OUTLAW DRUG LABS RAPIDLY TAKE ROOT

CALDWELL, Ohio -- His left bicep, etched with a tattoo of the Grim Reaper
clutching a chemical beaker, quickly marks Ron Kuhn as a methamphetamine maker.

Kuhn practiced -- and perfected, he would brag -- the outlaw craft over
three years, working from clandestine "laboratories'' in rural Washington
County -- operations officials have said they want to shut down with a
proposed new law.

The Ohio House is scheduled to vote on the bill Tuesday.

Kuhn said a new law won't help, however, because making the illicit drug is
too easy. Methods and recipes vary. Kuhn bought his supplies legally, over
the counter.

He used a coffee grinder to pulverize cheap antihistamine pills containing
ephedrine, a key ingredient in meth. When the powder is added to
water-filled, quart-sized mason jars, the ephedrine separates. The recipe
also called for red-iodine crystals and hypophosphorous. The mixture --
some are heated, some aren't -- is run through a gauntlet of beakers and
tubing.

Kuhn, 47, recalled the cat-urine odor that wafted in the air as the
chemicals crackled and barked through the tubing. And, Kuhn said, he always
cautioned observers not to light a cigarette around the volatile fumes.

For those reasons, meth cookers increasingly work in rural areas where nosy
neighbors are few and far between.

With the setup akin to a crude high-school science experiment, Kuhn churned
out pure-white methamphetamine "ice,'' his specialty. His price: $250 each
for "eightballs,'' eighth-of-an-ounce units that can last a month. His
market: southeastern Ohio.

Kuhn cooked and sold and shot into his own veins the illicit drug until
authorities shut him down.

Smoked, snorted or injected, meth is said to deliver a rushing, euphoric
and addictive high like no other, more profound and prolonged than crack
cocaine. The drug's popularity has spread from the California coast across
the nation.

"Pure methamphetamine, it don't get any better,'' Kuhn said recently at
Noble Correctional Institution. Cookers such as Kuhn hone their recipes by
consulting the Internet, buying the Physicians' Desk Reference and
exchanging tips with other manufacturers.

Alarmed by a steady increase in such operations and the environmental
damage they cause, Gov. Bob Taft and state lawmakers are hoping the
legislation is tough enough to stop meth makers before they start.

The House bill would criminalize the assembly of certain chemicals with the
intent to make methamphetamine and other drugs such as Ecstasy.

If enacted, the bill also would:

* Make meth manufacturing near schools and on public property a
first-degree felony.

* Label the drug a hazardous waste and hold manufacturers liable for
environmental-cleanup costs.

But Kuhn said a fancy new law won't make the labs go away.

Just last week, Fairfield County sheriff's deputies found evidence of a
crystal methamphetamine lab at a house in Lancaster. Deputies evacuated
homes near 1327 E. Mulberry St. because of the volatile chemicals.

The arrest Thursday of Vincent P. Spinelli, 36, led to the raid at the
house he shares with his mother, Sheriff Dave Phalen said. Spinelli is
being held in the Pickaway County jail on one count of illegal
manufacturing of drugs. If convicted, he faces a maximum eight years in
prison and a $15,000 fine.

Smart cookers, Kuhn said, will evade suspicion by buying and storing
supplies at different locations, making the proposed law difficult to enforce.

"It might sound good to the public, but it isn't going to do anything. As
long as it's easy to make, man.''

Historic high

Call it ice, speed, crank or redneck crack, its latest nickname, variations
of methamphetamine have been around for decades. During World War II, both
Allied and German troops took speed to fight fatigue, and 1950s housewives
popped pep pills to lose weight. College students and truckers long have
used the drug to pull them through all-nighters.

Modern meth manufacturing began in California with biker gangs and Mexican
organized crime. Kuhn bought his recipe and his Grim Reaper tattoo in
California.

Meth production the past decade has crept stealthily across the country and
into the Midwest, spreading throughout Ohio, authorities said.

Rural production is becoming popular because -- far from nosy neighbors who
might call police -- the distinctive odor can dissipate before detection.
Manufacturers also know that rural sheriffs generally lack the staff, money
and training to uncover the labs, said Lee Hawks, assistant agent in charge
of the now-defunct Major Crimes Task Force in Athens and Meigs counties.

Last year, federal authorities busted 18 meth labs in Ohio. So far this
year, they have hit 37, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration. And the more they raid, the more chemical cleanup there is.
The drug agency spent $99,556 in 2000 and $113,000 so far this year on
cleanup in Ohio.

Buckeye State numbers faintly echo the nation's. Last year, the DEA seized
7,528 labs. No one knows how many still operate.

"They're like deer at the side of the road. For every one you see, there's
probably four or five you don't,'' Hawks said.

Environmental hazard

Hawks and the task force helped confiscate three manufacturing labs in
rural Athens County in recent years. In the process, they and others
quickly learned that a meth-lab bust is nothing like a marijuana raid; the
dangerous chemicals require a protocol that crosses law-enforcement
jurisdictions.

The drill goes like this:

* When local law-enforcement officers find a lab, they alert the DEA.

