DEADLY RECIPE: FOR FLY-BY-NIGHT CHEMISTS AND PSEUDO PHARMACISTS, COOKING METH - THE FASTEST-GROWING ILLICIT DRUG IN THE COUNTRY - IS UNFORTUNATELY AS EASY AS PIE. In cheap motel rooms and low-rent apartments, these cooks take orders from anyone with cash.
They probably don't carry food-handlers permits, but then again they don't need them.Their recipes call for benzene, hydrogen cyanide, mercury chloride, ephedrine, hydriodic acid, red phosphorous and hydrogen chloride gas - a nasty little gaseous form of hydrochloric acid.
If they're out of those items - or they can't get a hold of them - no need to borrow from neighbors, just substitute Red Devil lye, swimming pool cleaning agents, Freon, Coleman fuel and caustic drain cleaner.
These pseudo-pharmacists and fly-by-night chemists then mix the elements inside Pyrex glass flasks, heat and let the toxic soup stew.
So what's on the menu? The fastestgrowing illicit drug in the country known simply as meth - a simple sobriquet for methamphetamine, a central nervous system stim-ulant.
The drug has many variations and several noms de guerre - "crank," "speed," "ice," "tweek," "go-fast," "peanut butter," "root beer" and "crystal."
Meth is to the '90s what crack cocaine was in the '80s: a narcotic epidemic with devastating social implications.
Like baking a cake
Getting hold of meth is as easy as going grocery shopping. Basic "shopping list" ingredients include common household products like Drano, matches and Sudafed.
A basic understanding of chemistry is helpful but not required.
And if you can cruise cyber-space, you can find any of a dozen recipes on the Internet. "Tried and true" 11-step procedures complete with chemical breakdown diagrams are just a keystroke away for anyone who goes online.
"If you can bake cookies, you can make meth," said Sgt. Robby Russo, who heads the Salt Lake County sheriff's six-officer narcotics team.
It's so easy to manufacture that some, tired of paying others for their drugs, will try their hand at cooking. Because of its low price and easy accessibility, meth use has skyrocketed, particularly in the western United States.
"It's gone from being the outlaw drug to the drug of choice," said Salt Lake County sheriff's narcotic detective Tim Langley. "It's so popular, it surpassed (cocaine) about two years ago here in Salt Lake."
A cook can get all the necessary ingredients from most one-stop shopping stores and usually won't draw any suspicion.
Few grocery store chain representatives are even aware that illicit drugs can be manufactured from common cold and asthma medi-cines.
"This was the first any of our people have heard of it," said Smith's Food and Drug Center spokeswoman Shelley Thomas.
She did say the stores' marketing representatives have been keeping tabs on legislative efforts to regulate the sale and accessibility of products like Sudafed and others that contain pseudo-ephe-drine. Thomas also said the company's non-food managers aren't aware of anyone purchasing significant amounts of the over-the-counter products.
Still, most retail pharmacies will have to account for sales of more than 24 grams of pseudo-ephe-drine and phenyl-pro-pan-o-la-mine to the Drug Enforcement Agency on the heels of a national meth act passed this month by President Clinton. The law takes effect Jan. 1, 1997.
"But 24 grams is a ton of it," Thomas added. "That's nearly 500 dosage units for a single transaction. We don't stock that much."
Other store officials said they realize there's a problem, but they also haven't seen any significant increase in people hoarding ephedrine or pseudoephedrine.
"It's an issue we've been aware of for about a year and a half, but we really haven't seen any problems," said Rob Boley, spokesman for some 200 Portland-based Fred Meyer stores. "According to the sales data we have, we haven't seen any indicators of a widespread concern in any of the company's health and beauty de-part-ments located inside our one-stop shopping centers."
Still, cooks can find what they need, investigators say.
And in addition to the price and availability of meth, users say the high is more intense and lasts longer than most of its hard drug counterparts. It can be injected, snorted, smoked or eaten, and its purity has risen from 46 to 72 percent in two years, according to DEA records. The average high lasts about 15 hours and costs about $100 per gram or up to $1,500 an ounce, while nationwide prices per pound range from $6,500 to $20,000.
