TOO EASY TO BUY INGREDIENTS -- METHAMPHETAMINE INVADES THE MIDWEST

Invasion Iowa is a new TV reality show. A fake film crew descends on a
small town and pretends to make a science-fiction movie. The locals try out
for the "parts." The humor is gentle. This is the Iowa of apple pies, tidy
lawns and nice farm folk.

But Iowa has another reality, and there's nothing funny about it. Iowa has
been invaded, all right, and the ravager is crystal meth.

Methamphetamine is possibly the worst drug of all time. It quickly clamps a
hard addiction onto users. The end product is hallucinations and paranoiac
rages. People trying to kick meth may need two years to even start feeling
normal.

Crystal meth ruins lives. Iowa broke up 1,472 meth labs last year alone.
And the state now cares for 1,000 children abused by their parents' meth
habits. Methamphetamine is responsible for 62 percent of the admissions
into state prisons. Iowa's heartache is shared across the heartland -- from
Idaho to Nebraska to Indiana to Oklahoma.

And how has the Bush administration responded? By cutting drug-treatment
programs. The proposed new budget would also slash federal funding for
meth-related law enforcement and environmental cleanup by 50 percent.

The states try to do what they can. Iowa has just passed a stiff law
limiting people's ability to buy cold medicines at drugstores. Sudafed,
Dimetapp and other common-cold remedies contain pseudoephedrine -- a key
ingredient in methamphetamine.

Meth is not a ghetto drug. Its users are over 90 percent white. And while
the epidemic is spreading, it remains concentrated in America's heartland.
There are several reasons. One is privacy. People can cook meth in their
kitchens or bathrooms. And it's easier to hide such activities in a rural area.

You can go to a Wal-Mart and buy almost everything you need to make
methamphetamine. Tupperware containers can hold the acids. The only
ingredient not widely sold is anhydrous ammonia. But it's easily found on
farms, which use it for fertilizer.

Homemade meth can unleash a more intense high than drugs coming from
California or Mexico, which tend to be less pure. And rural drug addicts
might prefer buying from local sources -- and avoiding the savagery of
big-time dealers.

Why is such an awful drug so popular? The obvious attraction is the high.
(With time, of course, the pleasure surge gets harder to reach.) People
also take meth to lose weight -- which accounts for the high number of
female addicts, many of them mothers.

Meth also keeps people awake. Social workers say hard times in rural
America have people holding two or more jobs. The tired drudges take meth
to keep going. Marvin Van Haaften, Iowa's drug czar, says he came across a
farmer who used meth during the harvest season. The drug helped him work
three days straight. The farmer is now in jail.

Meth has become especially popular among truck drivers. Truckers call it
High Speed Chicken Feed. At truck stops, meth sellers run right up to
drivers' cabs with their wares.

The saddest victims are children. Meth fumes coming from the kitchen damage
their lungs. And their meth-addicted parents often neglect them. Police
raiding home-based meth labs say they've opened refrigerators to find meth
oil but no milk. The children are often dirty.

Law enforcement hates the scourge. Wherever there is meth production, there
are lots of loaded weapons. Three Oklahoma highway-patrol officers have
been killed in meth-related cases. Kansas named its own law restricting the
sale of cold medicines after Matt Samuels, a county sheriff murdered while
trying to arrest a man cooking meth in his home.

When it comes to anti-social behavior, the meth trade knows no bottom. One
drug maker reportedly ordered his child to shoot anyone coming near the
family lab.

Our congressmen in Washington, meanwhile, don't seem very interested. They
prefer lining up to denounce the use of steroids in Major League Baseball.

The Defense Department is requesting -- and will probably get -- $257
million to slow the drug trade in Afghanistan. After all, heroin
trafficking helps fund terrorism.

There's a difference, one supposes, between foreigners terrorizing
Americans and Americans terrorizing each other. But an invasion is still an
invasion. Iowa knows all about it.