METH STILL A MONSTER

BENTONVILLE -- Authorities arrested 32 people in a single investigation in
1999 in hopes of stemming the flow of Mexican methamphetamine into
Northwest Arkansas. New drug dealers repaired the pipeline within six months.

Nearly four years into their intensive fight, authorities aren't much
closer to solving the region's meth problem. Arrests and lab seizures
continue to rise. In Northwest Arkansas, two main forces fuel the meth
trade -- widely scattered local producers, or cooks, based in rural areas
and structured, high-volume production and trafficking groups based in Mexico.

Police say the solution lies in getting more: more federal money and
manpower, more intelligence on drug dealers, more education in the schools
and more treatment options for users.

The state and federal governments have passed more laws, and they've
dedicated more money and manpower in the past few years to try to beat the
meth epidemic. Authorities say it hasn't been enough. As quickly as new
laws and personnel are added, dealers and cooks change their tactics.

"We're dealing with meth constantly," Madison County Sheriff Phillip Morgan
said. "We've got a jail full of meth cooks right now. Every time we put one
in jail, two or three replace them."

A FEDERAL FIGHT

Arkansas led the nation in 1999 with the highest ratio of meth lab seizures
per capita with 554. In 2000, law enforcement seized more than 750 meth labs.

That number is expected to reach nearly 1,000 this year, officials said.

New federal laws that trigger mandatory minimum sentences for lower
quantities of meth have pushed cooks to reduce their output, said Bill
Cromwell, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas.

"We used to see individuals setting up these huge labs and trying to cook
large quantities of meth," Cromwell said. "Now, they're facing stiffer
penalties for larger quantities. That's driven them to produce smaller
amounts, one to three ounces, in little box labs that they can set up
quickly in motel rooms or cars."

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration in Fayetteville has doubled its
task force with police from agencies across Washington, Benton and Carroll
counties. A strategist with experience in Mexican meth trafficking recently
joined the DEA in Fayetteville.

The Rogers Police Department pulled its narcotics officers off the
state-sponsored 19th Judicial District Drug Task Force last year and
started a city drug squad. Some officers on the squad have a dual
assignment with the growing Fayetteville DEA office.

"It's not realistic to think that a handful of narcotics officers in a
department of our size is going to clean up all the meth," Rogers Police
Chief Tim Keck said. "The federal resources and the extended jurisdiction
that our guys get from being assigned to the DEA is just too good to pass up."

Federal jurisdiction is even more important now that Rogers is annexing
land outside its borders. "We don't want to blow an important drug case
because of a 50-yard jurisdictional miscall," Keck said.

Some small-town police complain they don't reap the federal drug fighting
benefits because they don't have the manpower to assign an officer to the
federal task force.

Cave Springs police Chief Phil Scuimbato said this three-officer department
is out of the drug fighting loop since the 19th Judicial District Drug Task
Force covering Benton and Carroll counties disbanded last year.

"Until law enforcement bands together and puts in place some kind of
centralized intelligence-sharing system, the small towns are left behind,"
Scuimbato said. "The DEA isn't designed to go into a small town and buy an
eight ball [one-eighth of an ounce] of meth. They're designed to find the
source and cut it off. It's up to the smaller cities to do the leg work.
Without the task force, we have absolutely no resources."

METH MOST POPULAR

Meth arrests continue to surpass other drug arrests in Northwest Arkansas,
prosecutors said. Marijuana and cocaine follow. And demand continues to
outpace what area meth labs can produce.

In 2000, police arrested 838 people in Arkansas on charges of manufacturing
meth, the Arkansas State Police reports. Benton County had the most arrests
with 86.

Street-level meth arrests provide police with a steady stream of
intelligence about production and trafficking. In this area, police have
made some gains.

"It seems like meth users are more willing to [give] their sources now,"
Fayetteville police Lt. Tim Helder said. "That old code of loyalty that
used to prevail isn't as strong anymore."

In Springdale and Rogers, agents use the information to help unravel
tightly organized drug rings that distribute meth by the pound. The meth is
made in superlabs in Mexico and imported through Texas or California by car
or mail.

Agents with the 4th Judicial Drug Task Force in Madison and Washington
counties spend much of their time trying to intercept multiple-pound
shipments of meth imported into Fayetteville and Springdale, said Craig
McKee of the task force.

"Most of the meth was see is imported," said Lt. Mike Johnson of the Rogers
Police Department. "It's being distributed in multiple pounds."

Now traffickers are protecting their identities by positioning middle-men
between themselves and police.

"Before, we had the dealer selling to the supplier or straight to the
user," said Keck, who helped lead the 1999 meth sweep, Operation Daycare.

"Now we've got pounds funneling through a fourth person," Keck said. "These
people have proven their trust to the dealers. They present a new layer of
protection that's harder to penetrate. But we will."

Catching those who produce meth locally can be just as frustrating for police.

In rural Northwest Arkansas, drug agents complain about staying one step
behind meth cooks who abandon used toxic chemicals in outbuildings, car
trunks and even cemeteries.

Drug agents say local labs are more mobile and simple than the elaborate
collections of glass, beakers and tubes they seized two years ago.

"Meth still runs rampant here," a drug agent at the Benton County sheriff's
office said. The agency has two drug agents to cover the county. "There's
been no letting up. The labs we see now are more mobile, and the cooks are
getting smarter. They shut down operations fast and delegate their duties
to other people."

