DRUG PROBLEM WORSE BASED ON NEW DATA

Day breaks in Bessemer, and an unmarked van rumbles over railroad tracks.
It turns down a street filled with grand but aging homes and parks behind a
rundown frame house, the worst in the neighborhood.

Eight heavily armed men and women dressed in black, with armored vests
and helmets, pile out. They smash through the home's rear door,
shouting, "Sheriff's department! Search warrant!"

In the war on drugs, it's another skirmish, something that is
occurring far more often in Alabama. For the first time, the state
Department of Forensic Sciences crime lab is counting drug cases
statewide, and it's getting a total that is nearly double what was
previously calculated.

Now we know 30,891 drug cases were filed in Alabama in fiscal 2006,
said Gary Wallace, chief of drug chemistry at the crime lab.

That's one case for every 150 Alabama residents. It represents more
defendants than the entire population of Bessemer, and at that rate in
three years the number of people arrested could fill Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Alabama, like the rest of America, has an escalating and costly drug
problem. The FBI estimates that adult drug arrests tripled from 1970
to 2005. More than 1.5 million of these arrests occur annually in the
U.S. The cost of illicit drug use in 2002 was $181 billion, with $107
billion of that associated with crimes such as murder and robbery,
according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Timely information:

Wallace said new software is enabling officials to calculate the total
number and types of drug cases the crime lab handles. It is providing
a real-time look at the flow of illegal drugs seized by police in
Alabama and, indirectly, is giving officials a pretty good idea of the
number of arrests.

For years the most authoritative data on drug arrests came from the
Alabama Criminal Information Justice Center's Uniform Crime Reporting
Program. But it is an incomplete source of information.

For instance, the crime lab statistics reveal that the number of drug
arrests made every year in Alabama may be much higher than counts
taken by the Uniform Crime Reporting Program. While the crime lab
analyzed evidence in almost 31,000 drug cases in fiscal 2006, the
Uniform Crime Reporting Program counted 17,365 drug arrests for
calendar year 2006, according to its annual report.

Page 2 of 3 Carol Roberts, a public information expert for the Uniform
Crime Reporting Program, said some police agencies in the state,
including the state Department of Public Safety, the state troopers,
fail to report their drug arrest numbers. Thus, data are incomplete,
she said.

Wallace said the total number of cases handled by the crime lab
nonetheless provides a fairly accurate indication of just how many
drug arrests are made in Alabama. The lab handles drug cases from all
police agencies in Alabama, he said. Everybody sends in their evidence
because quantitative and chemical analyses are necessary for criminal
prosecution.

So the crime lab is able to accurately count criminal drug cases,
which are now pouring into the lab at a rate of 2,800 a month, or
about 90 a day, Wallace said.

Many cases involve more than one drug, so the number of cases is lower
than the number of seizures - 36,969 for the past fiscal year. Boiled
down, that means an illegal drug of some sort is seized on average
every 15 minutes in Alabama, around the clock.

A typical raid:

The drug operation in Bessemer early one Wednesday morning provided a
look at what kinds of charges are typically filed, and what types of
drugs are most often seized.

Minutes after deputies crashed through the back door, a bleary-eyed,
shirtless man was brought out in handcuffs. "Usually when you do this
early in the morning you catch them in bed," said Lt. Paul Hogan, head
of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department narcotics division.

Deputies confiscated a 12-gauge shotgun, and two police dogs sniffed
out what appeared to be small amounts of crack cocaine and marijuana.
The 38-year-old resident of the home was arrested and charged with
possession of a controlled substance.

The overwhelming majority of drug arrests nationwide and statewide are
for possession, as opposed to trafficking.

Marijuana was the top illicit drug confiscated last fiscal year in
Alabama. According to the crime lab, authorities seized about 2,500
pounds of marijuana in 15,409 cases. That's half the state's caseload
for drug violations.

Page 3 of 3 Cocaine was the other suspected drug seized in the
Bessemer raid. It is the No. 2 drug on the crime lab's list of cases.
There were 10,954 seizures last fiscal year involving about 240 pounds
of cocaine, either as powder or crack.

Prescription drugs:

The drug lab statistics also reveal that police and medical examiners
are facing an increasingly complex problem with prescription drugs.

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"We see a little bit of everything," Wallace said.

The crime lab analyzed about two dozen types of prescription drugs and
about a dozen street drugs. The most commonly seized prescription drug
was hydrocodone, the narcotic ingredient in Lortab.

"Lortabs have taken over as the pharmaceutical drug of choice,"
Wallace said. "Valium led that for a while, but Lortab has taken over."

Wallace said prescription drugs have a tendency to morph into a
variety of forms. For example, a class of tranquilizers known as
benzodiazepines came onto the pharmaceutical market in 1960, first as
Librium and then Valium.

There are now dozens of benzodiazepines, all with slightly different
tranquilizing effects and all with the potential for addiction and
overdose. Five different benzodiazepines were seized by authorities in
Alabama during fiscal 2006, according to data from the crime lab.

Wallace said most trends revealed by the statistics aren't surprising.
Officials generally know what's being seized because they handle the
arrests and paperwork. They also know many types of illegal drugs come
and go.

LSD has come and gone several times since the 1960s. It's now gone,
with only five seizures of that hallucinogen in fiscal 2006.

But the main drug of choice stays the same, easily topping the number
of seizures by police. "The majority is marijuana," Wallace said.
"That's pretty standard every year."

Long days and nights:

One of the deputies participating in the Bessemer raid said it is much
easier to zero in on street drugs than prescription drugs. That's
because people who abuse prescription drugs usually make their
purchases through medical channels. They may shop around for several
doctors, or find an unethical doctor willing to write prescriptions
for a price, making those kinds of crimes tough to uncover.

Still, Hogan's team of narcotics deputies stays busy, sometimes
putting in long days and nights. The deputies started work at 5 a.m.
the day of the Bessemer raid, and planned to conduct another operation
later that day, and then again at 7 p.m.

"I don't think we're ever going to stomp out drugs totally," Hogan
said.