ILLEGAL METHAMPHETAMINE LABS SPROUTING UP IN RURAL GEORGIA

Albany --- Rural Georgia is well known for its barbecue cooking, but Boston
butts aren't the only thing simmering at some backwoods bungalows these days.

Methamphetamine, a drug once associated with outlaw biker gangs, has become
a serious problem throughout rural Georgia, authorities said.

Police have busted 88 methamphetamine labs in Georgia this year, compared
with 29 the year before, said Special Agent Coleman Ramsey, supervisor of
the Drug Enforcement Administration's regional clandestine laboratory
program in Atlanta.

"It's a drug that people are hearing more about," he said. "It's a cheap
drug for the high they're getting. It's relatively inexpensive to make and
the profit is enormous.

"You can basically take an $800 to $900 investment and turn it into $16,000
to $17,000 in a matter of hours," Ramsey said. "There's a ready market for
it. As fast as you can make it, you can sell it."

A synthetic stimulant that can be smoked, snorted, injected or taken in
pill form, methamphetamine increases alertness and euphoria and decreases
appetite. It also can cause paranoia, drastic mood swings, brain damage and
death.

Because of the volatile chemicals used to make the addictive drug, 113 meth
labs exploded last year throughout the country. Some meth cooks use
acetone, which is highly combustible, and anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer
than can produce a poisonous gas. Other substances often associated with
meth cooking include Freon, ether (starter fluid) and potassium chlorate.

When drug agents take down a lab, they not only have to be concerned about
potentially violent criminals suffering from drug-induced paranoia, they
also have to be wary of fires, explosions and chemical contaminants.
Decontaminating a meth lab can cost between $3,000 and $20,000, officials say.

"The methamphetamine is not as big of a worry as the labs are," said Maj.
Bill Berry, commander of the Albany-Dougherty Drug Unit. "A clandestine lab
is a toxic waste area."

Georgia's latest meth lab bust occurred earlier this month in Crisp County,
about 100 miles south of Macon.

Drug agents and Crisp County deputies arrested four men, three from
Florida, during a raid on a Cordele mobile home. They also seized five
ounces of methamphetamine worth $5,500 and recovered two guns and $1,400 in
cash.

Ramsey said most of Georgia's meth busts have been in northeastern Georgia,
but the labs are not confined to that region.

"We're seeing it slowly moving south," he said. "The bikers have been
replaced over the years by the good old boy network. Ninety-nine percent
(of the users) are white men and women."

Methamphetamine also is showing up in metro Atlanta's Hispanic population,
he said.

Because of restrictions placed on some of the ingredients used to make
methamphetamine, cooks now make the drug from two legal substances,
ephedrine and pseudoephedrine.

Ramsey said it is difficult to recover from meth addiction.

"I have a friend who is an emergency room doctor," Ramsey said. "He says
you never see any old methamphetamine users. They're . . . dead."