Police also noted that most local labs produce personal supplies for the
cook and small circles of his friends and family.

"Most labs we get are people cooking just to support their habits," McKee
said. "When we go into these labs we hardly ever find dope and we hardly
ever find money."

Benton County Prosecuting Attorney Bob Balfe said a spike in the number of
meth cases prompted him in January to assign a deputy prosecutor to only
drug cases. Deputy prosecutor Kerry Kotouc has specialized training in meth
lab investigations and is a point person with central knowledge of drug
cases throughout the county.

The result is better prepared meth prosecutions and longer sentences, Balfe
said.

NEW LAWS, NEW LOOPHOLES

Arkansas State Police Director Don Melton is designing a statewide drug
strategy to combine the resources of law enforcement agencies and improve
intelligence sharing.

The strategy will include involvement from the DEA and the Arkansas Drug
Council, which disperses grants to law enforcement, treatment, prevention
and education entities in Arkansas.

"We need to make sure that everyone's sharing the resources available now,
and that law enforcement isn't acting redundantly in its investigations,"
Melton said. "I know of several different agencies that are researching the
same drug trafficking networks at once. We need to make sure we're on the
same page."

It disheartens police that meth recipes are a few mouse clicks away on the
Internet. Hardware and grocery stores stock most ingredients to make meth.

In 1999, the Arkansas Legislature passed two laws making it a felony to
possess otherwise legal chemicals with the intent to make meth. Another law
made it a felony to have anhydrous ammonia, also used in meth production,
in a container that doesn't meet federal safety regulations.

In step, retailers started alerting police about suspicious sales of
products used to make meth.

Meth producers know it draws attention when they fill a shopping cart with
Red Devil lye, denatured alcohol and muriatic acid, investigators said. So
they dispatch several people to different stores where each buys a supply
of only one product. Later, the products are assembled at one place,
combined and heated to make meth. The workers are often paid in finished
product.

"One person will be assigned to break down the ephedrine, and you'll have
three different tasks going on at the same time," Johnson said. "Then they
abandon that location and move on to someplace else."

Police pin some hope on Act 1209, which restricts the retail sale and
possession of ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, norpseudoepherdine and
phenylpopanolamine to single transactions of no more than three packages or
nine grams, whichever is smaller. The act became law June 1.

Rogers drug agents have already heard from a few cooks who admitted upon
arrest that the new law stymied their production.

In rural Benton County, drug agents said producers simply cross into
Oklahoma to avoid the Arkansas restrictions.

Another new law pleases police even as they doubt its impact. Act 1141
allows a 10-year prison enhancement for anyone arrested making meth around
minors. Northwest Arkansas drug agents said they find children living near
75 percent of the meth labs they seize.

REGIONAL EFFORT

Not all of the meth imported to Arkansas stays in the state.

Arkansas was turned down last year for a federal designation as a High
Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. Regions that are deemed high-intensity
areas receive from $1 to $14 million each year to combat drugs.

Arkansas wanted to use some of the $2.3 million it requested to build
computer networked intelligence-sharing systems and to form multiagency
task forces to coordinate with federal, state and local police.

Now, two new initiatives are under way to secure high intensity
designations in Arkansas. One targets statewide coverage. The other
comprises western counties bordering Oklahoma.

Eric Drost, an assistant to the state drug director, said officials started
last month drafting a new high-intensity trafficking area proposal that
will target counties in the four corners of the state. The proposal will
focus on showing that drug trafficking in Arkansas extends beyond state lines.

The proposal includes evidence of meth brought into Northwest Arkansas and
being distributed to Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, Drost said.

"Part of why we were turned down last time was that we didn't put enough
emphasis on showing a threat to other parts of the country," he said. "This
time we'll do a better job of illustrating drug trafficking organizations
within Arkansas and how that affects other states."

Sheldon Spurling, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Oklahoma in
Muskogee, said meth trafficking jumps across the Arkansas and Oklahoma
border and begs for a coordinated response by federal and state officials.
Spurling is directing an effort to seek a high-intensity area designation
for the border corridor.

"Besides the local producers crossing state lines, there are substantial
shipments along this primary corridor," he said.

An executive committee that prepared Arkansas' 2000 proposal said the state
is a pathway for drug trafficking because of its interstate highways. The
highways provide a conduit for drugs in and out of the state. Smuggling
patterns shifting away from the United States' southwest border have made
Arkansas an attractive alternate route, the committee reported.

Mexican organizations are smuggling large amounts of meth into Arkansas for
consumption and further distribution to other states. There are also
initial signs that Mexican heroin is following the Mexican-produced meth
from the Western states, the committee said.

DEA Director Asa Hutchinson said Congress has recommended that the National
Drug Control Policy look favorably on establishing a high-intensity
trafficking area that would include Arkansas.

The former U.S. representative from Fort Smith said he expects his home
state to land a high-intensity designation. In the meantime, the DEA will
continue its increased presence in Northwest Arkansas.

"Whenever you have an emerging drug problem that intensifies to the level
that methamphetamine has, it takes a while to turn that large ship around,"
Hutchinson said. "Methamphetamine isn't a Washington problem, it's a local
community problem and we'll continue to be helpful."