METH USE SWEEPS REGION

Four Methamphetamine Labs Uncovered Last Week In Cabell
County

HUNTINGTON -- Learning last week that a methamphetamine laboratory may
have been operating over his head unbeknownst to him came as a shock
to Spring Valley resident Craig Kitchen.

The Huntington Violent Crimes and Drug Task Force's tools of the trade
for busting methamphetamine labs include gas masks, protective boots
and gloves.

While he was tending bar at Marco's Bar and Grill last Monday evening,
authorities raided an apartment above the Huntington bar at 411 9th
St. they suspected as a meth lab and arrested a Julian Richard Stark,
52, who lived at the address. Stark was charged with possession with
intent to distribute.

Kitchen said the news came as a shock, knowing how explosive meth labs
can be.

"A good crowd hangs here," Kitchen said. "We had no idea something
like that was going on."

A meth lab operating in the middle of Huntington, however, came as no
surprise to authorities, who have seen them built in the back of cars,
hotel rooms and homes.

Meth use and manufacturing has spread rapidly over the state in the
past two years and grown considerably in Cabell County over the past
several months, authorities and drug counselors said.

In the last week, police closed four meth operations, with three in
the Milton and Ona areas and one in downtown Huntington. Authorities
estimate about 160 meth labs have been discovered all over the state
this year with more than 10 of them in Cabell County.

Meth addicts have turned up in higher numbers this year at local detox
centers. The numbers are increasing dramatically, said Tera McKendree,
a registered nurse at the Prestera Addiction Recovery Center in Huntington.

Four months ago, only one of the 13 drug addiction cases she works at
once involved meth. Since the spring, however, she regularly works
with three to four meth addictions at one time.

Meth owes its rapid growth in the area to its cheap production
methods, easy-to-obtain ingredients and long-lasting highs, she said.
A cook can spend $100 making meth and make $1,700, she said.

Drug counselors such as McKendree are bracing for the problem to get
worse.

"As far as what I am seeing, it won't stop anytime soon, not when the
products are readily available," McKendree said.

Meth cooks make the drug from common household items and
over-the-counter drugs.

The chemicals ephedrine and pseudoephedrine found in over-the-counter
decongestants are often the principle ingredients, along with other
household items. The recipe can differ from one drug maker to another.

The drugs acts as a stimulant, keeping people up for days and even
weeks without sleep or food.

One 22-year-old meth addict who wished to remain anonymous said the
since he became addicted to meth three years ago, he has slept a total
of about three weeks. Before he checked into rehab at Prestera in
Huntington this week, he said he hadn't slept for three weeks.

He described himself as a zombie on the drug and remembers little of
the past three years he said he spent living on the streets of
Charleston. Symptoms included seeing his heart race so rapidly he
could see his chest pulsating.

The man described the high from meth as incomparable to any other drug
- -- a high that caused addiction after the first try.

The drug is not new to the area, he said, and has been around the
state for years.

Meth's march eastward

Methamphetamine had its inception on the West Coast in the 1970s,
primarily as a drug used in biker gangs and distributed through
organized crime organizations from Mexico, said David Taylor,
spokesman for the El Paso Intelligence Center, which tracks drug
trafficking data all across the country.

As the western states saw meth use spread rapidly, states began to
target the items used in making meth for stricter regulation.

Many pharmaceutical store chains such as Rite Aid and CVS have
policies limiting the amount of decongestants like Sudafed on shelves.
Oklahoma passed a law this spring requiring certain decongestants be
placed behind the counter at pharmacies and asking buyers to present
identification and sign a log book to buy the medicine.

Oklahoma's efforts have already pushed many meth dealers out of the
state, Taylor said.

"Take it off the shelves. Put it in a pharmacy, and make people sign
for it like you would sign for a regular prescription," Taylor said.
"We have got to get the community involved. It is a community effort."

Meth has moved from west to east across the country, and the same
pattern has remained true in West Virginia. Methamphetamine first came
on the radar of law enforcement in West Virginia in the Parkersburg
area in 1996. It became more widespread in the area by about 1998,
said Rick Woodyard, a deputy with the Wood County Sheriff's Office and
commander of the Parkersburg Violent Crime and Drug Task Force.
Woodyard said meth became a big problem after a drug ring involving
three people who moved from California to Wood County started a meth
lab in the region in about 1997, Woodyard said. That ring was broken
up by 2000, but the problem spread, he said.

