METH EPIDEMIC STRIKES OHIO

Brewed In Home Labs, Addictive Drug Destroys Lives It Touches

A scourge on the West Coast for nearly two decades, methamphetamine has
established a destructive toehold in Ohio, infecting rural outposts, big
cities and middle-class suburbs and consuming thousands of lives.

Like moonshine, but far more addictive, methamphetamine is a home-cooked
concoction that can be brewed in kitchens, hotel rooms, back yards and
trunks of cars.

And its destructive surge eastward - reinvigorated by Mexican drug cartels
- - has been driven largely by waves of hometown cooks, who pass the finished
drug and their favorite recipes to family, friends and customers. In Summit
County, a now-entrenched culture of meth-cooking has been traced to one
woman - Debra Oviatt - who has spent the last eight years in prison but is
still known today as Akron's "Mother of Meth."

"There's no doubt in my mind that Debbie got the whole thing started," said
Larry Limbert, a retired narcotics detective with the Summit County
Sheriff's Office.

Summit County has since become Ohio's meth capital. Narcotics officers
dismantled 104 labs there last year - far more than in any other county -
and are on pace to exceed that total this year. Common wisdom in law
enforcement holds that for every one lab busted, 10 remain undiscovered.

Nationally, the number of labs and other meth sites found last year topped
17,000, according to federal statistics, up from just 327 a decade ago.

As authorities in dozens of states try to shut down local cooks, evidence
is mounting that "ice," a more potent form of meth, is being shipped in
from Mexico and California to fill entrenched demand. In Summit County,
meanwhile, officials say the Department of Children Services has removed
dozens of children from homes where parents cooked and used meth in recent
years. One-third of juveniles enrolled in a Summit County drug-court
program reported having tried the drug, also commonly known as "crank,"
"crystal," "speed" and "tweek."

The number of methamphetamine users who sought help at Oriana House, a
drug-treatment organization in Summit County, jumped from 30 in 2001 to 386
last year.

"There's definitely something going on out there," said Oriana executive
vice president Bernie Rochford.

Police and narcotics agents in Lake County have found 15 labs since
September but only a handful before then. Portage County has dismantled at
least five labs since April.

Police in Ashtabula County have been finding nearly one lab a week. The
Children's Services agency there has had to close an adolescent group home
and shift resources to pay for the care of children removed from parents
who cook and abuse meth.

Methamphetamine use also is rising in Cleveland and its suburbs, where the
drug had been confined mostly to gay bars, bath houses and strip clubs,
says Lt. Michael Jackson of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office. Experts
predict the problem will get worse before it gets better.

"You've heard about crack, you've heard about heroin," said Akron police
Lt. Mike Caprez. "I've seen all those things take their course, and this
has them both beat." Like crack in some ways, meth is more dangerous Like
crack in some ways, meth is more dangerous

Comparing meth to crack cocaine is apt on a number of levels.

Both are stimulants. Both are highly addictive.

While methamphetamine can be snorted, injected or eaten, more than half of
those who sought treatment for meth addiction in 2003 said they smoked the
drug -- which is how crack is ingested.

Smoking meth produces the same strong, instantaneous "rush" that crack
smokers achieve.

Methamphetamine floods the pleasure centers of the brain with large amounts
of the neurotransmitter dopamine. It also affects other body chemicals that
govern sleep, thirst, hunger and sex drive, making a person feel energetic,
wakeful and hypersexual.

But meth remains in the body 10 times longer than crack, which can make
meth cheaper to use. And while crack is obviously dangerous,
methamphetamine causes even more physical harm.

A strong neurotoxin, methamphetamine damages the brain and other vital
organs in a way that crack does not. And recovery, while possible, can be
more difficult and take longer.

It can take several years of abstinence before meth addicts' body chemistry
straightens out and they can feel "normal" again. Early studies show some
of the brain damage is reversible.

The drug also rots teeth, a condition known as "meth mouth." Users develop
ugly sores caused by incessant picking and scratching at phantom "crank
bugs" they feel under their skin.

And when the dopamine "buzz" wears off, meth users are left wide awake for
hours on end feeling angry and depressed.

The quick fix is more meth, which can trigger a vicious cycle of addiction.
Hard-core meth users, known as "tweekers," sometimes go days, even weeks,
without sleep.