Recipe for violence
A meth high is so intense that coming down is dangerous - not just for the user, but for anyone around him or her.
"It's such a dangerous drug because you don't know what ingredients have been used in the manufacturing process," said Langley.
The drug increases the heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and rate of breathing. It produces euphoria, and high doses have been associated with increased nervousness, irritability and extreme paranoia.
One man police arrested for meth use and production in Salt Lake County installed tiny cameras on his roof, around his house and even in a bird cage near his front door. He monitored the surroundings of his home from seven or eight television screens mounted to his bedroom wall.
"He thought everyone was a cop," Russo said. "He'd get strung out and shoot up his neighborhood at 3 in the morning."
Some users will try to cushion the fall from a meth high with alcohol use. Many sometimes go days without sleep, which exacerbates the psychotic effects of meth.
Police say the only constant when dealing with a meth user is violence. Take George White, for example.
His girlfriend called police after he threatened her on July 28. When officers arrived, White barricaded himself inside the Union home and refused any com-munication. Deputies fired several different types of tear gas into the house, filling it with toxic clouds.
"He sat in there . . . for an hour and a half," Langley said. When SWAT officers had waited long enough, they stormed the house. As they entered the basement, White popped up from behind a bar holding a shotgun.
Langley shot and killed him. An autopsy showed White was using meth when he was killed. Investigators also found evidence that he had been manufacturing meth in the home, Russo said.
The next day, Russo said he could barely stand to enter the house because the residual tear gas was so irritating to his eyes.
"We can spot someone who's on meth a block away. It's their eyes, wild eyes," Russo said.
"It creates a psychotic reaction in the brain that eventually pushes 100 percent of long-term users into an (indefinite) psychotic state," Russo said. "When we arrest them, we have to fight them. I've had fingers bitten, I've sprayed them full-on with chemical and organic pepper spray, and they aren't fazed."
"It's like the lights are on but no one's home," Langley said.
This is the place
Statistics show Utah is among the top four states in the country in meth production, trailing only California, Missouri and Texas.
Because of the demand for meth, police say many former cocaine smugglers have switched to the easier and more popular meth making. It can be cooked up with the readily available chemicals in a kitchen, a motel bathroom or even a pickup truck rolling down the road.
"It's a home-grown drug," Langley said.
Local Drug Enforcement Administration agents say they have busted twice as many meth labs in Utah since 1994, and 70 percent of those raids were within Salt Lake County.
"In the last fiscal year, we participated in cooperative and multi-agency investigations and seizures of 63 separate labs, from St. George to Weber and Morgan counties," said Scott Meadows, acting resident agent-in-charge with the DEA in Salt Lake City. "The year before it was 34."
But as far as actual quantity of drug production is concerned, the state is below average.
"The real point you have to make is that every lab has an individual production, usually only about three ounces per batch here in Utah," he said. "To make any kind of profit, someone would probably have to make 17 or 18 batches."
But, like most professions, where there are pros, there are rookies.
Police refer to many of Utah's labs as "trailer park," "matchbook" or "Beavis and Butt-head" labs, referring to the popular idiotic cartoon characters on MTV.
Unlike cocaine and other drugs, meth rarely receives attention except when a clandestine lab blows up - usually because of a careless cook who doesn't pay attention to a boiling pot.
"When cooking this stuff during the heating process, the red phosphorus can at times turn into white phosphorus. You know, like white phosphorus that's used in making incendiary bombs?" Lang-ley explained. "All that's need for a nice little explosion is some sort of friction point or oxygen source."
Utah Division of Investigations Sgt. Al Acosta remembers his first encounter with an unsophisticated chemist in 1993.
It was a low-budget motel on State Street. The owners had called police when a cleaning woman found someone's "belongings" had been left behind in the room.
Acosta found the ingredients for meth cooking in a makeshift lab that included kitty litter around the tubing to contain the drug's odor.
"I said, `This is a lab, but I've never seen anything like it before,' " Acosta said. Unfortunately, he's seen dozens since.