At one point, law enforcement in Wood County ran into three labs a
week, he said. Now, they have curtailed that number to one or two a
month, he said.

"Recipes started being passed about, started gathering," Woodyard
said. "We were the part of the state that was drastically being
besieged by it. With three labs a week, it got quite taxing."

Woodyard said the task force and law enforcement in Wood County put
finding and destroying meth labs as a high priority to eradicate meth.

The volatility of meth labs demand immediate action when found, said
Matt Hoke, the Cabell County Violent Crime and Drug Task Force
coordinator.

There is little time to gather information as in drug busts of another
nature, he said.

"You have that inherent danger of the lab exploding and toxic fumes,"
Hoke said. "That speeds up nature. We will take a case down earlier
than we normally would because of the danger."

Many law enforcement agents are still learning the ropes on how to
deal with meth in West Virginia. Two years ago, only a handful of
people, mainly out of the Parkersburg area, were trained to handle
dismantling a meth lab. Now there are more than 100 trained personnel
in the state spanning all levels of law enforcement, from federal to
local, said Joe Ciccarelli, a supervisory senior resident agent with
the FBI in Charleston.

Ciccarelli is part of the Huntington Violent Crime and Drug Task Force
that dismantles meth manufacturing sites in Cabell, Mason, Lincoln and
Wayne counties.

The explosive nature of the chemicals and toxic fumes that can be
around meth labs require trained personnel, Ciccarelli said. Members
of the Violent Crime and Drug Task Force involved in meth lab cases
get certified through a weeklong training session and must be
re-certified every year. Some of the members even receive further
training, he said.

The technical challenges to cleaning up a meth lab costs the taxpayers
about $3,000 per lab, Ciccarelli said.

A violent drug

The meth cooks also pose a danger to the emergency responders when
they find a meth lab, he said.

Law enforcement link meth with increased violence. Indeed, several law
enforcement officials said meth labs are often discovered by police
while responding to domestic violence complaints.

Meth addicts and dealers are more prone to violence than those
involved in other drugs, Ciccarelli said.

"Meth seems to cause an inordinate amount of violence," Ciccarelli
said. "It almost seems like it is more personalized violence. In my
experience, it seems like meth organizations are more closely knit.
When they get into meth, two people that were at one time friends
become enemies. Whereas the crack-cocaine trade is more anonymous."

The Parkersburg/Wood County region has seen many of its recent violent
crimes involve methamphetamine in some way, Woodyard said. The last
four homicides in the Parkersburg area have involved meth, he said.

Parkersburg's task force also reported domestic violence increased 25
percent in its jurisdiction in 2002 because of meth.

"It poses a grave danger to patrol officers. They don't know who they
are approaching," Woodyard said. "When they are coming down off the
drugs, they have hallucinations and can perceive threats to
themselves."

This unpredictability has made treating drug addicts much harder in
the last year for local drug counselors. The past year has been the
toughest of his 10 years as a drug therapist, said Joel Sperry, a
therapist and certified addiction counselor at River Park Hospital in
Huntington.

Sperry, who counsels teenagers addicted to drugs, said more than 50
percent of the children he treats between the age of 14 to 18 admit to
having used meth. This compares to last year when Sperry said he
didn't see any meth users.

The meth addicts going through withdrawal can be violent.

"Their irritability is unpredictable," Sperry said. "They will be
doing fine and then just go off the deep end."

Experts offer no easy solutions to the spreading meth problem, but
many said there needs to be more funding put into finding meth labs
and more restrictions needed on the ingredients used to make meth.

Drug task forces such as the one in Huntington are becoming burdened
with meth cases, Hoke said.

Task forces devoted solely to methamphetamine, like many in the
western United States, may need to be formed in West Virginia, Hoke
said.

"Right now, the drug task forces are taxed. Police departments are
taxed," Hoke said. "The calls for service still goes up in the area,
which means more hours and more manpower. It has reached epidemic
proportions. I don't think we have seen the worst of it yet."