METH LABS MUSHROOMING IN STATE

Treatment Facilities, Prosecutors See Boom in El Paso, Teller Counties

Tuesday, December 31, 2002 - Methamphetamine labs are growing in popularity
in Colorado, with El Paso and Teller counties leading the way, and many
experts are blaming the drug's cheap prices and long-lasting high.

"It fits the addictive personality perfectly," said Tom Knight, a former
addict who now works as an outreach manager. "It's an instant high, and it
lasts longer than cocaine."

"With cocaine, it's a 20-minute deal and you're going, 'Wow, it's over,'
but with meth you get more for your money," said Knight, who works for the
Houston-based Cenikor Foundation, a private residential treatment program
with an outreach office in Colorado Springs and a treatment facility in
Lakewood.

Colorado is the country's 14th-largest producer of the drug, and if trends
continue, it will likely have a higher ranking soon.

Authorities in neighboring El Paso and Teller counties have busted more
methamphetamine labs than any other location in the state. And this year's
numbers, 149 busts as of late last week, are almost double what they were
in 2001, when 88 labs were broken up by the joint drug task force that
covers both counties. Just four years ago, that number was five.

"This shows you how bad this problem is and how fast it is taking over
here," said Jim Gerhardt of Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking
Areas, a program run out of the Office of National Drug Control policy. "It
is very likely we are (soon) going to be in the top 10 in the nation. This
is a huge increase."

Many labs are still operating undetected, said Detective Terry Curry of the
task force.

"For every lab you bust there are 10 more out there that you haven't done,"
he said

Curry said most of the labs his task force discovers are in Colorado
Springs. He believes many others go undiscovered in rural parts of El Paso
County.

"In the city, people live in close proximity to one another and they smell
things and see things and call in tips," Curry said. "In rural areas people
are spread out. There are probably just as many (labs) in the rural areas
but they are just not being reported."

The 4th Judicial district attorney's office prosecutes drug busts in El
Paso and Teller counties.

In 1991, the district attorney's office prosecuted 54 methamphetamine
cases. In 2001, that number had jumped to 581 cases, meaning 52.6 percent
of the county's drug cases involved methamphetamine.

"We have been seeing the meth cases just soaring," said Assistant District
Attorney Dan May. "I would say it's an epidemic in the county. The numbers
have just taken off for use and for the number of labs out there."

Knight of the Cenikor Foundation said 45 percent of the Lakewood center's
175 patients are meth users, the majority of whom come from El Paso County.

A former addict who kicked his habit four years ago after completing
Cenikor's program, Knight says he understands how difficult it is to
overcome an addiction.

"I was experimenting with meth when I was about 15," he said. "I started
drinking and realized that once I got drunk, if I did some meth then I
could drink some more."

Knight, 42, was on his eighth driving-under-the-influence charge when he
was finally sent to prison for being a habitual traffic offender in 1988.
As soon as he got out of jail in Adams County nine months later, he started
using again.

It was the beginning of a downward spiral in which he alternated between
meth-induced bliss and time in county jail. He lost his job and his home.
He saw friends murdered, and his mother told him to stay away.

"I think of meth as a dollar-store drug," he said. "You can make your money
stretch out. Also, it's cheap to make."

And, unlike other drugs such as cocaine and marijuana, which are difficult
to cultivate in Colorado's mountain climate, methamphetamine can be
produced just about anywhere.

"People are making it in their homes, in their friends' homes, in storage
lockers, in the backs of their cars," Curry said.

"You can have a meth lab in a backpack or inside of a house," he said. "We
have people cooking all the way up north in Black Forest in $250,000 homes
and way down south in less affluent areas where people don't have jobs. It
affects all areas of society. Anyone could be a cook.

"The idea behind it is, why should I pay someone else for my dope when I
can make it myself?" he said. "For $150 I can go to Wal-Mart and buy enough
supplies to make an ounce of meth that sells for $1,200 on the street."

A lack of mandatory sentencing laws also contributes to the meth problem in
El Paso County, Curry and May said. Many users get probation, Curry said.

"People cook more in this area because they can pretty much assume that
they're not going to do any jail time," Curry said.

May said most first-time offenders will only serve probation unless they
bring huge quantities of the drug across state lines or are caught with a
gun while selling. However, sentences are slowly becoming harsher, he said.

"When we first saw the labs cropping up, they were treated just like any
other possessor drugs in the courts," May said. "But now that there has
been an explosion of them and you're seeing more public danger associated
with them, we are noticing that the sentences are getting harsher.

"This is starting to be treated more than just any other drug possessor."

El Paso County has had at least two methamphetamine-related fires this
year. No one was seriously hurt, Curry said, but in Denver two women were
killed in January when the house in which they were cooking the drug blew up.

"We arrested two cooks who told me during an interview that if they had the
availability, they would train 100 cooks, because 'that means that you're
looking for those 100 people and not me,"' Curry said. "It's definitely an
escalating problem in the county."