Most cooks create their drugs in rental properties. Acosta said the process is so toxic that to effectively clean up a lab requires specially trained chemists who wear protective gear that resembles a space suit worn by astronauts.
Acosta said cooks pour toxic chemicals down drains and into sewer systems, creating environmental contamination no one's even tried to measure yet.
The state budgeted $75,000 this year alone to clean up and dispose of meth lab chemicals and equipment. That sometimes includes throwing out carpet and sheetrock in a contaminated house, Acosta said.
Cooks will even throw away clothing they wore while brewing a batch of meth.
Not just a biker drug
Discovered in 1919, methamphetamine was a powerful stimulant used by the Japanese and Germans during World War II to boost workers' industrial output and keep tank drivers alert. Known as "Bennies" or pep pills, methamphetamine became popular in the 1960s and '70s in the United States among students, athletes, truckers, housewives and hippies.
More recently, outlawed motorcycle gangs looking for a cheap substitute for cocaine, took over the production and distribution of methamphetamine in the United States.
"They called it `crank' because they used to hide it in their motorcycles' crankshafts," Russo said.
But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the United States adopted tough new laws regulating the precursor chemicals needed to make the stimulant - such as ephedrine - which then pushed the mass production of meth south to Mexico.
The move helped the Mexican cartels wrestle complete control of the illicit business from U.S. gangs, including Utah factions. Now, smaller labs proliferate in Utah, but the big shipments come from Mexico by way of Southern California.
To wit: Twenty-two pounds of meth - with a street value ranging from $1 million to $2 million, depending on the purity - were seized in August from a South Salt Lake home as part of the county's largest haul ever of illegal drugs.
The raid also included 27 kilos of uncut cocaine bricks, which arrived in the Beehive State buried in coffee grounds from the northern Mexico hamlet of Aguas Pie-dras.
"This was a major seize," Russo said. "And most of the stuff we see here (in Utah) is the finished product. But across the Southern California border and into Arizona, they're very professional in the production end. It's not uncommon to see them using 22-liter bottle flasks and making between 5 and 10 pounds of the stuff."
Equipment used by the pros doesn't come cheap, either. The glass flasks alone can cost thousands of dollars. In one operation, Langley described those employed in the Mexican manufacture of the drug as "worker bees in the hive," each having a specific duty in making the meth.
"One guy would get paid to just sit there for 12 hours at a time in one spot, stirring the juice to make sure it `cooked' evenly," he said.
Stats and politics
Figures surrounding meth production and use are nothing short of staggering.
In 1989, the number of U.S. meth users was estimated at 2 million. Four years later, that estimate had doubled, according to statistics from the Drug Abuse Warning Network.
Nationwide, the number of meth-related deaths nearly tripled from 1991 to 1994, from 151 to 433. Meth-related homicides are also up, from fewer than 10 in 1992 to more than 60 in 1995. The number of hospital emergency room visits related to the drug more than tripled, from 4,900 in 1991 to 17,400 in 1994.
Dr. Maureen Frikke, assistant state medical examiner, said the drug causes the heart to "short-circuit."
"What one person tolerates can be fatal for another," she said. "There is no such thing as a safe dose of meth."
And for every lab raided, authorities claim, three to 10 go undiscovered.
But both local and national politicians are coming out with both guns to bust up the meth contagion with the recent passage of a major law and a 14-state compact designed to monitor the flow of trade.
Behind the strength of bills sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act of 1996 on Oct. 3, which allows authorities to seize chemicals used to make the drug.
The new law - which brings a 9.3 percent increase in federal drug money, more than $15 billion - also increases penalties for trafficking in the chemicals and possessing equipment needed to manufacture methamphetamine.
The act also creates rigorous reporting and record-keeping requirements for very large retail purchases of cough and cold products containing ingredients that could be used to make meth; establishes new reporting requirements for firms that sell pseudoephedrine or phenylpropanolamine products via mail; and creates a Methamphetamine Interagency Task Force to design and implement a national education, prevention and treatment strategy.
