ILLEGAL DRUG TRADE KEEPS FORENSIC LAB BUSY

Scientist Identifies 'White Powder' And 'Pink Pills' For Police

As long as Ed White can remember, he's been fascinated with the guts of stuff.

"Always as a child, I liked to see how things worked," White, 48, said
after giving a detailed explanation of a piece of $85,000 quilt-box-size,
high-tech lab equipment that's been given the appropriately gee-whiz name
GC Mass Spectrometer.

That's why White enjoyed those most basic "what-makes-it-tick" classes in
high school, chemistry and biology, and earned a double major in those two
subjects when he graduated from Troy State University in 1981.

Also no surprise: White's favorite TV character is "Quincy," the title
character in the long-running drama about a forensic crime lab in Los
Angeles. And that's why Ed White is a natural fit as chief of the drug
chemistry section at the state's regional forensic evidence lab in Huntsville.

After all, the lab's reason for being is to use state-of-the-art equipment
to poke, slice, dice, shake and otherwise probe whatever law enforcement
agents run across, but can't precisely identify, when investigating crimes
ranging from DUI to murder.

"It's just a challenge to find out what's in that white powder," White
said, describing a substance he's often asked to test, which almost always
he determines is cocaine.

"White powder" is usually about as specific a labeling he'll find when
opening a box of evidence to be tested. A few examples of how police
identify materials they bring to the lab: "15 pink pills"; "2 green and
white pills"; "one brown and white pill."

White sees a lot of drugs under his high-powered microscope and in the
lab's other high-tech detection equipment. The most common remains the same
as when White began working at the Huntsville lab in 1982: marijuana.

But cocaine, the long-running No. 2 illegal drug, is rapidly being
overtaken by the increasingly abused stimulant, crystal methamphetamine.

White credits, or blames, the drug's popularity on how easy it is to make.
"You can go to a Wal-Mart and get everything you need," he said. Awaiting
testing by White and his colleagues are 105 boxes filled with suspected
parts of area meth labs.

Illegal drugs in general continue to be on the rise here as in the rest of
the country, if White's workload is any measure. Despite an increase in
staff and a quantum leap in the productivity of forensic lab equipment
during his 21 years working here, the Huntsville lab's backlog of suspected
drugs to be tested has jumped from 300 to 1,300 cases.

Police brought in about 115 items a week to be tested by the drug lab when
White began working there in 1982; they now bring in on average about 350
items a week, he said.

"I've stayed busy," White said. "You always stay busy with drugs."