That's when they become especially dangerous to themselves and others.
Meth-driven psychosis -- chiefly paranoia and hallucinations -- combined
with severe sleep deprivation can result in bizarre and violent behavior.
James Trimble's attorney has claimed in court filings that his client was
in the throes of meth-induced psychosis when he killed three people in
Portage County's Brimfield Township in January.

Because it is cheaper to use than crack, and because some start using it
for reasons other than getting high, meth has also had a broader appeal
among potential abusers.

Women, who abuse meth at about the same rate as men, often report that they
began using the drug to lose weight.

Blue-collar and construction workers use methamphetamine for an energy
boost to get them through long days of hard labor.

An epidemiologist recently reported that in North Carolina, hunters and
fishermen are using meth to stay awake.

Gay men everywhere use meth for its ability to enhance sex. Stepped-up meth
use is being blamed for dramatic recent increases in infection rates for
HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

"There isn't a specific demographic that I associate with meth," said Dr.
Alex Stalcup, a drug treatment specialist in San Francisco. "It's
essentially a universal drug." Three abusers: three different stories

Three Abusers: Three Different Stories

Margaret, 27, of Summit County, felt self-conscious about her weight after
giving birth to her second child. Her boyfriend coaxed her into trying meth
two years ago as she did the laundry at their apartment in Mogadore.

"I remember I felt like my eyeballs were going to come out of my head, it
burned so bad," Margaret said. "But then, I had all of this energy. So much
energy I didn't know what to do."

She said she stayed up for five days straight, calling off work, scouring
and scrubbing virtually every inch of her apartment.

"I loved to clean when I was on it," she said.

She did indeed lose weight. But then she lost her job, and, because of bad
luck, a vengeful boyfriend and the bag of meth police found in her purse,
she lost custody of her two children, too.

Margaret is now in a community-based corrections facility in Akron working
to put her life back together.

"I can't believe I let this happen to me," she said.

Chad, a 20-year-old recovering addict, said he became instantly addicted to
meth after someone gave him a few lines to snort at the Streetsboro
manufacturing plant where he worked. He said many of his co-workers used
meth to endure the grind of 12-hour days on the factory floor.

"That was my excuse, to get through the shift," Chad said.

Max, 34, of Cleveland, said he and numerous gay men he had sex with in West
Side bath houses would use meth. Most preferred not to use condoms, he
said, and few asked him about his HIV status. He is positive.

Max said he has been drug-free since April, when he and other members of a
group calling itself the "Gay Mafia" were arrested in a sweeping
methamphetamine bust. Federal authorities say the group sold meth brought
here from Phoenix.

"Had I not gotten busted, I would still be doing it," Max acknowledged. "I
don't think there's anything wrong with it."

While crack use increased rapidly, peaked in the late 1980s and then fell
off as people became wary of its effects, meth use has been rising steadily.

From 1993 to 2003, the number of people seeking treatment for meth
addiction jumped five-fold.

Also in 2003, 14 states reported that more people entered treatment for
methamphetamine than for cocaine and heroin combined. A survey that year
estimated that more than 600,000 people recently used meth, about the same
number as used crack. But experts now believe that meth use has exceeded crack.

Unlike crack, methamphetamine -- often referred to as "poor man's cocaine"
- -- has swept through rural communities across the country, including in
southern Ohio.

But it has long been popular in big cities as well, especially out west,
where places like San Diego, Phoenix and Portland, Ore., report high rates
of meth addiction.

Police in Los Angeles say meth has become that city's No. 1 drug.

And police in other western states say methamphetamine is not only their
top drug concern, it's their top crime problem as well.

Walt Myers, the recently retired police chief in Salem, Ore., said meth use
drives at least 85 percent of the crime in that city. Police in Tucson,
Ariz., attribute dramatic recent jumps in thefts and burglaries to a
worsening methamphetamine problem.

And identity theft is emerging in many communities as a crime of choice
among meth addicts.

Bob Brown of the Colorado Bureau of Criminal Investigation said his agency
has investigated numerous rings of meth users producing high-quality
counterfeit checks and identification cards.

"They don't sleep and they're high," Brown said of the meth-driven
counterfeiters. "They're staying up late at night when the rest of us are
sleeping, and they're cranking this stuff out."

Nearly 60 percent of county sheriffs said in a recent national survey that
the meth epidemic is their worst drug problem -- three times the number
mentioning cocaine.

"It's not like the crack epidemic," said Richard Rawson, a drug treatment
expert at UCLA. "It's not a flare-up and flame-out. It's a gradual
infestation and it stays there. That's not a very positive perspective on
the future."

