I get the kids something to eat or do I buy
an eight-ball?' The eight-ball won," Savage said. An "eight-ball" is a
term common among drug users describing an eighth of an ounce.

An angry woman in the audience asked the woman why she did it. She
asked her to explain why the high was so great.

"The girl was crying as she started to describe the first time she got
high, but as she described it, a smile came across her face," Savage
said. The woman remained clean another month before she relapsed
again, Savage said.

"If it's day by day for an alcoholic, then for meth it is hour by
hour," Savage said.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin