UNNECESSARY EPIDEMIC

A decade ago, federal authorities choked off the supply of chemicals needed
to make methamphetamine, a cheap, potent stimulant that was devastating the
West.

The drug grew scarce, and rehab centers saw fewer meth patients.

Emergency rooms reported fewer meth overdoses.

Fewer people were arrested for possessing the drug. Identity theft and
car theft -- crimes typically committed by meth addicts -- fell in
several Western cities. Federal agents had vastly improved the quality
of life, but they didn't know it. Within a year, the drug cartels that
make most of the nation's methamphetamine found new ways to obtain
their ingredients, taking advantage of a loophole left open by
Congress. As a result, meth use rebounded, and the epidemic spread
eastward.

Today, an estimated 1.3 million Americans smoke, snort or inject the
drug. An investigation by The Oregonian shows that Congress and
federal authorities could have contained the methamphetamine epidemic,
and still can. The investigation establishes for the first time that
methamphetamine traffickers are uniquely vulnerable to government
pressure. Methamphetamine differs from heroin and cocaine, which are
distilled from plants grown across vast stretches of South America and
Asia. Drug dealers create meth from ephedrine or pseudoephedrine,
chemicals used to make cough and cold remedies such as Sudafed. Only
nine factories manufacture the bulk of the world's supply. Deprive
traffickers of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, and the meth trade
withers. Peter Reuter, a leading drug expert and longtime skeptic of
the government's ability to disrupt the drug trade, said The
Oregonian's findings were startling. Reuter called them the first
convincing evidence that government and law enforcement agencies could
substantially reduce meth addiction. The research, he said, shows that
tightening control over the supply of meth chemicals would make "a
significant difference to the criminal interests" while modestly
inconveniencing consumers. "I have been asked in the course of the
presidential campaign, 'Why doesn't anyone talk about drugs?' " said
Reuter, a University of Maryland professor who served on the Clinton
administration's meth task force. The answer, Reuter said, is that no
candidate has a plausible approach. "Here, you actually do have a
better idea." The Oregonian found striking correlations between
government actions and meth abuse.

In two periods -- 1995-96 and 1998-99 -- federal authorities
interrupted the flow of chemicals to drug cartels.

Each time, crime and addiction fell in tandem as the price of the drug
rose. The Oregonian discovered these previously overlooked successes
by examining millions of reports on arrests, emergency room
admissions, drug treatment, and the price and potency of meth seized
by drug agents. Until now, federal officials were unaware of the
extent to which their policies succeeded. The U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration began calling for much tighter control over ephedrine
and pseudoephedrine nearly two decades ago. But lawmakers were
reluctant to interfere with the legitimate trade and said the DEA had
no proof the approach would work. The pharmaceutical industry lobbied
its allies on Capitol Hill and in the White House to delay or soften
legislation that would have harmed the $3 billion market in popular
cold products. When Congress finally gave the DEA broad authority over
the trade in pseudoephedrine in 1996, the agency did not take full
advantage of the powers it had sought. The agency allowed companies it
licensed to continue selling cold medicine, even after 20, 30, 40
written warnings that their products were found in meth labs. The DEA
said it has tightened its registration program since 2000, when a
number of officially approved dealers were charged with supplying
pseudoephedrine to meth traffickers. In a written statement, the
agency said it had "always considered" the control of meth chemicals a
"high priority." Meth abuse is particularly widespread in Oregon,
which treats more people for meth addiction per capita than any other
state in the country. The drug, sold in powder or rock form, delivers
an intense rush. A few hits cost just $25. Heavy users stay awake for
days, growing paranoid and aggressive before crashing into sleep. Gov.
Ted Kulongoski now calls meth the most pressing crime issue facing the
state. Police in Portland and surrounding suburbs say that meth users
are responsible for thousands of identity thefts each year. In rural
communities such as Coos County on the Oregon coast, social workers
say meth abuse plays a role in most cases of child abuse and neglect.
The story is repeated in communities across much of the country.

More people are now in rehab for meth addiction than for cocaine or
heroin in 16 states. And recent treatment data show the drug is
rapidly drawing new users in places such as Illinois, Kentucky,
Alabama and Georgia. The problem has been slow to reach the attention
of national policymakers, in part because the threat remains distant
from the nation's major East Coast cities. Authorities in Portland,
Spokane, San Diego and Phoenix report that 25 percent to 38 percent of
men arrested for any crime have methamphetamine in their bloodstream.
The comparable rates in New York and Washington, D.C., are less than 1
percent. Nancy Bukar, a lobbyist for the Consumer Healthcare Products
Association, argues that the regional nature of the problem weighs
against further restrictions on pseudoephedrine products. "You've got
to strike a balance here," said Bukar, whose group represents
pharmaceutical companies. "Yes, they're being used in an illegitimate
fashion by some people, but the major majority of people are using it
for colds and to unstuff noses." Over the past decade, meth
traffickers have displayed an uncanny ability to outwit regulators and
obtain their raw materials.

But former DEA officials say the government has failed to make a
concerted effort to deprive traffickers of two chemicals produced in
only four countries. The Oregonian's study shows that a national
strategy to halt the flow of meth chemicals could be accomplished with
little effect on consumers and relatively low cost to taxpayers. U.S.
diplomats could work with officials in India, China, the Czech
Republic and Germany to more closely track every sale of
pseudoephedrine from the few factories that produce it. Right now, DEA
officials review only exports from those countries to the United
States and Mexico.

U.S. diplomats could work with officials in India, China, the Czech
Republic and Germany to more closely track every sale of
pseudoephedrine from the few factories that produce it. Right now, DEA
officials review only exports from those countries to the United
States and Mexico. That approach failed to immediately detect a huge
smuggling route through Canada that opened in the late 1990s. The
National Institute on Drug Abuse, which spends $1 billion a year on
addiction research, could dedicate some money to developing an
effective decongestant that cannot be converted into meth. Pfizer, one
of the leading sellers of cold medicine in the United States, holds
the patent to such a medicine.

It has never been brought to market, Pfizer says, because it was not
enough of an improvement as a cold medicine to make it commercially
viable. The government could provide incentives for drug companies to
create such a product, just as it already subsidizes research on
unprofitable "orphan drugs" that promise cures for rare diseases.
Finally, the DEA could take a more aggressive approach to overseeing
the trade in the two key chemicals used to make meth. The agency
spends $700 million annually eradicating coca plants in South America.
It devotes only $20 million to tracking the flow of pseudoephedrine
and ephedrine -- the same amount the city of Portland spends annually
on its motor pool. John Coleman, DEA's former chief of operations,
said the agency "could do a lot of phenomenal things" if it put more
money into regulating drug chemicals. "We're keeping the
accomplishments low by keeping the staffing low," said Coleman, who
also served as head of the DEA's offices in Boston and Newark, N.J.
"It's not very hard, really," he said. "It's just like shooting fish
in a barrel. But you have to have the bodies." Trend across states The
Oregonian set out to understand what caused the explosive growth in
meth abuse during the 1990s. First, the newspaper analyzed the records
of 282,000 people entering rehabilitation programs for methamphetamine
abuse in Oregon, Washington and California from 1992 to 2000. Their
names were obscured to protect their privacy. Researchers who study
drug abuse have used treatment statistics as a barometer of the number
of addicts.

Just as population growth can be seen in clogged freeways, a rise in
patients reporting to rehab centers is a sign that the drug problem is
worsening. The rise and fall of patients in rehab is an imperfect
measure that could also reflect changes in availability of treatment
and other factors.

For this reason, The Oregonian examined treatment data from multiple
states in combination with statistics on crime, emergency room
admissions and arrests. During the 1990s, the number of patients in
Oregon, Washington and California admitted for meth abuse soared.

But during the two periods in which federal authorities restricted
access to the chemicals needed to make meth -- 1995-96 and 1998-99 --
clinics saw their meth caseloads sharply decline. In those years, the
numbers of patients diminished in Oregon, Washington and California,
three states with different approaches to rehabilitation. That pattern
was seen among people who voluntarily entered treatment and those
ordered to do so by courts and child welfare agencies. The Oregonian
compared these treatment statistics with the number of trauma and
overdose patients admitted to emergency rooms with meth in their
blood. The patterns were identical. The newspaper next examined
arrests for methamphetamine possession in the same period.

No statewide data were available for Oregon and Washington, but
in California the numbers rose steadily except in 1995-96 and 1998-99.
Finally, the analysis turned to data on two crimes most commonly associated
with meth users in Oregon: forgery and fraud.

Data statewide, as well as for Portland and Salem, once again showed
improvements in 1995-96 and 1998-99. Police in Spokane; Salem;
Sacramento; Kennewick, Wash.; and Phoenix reported the number of
vehicles stolen monthly dipped or leveled off in 1995-96 and again in
1998-99 -- the same periods when other indicators of meth use were
falling. Annual FBI data showed similar declines in rural counties of
Arizona, New Mexico, California, Oregon, Idaho and Washington. The
similarity among these multiple measures of meth abuse was striking.

The numbers of meth rehab patients, overdoses, arrests and property
crimes moved in unison, matching one another in many cases across
states down to the month. Taken together, the data The Oregonian
examined show there was good news hidden within the deluge of
meth-related crime stories of the past decade. But what caused such
simultaneous, dramatic changes in the drug habits of individuals
living thousands of miles apart? The answer lay in the supply of the
drug itself -- an aspect of the meth trade that turned out to be
highly susceptible to government intervention. Myths of meth The most
common belief about meth is that its use has grown rapidly because
anyone can make it. Television news features colorful scenes of houses
ablaze after volatile meth chemicals used by home cookers ignite. The
reality: Despite the existence of thousands of such home labs across
the country, federal drug agents say local users make very little of
the meth consumed in the United States. From Oregon to Iowa, the DEA
estimates that four out of every five hits of meth are cooked by
Mexican organized crime syndicates operating in California, where they
began making the drug on a grand scale a decade ago. Their ability to
produce plentiful, highly pure meth propelled the drug's popularity.
In the 1970s, meth was a minor West Coast fad. California motorcycle
gangs discovered the powerful stimulant first synthesized by a
Japanese chemist in 1919. In 1980, the bikers' main ingredient,
phenyl-2-propanone, came under federal control. So, underground cooks
turned to ephedrine, a mild stimulant whose main legal use was as an
asthma medication. To their surprise, ephedrine made meth twice as
potent. Prosecutors say a small-time Mexican cocaine runner named
Jesus Amezcua Contreras and his brother, Luis, saw the commercial
possibilities. "This was not some Laurel and Hardy, dumb bunch of
bikers that made meth in their back yards," said Larry Cho, a federal
prosecutor who obtained a 1994 indictment against Luis Amezcua in
Orange County, Calif. "Those guys were starting to industrialize the
methamphetamine process.

They made it into a business." The key to their success, DEA officials
say, was a massive and steady supply of ephedrine.

By 1989, the U.S. government had regulated sales of ephedrine powder,
but the law exempted sellers of ephedrine pills -- because the product
was a legitimate asthma medication. Some meth cooks began to tap a
gray market that hawked these products in adult magazines as "energy
boosters." But the Amezcua brothers went to the source, prosecutors
say, arranging directly or through middlemen to purchase bulk
ephedrine powder from manufacturers in Germany, the Czech Republic,
India and China. A federal indictment says the Amezcuas and their
scouts roamed Europe and Asia, placing orders by the ton. By 1992, the
brothers were shipping unprecedented quantities of ephedrine into
Mexico and on through Tijuana to Southern and Central California,
according to court documents.

There, the Amezcuas and other cartels that followed found plenty of
migrant labor and mile after mile of open space in which to hide a
revolutionary process for making meth. Drug agents from San Diego to
Sacramento began discovering labs that cooked meth in a flask the size
of a beach ball, big enough to hold 11 two-liter bottles of soda. As
many as 12 of these giant globes were strung together, for a capacity
of 144 pounds of pure meth every 48 hours. Cut to street purity, that
amount of meth would equal 1 million doses -- enough to keep tens of
thousands of heavy users high for days. By contrast, home-based labs
produce about one ounce of meth at a time, enough for 280 doses.
Seemingly overnight, cookie-cutter copies of the mammoth labs were
everywhere. The operators were migrant workers, paid and trained by
mysterious benefactors to keep the labs running and their mouths shut.
The product entered existing Mexican distribution channels for heroin
and cocaine that stretched as far as North Carolina. As meth became
more abundant, dealers had less need to dilute it. The drug's purity
rose. Purer drugs are more habit-forming, studies have shown.

Primates and rats, trained to press a lever that releases a shot of
drugs, learn the trick faster when the initial dosage is strong. Purer
drugs also reduce the cost of getting high. A $25 bag of meth lasts
longer. Numerous studies in both humans and animals show that when the
"cost" goes down, users get high more often -- just as motorists
choose to drive more when gasoline is cheap. That is what happened
with meth from 1991 to 1994. The average purity of meth doubled
nationally in those years, reaching more than 70 percent, according to
a RAND Corp. analysis of DEA data. The highly potent meth hit the
street simultaneously in nearly every Western state, The Oregonian's
analysis shows.

Soon after, the numbers of people entering rehab for methamphetamine
addiction, arrested for meth possession and suffering overdoses began
to rise. Drug cartels had created a national habit by making meth
plentiful and pure. But the secret to their success -- the ephedrine
pipeline -- was about to be exposed. The perfect storm One day in
March 1994, a shipping agent in Frankfurt, Germany, made a mundane but
fateful decision that would bring chaos to the market that the Amezcua
brothers had built. A customer with a shipment of 120 cardboard
barrels bound for Mexico City had left explicit instructions to steer
the load clear of U.S. ports.

But the flight to Mexico City was overbooked and beyond its allowable
cargo weight. Contrary to the shipper's wishes, the agent sent the
load on a Lufthansa flight that landed in Dallas. There, the shipment
immediately raised suspicions. U.S. Customs agents on the tarmac
noticed that the labels had been altered.

They pried open the barrel lids and found 3.4 metric tons of pure
ephedrine powder, enough to cook up more than 41 million doses of
methamphetamine. It was a lucky break.

For the first time, federal investigators had evidence they could use
to trace precisely who was supplying ephedrine to the Amezcuas. Four
months after the first multiton seizure, customs agents in Dallas
seized another 2.4 tons of ephedrine.

In October, Dutch authorities at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport stopped
a 6.9-ton shipment of ephedrine that was bound for Guadalajara. Terry
Woodworth, who recently retired as the DEA's deputy director of
diversion control, called the string of discoveries "an eye-opener."
"We were, to be candid, not as aware of that situation as we should
have been until the Dallas-Fort Worth seizures," Woodworth said. DEA
officials flew to a meeting of the International Narcotics Control
Board in Vienna to confront their counterparts from the countries that
had unwittingly helped the Amezcuas obtain their ephedrine.

Within months, the manufacturing countries and nations that were
stopover points enacted stringent export restrictions. In the United
States, meanwhile, Congress had moved to choke off access to ephedrine
pills, which had been protected from regulation and were being found
by the millions in meth labs. A new law, requiring sellers of
ephedrine pills to register with the government, was scheduled to take
full effect in 1995. Many shady operators were scared away. As a final
blow, an IRS investigation led to a mail-order pill maker suspected of
providing tons of ephedrine to the meth market in pill form. DEA
agents shut down the Pennsylvania company in May 1995. DEA officials
say that in just 18 months, they and their foreign counterparts
blocked or seized an estimated 170 to 200 tons of ephedrine.

It was a sixth of the world's entire annual production. "The hose was
clamped," said Gene Haislip, former head of the DEA office that tracks
chemical sales. In California, the Amezcuas and other Mexican meth
cartels felt the effects. According to a DEA report written at the
time, the standard, 55-pound drums of foreign ephedrine the
traffickers called "tins" were going for as much as $80,000, nearly
double the old price.

Eventually, the traffickers stopped buying tins altogether, aware that
the only people with any to offer were undercover police. Short on
ephedrine, traffickers produced less meth, prompting dealers to dilute
or "step on" the product.

In late 1995, according to a California Bureau of Narcotics
Enforcement internal bulletin, meth samples for the first time were
found mixed with MSM, a veterinary analgesic that looks just like
crystal meth. Retail purity plummeted.

Nationally, samples of the drug bought undercover fell to only 40
percent to 50 percent pure after peaking at 70 percent to 74 percent.

It was much the same in all the communities where the drug cartels had
extended their distribution network.

>From Oregon to Missouri, meth seized by drug agents tested weaker and
weaker. In August 1995, a final sign of desperation emerged.