The Making Of Summit's Mother Of Meth'

The infestation in Akron can be traced to when Debra Oviatt returned to
Ohio a second time from California, bringing along her favorite recipe for
home-cooked meth.

Oviatt, 52, grew up in Wadsworth but moved as a young adult to California,
where she was arrested numerous times for auto theft and was sentenced
twice to prison.

She returned to Ohio after being paroled in 1986 and apparently brought a
meth habit with her.

Postal inspectors arrested her in 1991 after a package containing
methamphetamine was mailed from California to her brother-in-law's home in
Richfield. Oviatt received six months in state prison.

She fled to California three years later when one of her customers was
arrested after a 3-ounce package of meth was sent to his home.

When she came back to the Akron area in 1996, Oviatt brought with her a
deadly legacy: the ability to make her own meth and a willingness to pass
on the recipe.

Methamphetamine is manufactured using a witch's brew of solvents and
chemicals to change the molecular structure of pseudoephedrine, the active
ingredient in popular over-the-counter cold remedies such as Sudafed and
Actifed.

Meth labs are typically lowtech affairs. The tools of the trade - glass
jars, plastic soda bottles, coffee filters and aquarium hoses - can fit
inside a typical suitcase. The flammable and combustible nature of the
ingredients makes the process potentially dangerous, but not difficult to
learn.

"There's definitely a science in making it, but it's not rocket science,"
said Michael Fox, a drug counselor with the Community Health Center of
Akron. "With a little bit of training, anybody can make it."

Meth cooks typically attract a small coterie of friends and addicts who
gather ingredients, such as cold pills, in exchange for a share of the
finished product.

When those friends and addicts learn the recipe themselves, they often form
their own co-operatives, which leads to more cooking, more drugs and more
addiction.

That's essentially what happened with Oviatt, authorities say. And the
result was a dramatic increase in meth abuse in southern Summit County.

How many people she eventually taught to make the drug is in dispute.

Although she declined twice to be interviewed, Oviatt claimed in a letter
to have taught only two. Police think it's many more.

Among her students, they say, was Oviatt's son, Christopher Shrake, who is
serving a second prison sentence for meth manufacturing.

Legendary Cook Undaunted By Charges

It was Shrake's carelessness that led to the discovery of Summit County's
first known methamphetamine lab nearly 10 years ago.

About 7:30 a.m. on May 5, 1996, the Green Fire Department got a call about
a fire at a home on East Turkeyfoot Road. Shrake apparently started the
fire while mishandling some of the ingredients.

The home sustained extensive damage. Firefighters' initial suspicions were
confirmed when members of a Summit County drug unit arrived and revealed
that they had been investigating reports of a meth lab in the home.

A Summit County grand jury indicted Oviatt and Shrake. But that didn't slow
Oviatt down.

Police say that after a friend made and sold enough meth to post her bail,
Oviatt set up a shifting string of labs in people's homes and in hotels
along Interstate 77.

Detectives said Oviatt sometimes enlisted the help of her 6-year-old
daughter to scrape methamphetamine residue from filters, telling her it was
bird seed.

Oviatt initially was selective about whom she taught, sometimes sharing
only a portion of the recipe in exchange for cash or meth-making
ingredients, a former student said. That changed when it was clear she was
headed to prison.

"Debbie wanted to teach anybody and everybody so this town would be flooded
and nobody would make any money," the student said.

Before she could settle the charges from the Green incident, Oviatt was
arrested in August 1996 at a hotel in Wadsworth.

Police, who had been called because of a fight between Shrake and his
girlfriend, found methlab components in Oviatt's room.

Oviatt agreed to a plea deal on charges from both arrests. But before
sentencing, she fled in February 1997 with the 6-year-old and a pregnant
16-year-old daughter.

Detectives spent five months chasing her around Ohio, West Virginia and
Pennsylvania.

"She bounced from apartment house to apartment house, hotel to hotel," said
Limbert, the retired detective. "They would make enough dope in those
places that they would be OK."

Oviatt's meth-cooking career ended on June 22, 1997. That's when her
younger daughter called 9-1-1 from a hotel in Springfield Township and
asked to speak with Limbert and Detective Bruce Berlin. Oviatt, who had
left the hotel, was arrested later that evening.

She pleaded guilty to various charges, including racketeering and
kidnapping, and received an 11 1⁄2-year sentence.

Police believe that by the time she went to prison, dozens of others had
learned how to make methamphetamine, either directly from Oviatt or from
one of her students.