* The DEA deploys specially trained agents to confiscate the lab.

* Local firefighters and emergency workers typically are put on standby as
the agents enter the lab.

* The DEA hires hazardous-materials contractors to remove the chemicals.

* The federal drug agency works closely with the state Environmental
Protection Agency and, in Ohio, the Bureau of Criminal Identification and
Investigation in confiscating labs.

Cleanup costs can reach $10,000 for a house contaminated by chemical
residue from meth production, authorities said.

The cooking method can produce phosphine gas and acid vapor, which are
hazardous if inhaled or come in contact with the skin. One recipe calls for
chloroform, a suspected human carcinogen.

Sometimes cookers dump hazardous residue outdoors, which poses a threat to
soil and water.

"For every pound of methamphetamine produced, approximately 5 to 6 pounds
of hazardous waste is generated -- liquid, solid, whatever,'' said Abby
Lavelle of the Ohio EPA's Division of Emergency and Remedial Response.

Worse, the environmental risk can be mobile. Kuhn cooked indoors. Others
cook "Nazi'' style, Lavelle said. Named for German troops' use of speed,
the formula's key ingredient is anhydrous ammonia, legally used as a farm
fertilizer or refrigerant. The method is portable enough to stash in a car
trunk.

"The scary part about the Nazi labs is they could cook while they drive.
The mixture of chemicals creates heat and cooks. It's very dangerous to the
public,'' Lavelle said.

Alarmed by the surge in production, Lavelle and Hawks began working with
state agencies to offer local police, firefighters and emergency workers
training in lab detection and raid protocol.

Taft, meanwhile, was learning more at conferences.

"The governor said, 'We need to stop this before it spreads,' '' said
Domingo Herraiz, director of the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services.

An anti-meth campaign, including a May 8 conference in Columbus, will
introduce fact cards for retailers and motel owners who may unwittingly
sell chemicals to a meth producer or rent a room for a temporary lab.

Last year, at Herraiz's request, Hawks filed a detailed report with
recommendations on fighting the methamphetamine labs and cookers he was
seeing in Ohio. The report went to Taft and helped form the basis of the
pending legislation, which House Speaker Larry Householder said is a priority.

Hawks said he is glad officials are taking it seriously. Like Kuhn, he said
meth production is a growth industry. But unlike Kuhn, Hawks said he thinks
tough laws can help stop it.

Lost years

Why manufacture meth?

"The money,'' Kuhn said. "Yeah, the money is extreme. It costs less than $1
a gram to make, and it sells for $100 a gram.

"People beat your door down.''

He charged the going rate, drug investigators said.

Kuhn earned a good income, but would not disclose exact figures.

Informants quoted in court documents said Kuhn made meth in his rural house
outside Macksburg, between Caldwell and Marietta in Washington County,
about 90 miles southeast of Columbus. A raid inventory details the
chemicals and supplies seized from the dwelling.

Kuhn said the informants lied. "I'm not that stupid. You could get busted
for residue.'' He said he used local motel rooms instead.

Either way, Kuhn was busted. Indicted on two counts of illegal manufacture
of drugs, he pleaded guilty last year to one count and was sentenced to a
flat five years in prison.

At the time, Kuhn was down to 111 pounds. Accustomed to staying awake on
meth for as long as 12 days, he recalled, he ate nothing but spoonfuls of
peanut butter and ice cream.

Buzzed and made obsessive by the drug, he built pendulum-style clocks,
threw darts, played with his Playstation, tinkered with car bodies and
partied with his "girls,'' the local women who used his drug. Anything to
"keep busy,'' Kuhn recalled.

Some of the women, sleepless for days on a prolonged methamphetamine binge
with Kuhn, scratched their arms so deep they made gouges. Such "tweaking''
meth users think they have bugs on their arms, hallucinations that indicate
chronic use.

Kuhn said he feels guilty now. "Them girls wouldn't have been doing it if I
didn't make it,'' he said.

Today, Kuhn eats regularly and attends Narcotics Anonymous classes. He is
back to his normal weight of 170 pounds. Except for a scar on his left
forearm where he blew a vein shooting up, and the meth-rotted teeth he
lost, Kuhn is in good condition after a lifetime of drug abuse.

His love affair with drugs began at 14 when he smoked his first joint in
the back seat of a Corvair, and continued through 33 years' worth of
uppers, downers, LSD, peyote, mushrooms, cocaine and, finally, his favorite
- -- meth.

A career drug dealer from Canton in northeast Ohio, Kuhn served jail time
in Stark County for robbing pharmacies. He has been thrice divorced; his
four children, who range in age from 15 to 19, don't answer his letters.

Kuhn, who missed many of their birthdays and holidays when they were
younger because he was high, said he understands.

When he gets out of prison, he hopes to run a backhoe business and won't
use drugs, he said. And he vows to help parents and authorities spread the
anti-meth message to kids.

He said he took pride in his product but had some ethics, he said.

"I made large amounts, and I sold to bikers. I didn't sell to kids,'' he
said. "All in all, I'd hate to see kids get going on it,'' he said.