Investigators in California's Central Valley seized a lab that made
simple amphetamine, a much weaker stimulant that can be made without
ephedrine.

For months afterward, what was sold as meth was actually the less
potent drug, according to law enforcement officials. Relief came to
communities meth had ravaged. In 1996, for the first time in four
years, the number of people in rehab for meth fell in 16 of the 24
states west of the Mississippi River; in five others, the growth in
rehab patients dramatically slowed.

Each had experienced double-digit annual growth in meth patients from
1992 through 1995. Now, the number was down: 18 percent in Oregon, 19
percent in California, 22 percent in Washington. Numerous other
indicators of meth abuse were falling: meth-related trauma and
overdoses nationally; arrests for meth possession in California; car
thefts in Salem and Spokane; forgeries in Phoenix and Portland. The
declining purity of meth had suddenly raised the cost of getting high
and reduced the drug's addictive allure. Multiple gauges indicated
that meth users responded by cutting back, while some first-time users
decided not to make meth a habit. To people who believe drug addicts
will achieve intoxication at any price, the findings would seem
surprising. But to the numerous researchers who have found that users
are sensitive to changes in price and purity, the outcome is perfectly
logical. "There's no doubt in my mind," said William Woolverton, a
leading addiction researcher on primates at the University of
Mississippi Medical Center. "If you reduce the dose of
methamphetamine, you weaken methamphetamine-taking behavior." In
November 1995, the Amezcua brothers gathered with their underlings in
Tijuana. According to a federal indictment, the Amezcua brothers
discussed their plight.

The disruption in their supply was forcing them to tap new sources.
They were feeling the pressure. Costly hesitations The perfect storm
that rocked the Amezcua empire represented a rare opportunity in the
battle against meth. It barely made a ripple with Congress. DEA
officials moved to control pseudoephedrine, ephedrine's chemical
sibling and the ingredient they assumed the cartels would try next.
But pressed by the pharmaceutical industry, lawmakers resisted. Meth
purity rose again as the Amezcuas made the switch. In 1996, Congress
required pseudoephedrine sellers to register with the DEA, a major
change.

The law took effect the next year, chasing off some distributors who
had supplied the meth trade.

Meth purity began to fall, and with it addiction and crime. Once again, the
victory proved short-lived. The DEA made limited use of its new powers, and
the drug cartels slowly found other ways to obtain their chemicals. In 1998,
some pseudoephedrine wholesalers with DEA permits started selling millions
of pills to meth traffickers. By 1999, purity was on the rise again. In
2000, the DEA cracked down, sending dozens of black-market wholesalers to
prison. By then, other pseudoephedrine brokers had found a new unregulated
Source: Canada, where the government had left open the same loopholes
Congress had shut four years earlier. Canada's imports of pseudoephedrine
jumped from 34 metric tons annually to about 140 tons in 2001. DEA officials
say that additional amount was smuggled into the United States and driven to
meth labs in California. The DEA says Canadian pseudoephedrine imports have
declined since.

And last month, agents announced a successful operation against a new
threat, Canadian distributors of ephedrine powder. "Breaking up these
organizations will dramatically limit the availability of ephedrine in
the United States and will have a significant effect on the
large-scale production of methamphetamine," Deputy Administrator
Michele Leonhart said in a statement. But the most recent statistics
on meth use show the number of addicts is rising, along with drug
purity, suggesting that traffickers have found other overseas sources
of supply. Only one independent researcher has closely studied the
issue. In an article published last year in the journal Addiction,
James Cunningham analyzed emergency room admissions in Nevada,
California and Arizona. That study, based on a narrower range of data
than The Oregonian's, reached the same conclusion: Controlling
chemicals reduces meth abuse. Cunningham, of the Public Statistics
Institute in Irvine, Calif., said researchers are reluctant to
acknowledge the value of law enforcement in curbing drug abuse. "A lot
of people have turned this into an emotional issue or a political
issue," he said. "We try to look at it as a health issue." Former DEA
officials who worked to squeeze the chemical supply said they have
long understood the basic principle. "If you don't have all the
ingredients to make the pie," said John Buckley, a retired DEA
diversion investigator, "the pie isn't going to come out right." News
researchers Lynne Palombo, Margie Gultry and Kathleen Blythe
contributed to this story.