South Akron Is Hotbed For Meth

Oviatt and her proteges helped make mostly white, blue-collar Akron
neighborhoods like Kenmore and Firestone Park - along with nearby Barberton
and Springfield Township - the epicenter of meth making in Summit County.

It's in that general area that most of Summit County's meth labs have been
found, including a would-be meth school operated by Brian Matheny, who
police believe learned and improved on Oviatt's recipe.

A nurse by training, Matheny set up a lab in the basement of his Kenmore
home, selling meth to support a substantial heroin habit.

Using a camera he had received for Christmas, he made an instructional
video on meth manufacturing.

Police found the tape during a search of the basement in September 1997.

It shows Matheny coughing and exhaling hydrochloric gas, which is used in
one step of the cooking process.

Penny Bishop, 43, got hooked on meth about the same time, and in the same
general neighborhood, and eventually learned to cook as well - out of
economic necessity.

Bishop says a friend introduced her to the drug in 1997, and she liked it
immediately. In about two months, her habit grew from $100 a week to $400
as she switched from eating meth to smoking it.

"I had to have it just to get out of bed," Bishop said. "If I didn't have
it, I wasn't moving."

Bishop depended on the drug to allow her to work long hours managing a
gasoline station. But when her habit quickly exceeded her salary, the
friend who first sold her meth began giving her money to buy cold pills.

She started shoplifting the pills so she could keep the cash and, as many
meth addicts do, learned to make the drug herself.

Bishop, a high school dropout, said she caught on quickly.

"It was amazing I could take all these chemicals and make a drug, but I
can't grasp simple things to get my GED," Bishop said.

By the late 1990s, many stores had begun limiting how many boxes of cold
pills a person could buy at one time. (It takes about 1,100
standard-strength pills to make a 1-ounce batch of meth, roughly 280 doses.)

Meth cooks have generally sidestepped such measures by sending out groups
of people to buy cold pills from as many stores as necessary to acquire the
amount needed for the next batch.

Laws cripple cooks, but meth keeps coming But in the last two years,
authorities have gotten more aggressive in trying to squeeze the cooks.

About 40 states have passed laws to restrict the sale of pseudoephedrine
products or are considering them.

In Ohio, legislators are considering a bill that would restrict sales of
pseudoephedrine products.

The Oregon legislature agreed last month to make it a prescription drug.
And Congress is considering a bill that would follow Oklahoma's lead by
requiring buyers of the pills to show identification and sign a log book.

A number of national retailers have voluntarily moved cold tablets to
more-secure areas of their stores. And drug manufacturers are gearing up
production of cold pills that contain phenylephrine - which cannot easily
be converted into meth - instead of pseudoephedrine.

Since Oklahoma's pioneering law took effect last year, methlab seizures
there have plummeted.

But not all the news is good. Narcotics detectives say there is more meth
than ever in Oklahoma. And the quality is better.

With local cooks being shut down, the state's entrenched meth demand is now
being met by Mexican narcotraficantes who have stepped up production,
mostly south of the border, to supply a growing U.S. market.

Seizures of "ice" - the nearly pure form of meth churned out in Mexican
super labs - have jumped nearly fivefold in Oklahoma since its
pseudoephedrine law took effect in April 2004.

Ice, which resembles shards of glass, "is like meth on rocket fuel," said
Mark Woodward, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs.

Because of its purity and strength, he said, it's more addictive and more
dangerous than the home-cooked meth it's replacing.

As long as the demand for meth highs persists, the future does not look
bright. There are no signs that meth use is dropping in the West, Midwest
or Southeast - areas of the country where meth use has become entrenched.

More Californians were treated for methamphetamine addiction than
alcoholism in 2003. And meth has started to make inroads into Pennsylvania,
Maryland and rural communities of New York - the outskirts of the Northeast
Corridor, which is home to 60 million people, onefifth of the U.S. population.

Vermont and Maine have been bracing for an upswing in meth use and
manufacturing. Two labs were recently found in Connecticut.

"Their numbers [of meth users] are going to go up," said Special Agent
Michael Heald, a methamphetamine expert with the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration.

Heald acknowledged that law enforcement's ability to stop the eastward
surge of meth is limited. Prevention and treatment, he said, are the best
weapons in this particular battle in the war on drugs.

"Until we teach people that drugs are absolutely destructive to ourselves
and society, we can arrest all the people we can" and still not win, Heald
said.

"We can't do this alone."