HOW TO BUST A METH LAB

Training Essential For Extremely Dangerous Task

A certain adrenaline rush comes with busting a meth lab, even if the
gun in your hand is loaded with paintball bullets.

The bad guys may be cardboard cutouts and the lab a Quonset hut at a
Drug Enforcement Administration training facility, rather than some
backwoods shack or ramshackle trailer. But the Kevlar vest can
withstand bullets fired from most handguns. The helmet is real. The
gas mask makes a Darth Vader-like metallic click with each breath.

The instructor knocks on the front door, shouting, "DEA. Police. We
have a search warrant." The next thing you know you're inside,
clearing rooms like a SWAT team on Cops, firing only at targets with
odd numbers. The even-numbered targets could be the good guys, even
children. Everyone shoots at the dog. It's covered with paintball splatters.

Over the past 20 years, more than 12,000 mostly state and local law
enforcement officers have taken the weeklong DEA course on raiding
and securing a methamphetamine lab.

Though the number of meth lab busts has declined dramatically over
the past several years, it remains one of the most dangerous tasks in
law enforcement. Suspects can act like someone out of Night of the
Living Dead. Labs are sometimes booby-trapped. The chemicals used to
cook the meth are explosive, flammable and so toxic they can blister
flesh and damage internal organs.

"It's rough stuff," said John Donnelly, a lead instructor at the DEA
training facility on the sprawling Marine base at Quantico. Donnelly
got his start in the late 1980s busting meth labs in California's
Central Valley.

Even though he's raided meth labs more than 100 times, he said there
was nothing routine about it.

"Your heart races at the critical time," he said.

They call them "Beavis and Butt-Head" labs, the small labs where meth
addicts produce less than an ounce or so of the chemical cocktail for
themselves and their friends. Most of the "super" labs, which can
produce 10 pounds or more in a single batch, are now in Mexico.
Mexican gangs increasingly are using their cocaine-, heroin- and
marijuana-distribution networks to transport meth to the United States.

The number of clandestine meth-lab incidents nationwide has dropped
roughly 50 percent in the last year, from almost 12,500 in 2005 to
6,400 in 2006, according to the DEA. An incident can involve a bust,
the discovery of a disposal site for the chemicals or the seizure of
chemicals or other lab paraphernalia.

Officials said the 6,000 incidents nationwide were still too many.
"The meth lab numbers still aren't zero," said Rep. Rick Larsen,
D-Wash., the co-chair of the House Meth Caucus, who spent a day at
the DEA training facility. "And there has been no drop in the use of meth."

Meth is considered the most addictive illicit drug available. Usage
can lead to anxiety, insomnia, paranoia, hallucinations, aggression,
violent mood swings and an intense craving for the drug.

While there are recovering cocaine and heroin addicts, a meth
addiction is almost impossible to kick, Donnelly said. The toll on
families and communities can be devastating.

Since 2004, some 44 states have restricted over-the-counter sales of
ephedrine and pseudoephedrine products, which provide the basic
ingredient in methamphetamine. While that's led to the significant
drop in meth lab busts, almost 40 percent of local law-enforcement
officials across the country still consider meth the greatest drug
threat in their areas.

With ephedrine providing the kick, meth can be manufactured in labs
using red phosphorus scraped off matchbooks or from highway flares;
anhydrous ammonia stolen from ice rinks, where it's used as a
refrigerant, or from farms; ether, chloride gas, iodine, lye,
hydrogen peroxide, camp stove fuel and chemicals found in other
household products.

Every pound of meth manufactured produces 5 to 6 pounds of toxic waste.

"They throw it in the burn barrel, toss it on the side of the road or
let the garbage man take it away," Donnelly said.