And from the office of the U.S. Attorney General, Janet Reno announced a methamphetamine crackdown in 14 Midwestern states last month, focusing on raising public awareness, sharing intelligence and training local law enforcement.
Dubbed the "Midwest Strategy," it was devised by 18 U.S. attorneys and applies to 14 states, including Utah. The plan consists of designating an assistant U.S. attorney to coordinate investigations between state, federal and local law enforcement, share intelligence and control illegal distribution of chemicals used to make methamphetamine, Meadows said.
That's all well and good, say Utah investigators, but they just want to quit playing "catch up" with local cooks and users.
"Unfortunately, the government will regulate the use of a chemical used in the production and then (cooks) will find a way to duplicate it or synthesize it," Langley said.
"This will be around for a while."
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Notable meth seizures of 1996 in Utah
Utah ranks fourth in the nation in methamphetamine production. Among the more notable 1996 seizures around the state:
- Sept. 27 - About 25 guests were evacuated from the Desert Edge Inn in St. George while police cleared a meth lab from a hotel room.
- Sept. 20 - Six adults and a 14-month-old baby were inside a West Valley home where officers were led to a working meth lab described as a "toxic waste dump" by investigators.
- Sept. 10 - Davis County deputies were called to a Fruit Heights motel and stumbled onto a meth lab. The deputies were at the Mountain Creek Inn on U.S. 89 on a routine complaint when they were told of suspicious activity in another room, where $10,000 worth of meth was confiscated.
- July 12 - Two men were arrested after a routine traffic stop turned into the discovery of a working meth lab inside a room at the Spiking Tourist Lodge, 2866 S. State. South Salt Lake firefighters evacuated the entire building.
- July 9 - The Mountain Creek Inn in Fruit Heights was again the scene of meth manufacturing, when detectives found items of a portable lab inside the trunk of a car in the motel's parking lot. Glassware and other paraphernalia were discovered, along with other drugs, as detectives searched the vehicle owner's room.
- July 1 - Davis County Sheriff's SWAT teams raided a house attached to the Pines Bar on Main Street between Kaysville and Layton, where a person suspected of dealing drugs was found in possession of meth and other drugs.
- April 21 - Officers from the Utah County Narcotics Enforcement Team dismantled two meth laboratories and arrested three Orem residents they believe operated the labs near a storage unit located at 1020 N. Geneva Road and inside a northwestern Orem home.
- Likely the state's worst drug lab disaster occurred on Nov. 26, 1994, in West Valley City when a meth lab caught fire and burned an entire 12-unit building at the Shadowbrook Apartments, 3852 S. 1845 West. Damage was estimated at $1.5 million, which caused the structure to be demolished. The alleged "cook" fled to Sanpete County, where he was later arrested but then died in police custody from an apparent drug overdose.
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Methamphetamine
HISTORY:
Discovered by the Japanese in 1919, it was fed to kamikaze pilots during the Second World War. It was also Hitler's drug of choice. As the Third Reich crumbled, his doctor allegedly injected him eight times a day.
DESCRIPTION:
A stimulant in the form of a crystalline powder that is usually injected. It can also be smoked or snorted.
SHORT-TERM EFFECTS:
Increased alertness, energy, feeling of well-being, rapid heart beat and breathing, increased blood pressure, sweating, dilated pupils, dryness of mouth. User may become talkative, restless, excited; feel powerful, superior, aggressive, hostile; behave in a bizarre, repetitive fashion. Very large doses produce flushed pallor, very rapid or irregular heartbeat, tremors, severe paranoia, frightening hallucinations. Death can result because of burst blood vessels in the brain, heart failure or very high fever. Violence, accidental or otherwise, is a leading cause of amphetamine-related deaths.
LONG-TERM EFFECTS:
A heavy psychological dependence. Chronic heavy users may develop malnutrition or amphetamine psychosis, a mental illness similar to paranoid schizophrenia. They may also, among other things, be prone to violence and HIV infection from use of unsterile needles. Kidney damage, lung problems, or other tissue injury can result.
WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS:
Fatigue, long but disturbed sleep, irritability, depression and violence.