'COOKS' FACE FEW BARRIERS IN OBTAINING ANHYDROUS

Sigourney, Ia. - Little stands between meth addicts and the farm fertilizer
they use to make the illegal drug.

About a fifth of the 27,000 anhydrous ammonia tanks in Iowa are locked,
leaving the rest vulnerable to theft.

If locks present a barrier, users turn to farmers.

"It was nothing to buy anhydrous from a farmer," said Kenny Morrison, 30,
who spent two years in prison on meth charges. It was easiest when corn,
soybean and livestock prices were down.

"You can tell just by driving by who is struggling," Morrison said. "Nine
times out of 10, those farmers would sell it to me for $20 to $100 a gallon."

A few farmers have been sent to prison for selling anhydrous ammonia to
meth makers.

Experts point to the chemical's accessibility as one of the reasons Iowa is
one of the nation's methamphetamine hot spots.

"If there were a way to solve the problem, I'd be the first to say, "Let's
do it," " said Terry Fritchen, a manager at Agriliance in Sigourney, an
anhydrous ammonia provider. "But even locks have to be taken off for the
farmer. I don't see a clear solution."

Most Iowa meth "cooks" extract pseudoephedrine, usually from
over-the-counter cold or allergy medicine. Using heat, they combine the
medicine with lithium strips, usually taken from batteries, and anhydrous
ammonia to start a chemical reaction.

Fritchen has watched some nights from his bedroom window as a Keokuk County
sheriff's deputy pulls into the Agriliance lot a quarter-mile away to shine
headlights on the rows of white tanks.

Often, Fritchen's phone rings after one of these routine checks. The story
is usually the same.

Someone has slipped through the rows of corn at the lot's rear, connected a
vacuum hose to one of the tanks and taken off with a few gallons of
anhydrous ammonia. If the thief is careless, he has left a valve open,
letting a cloud of the dangerous gas escape to settle in a low pasture or
drift toward town.

"I get called up here all the time," Fritchen said.

Agriliance has installed a security light over the tanks but hasn't
purchased locks, nor has it put a security fence around the 50 tanks.

The company isn't alone.

After years of work, researchers at Iowa State University may have come up
with an anhydrous additive that would force meth cooks to use far more of
the ingredient in producing the drug.

At the same time, law enforcement officials are pursuing government and
private grants to purchase heavy-duty locks. Most tanks in south-central
Iowa were locked up this spring with such a grant.

"I think everyone has the same goal in mind: Let's make sure anhydrous is
put on the black list for these people," said Ed Beaman, president of the
Agribusiness Association of Iowa. His association approached ISU three
years ago about hunting for an additive that would make anhydrous ammonia
less attractive to meth cooks.

Thefts have become so common that many times farmer-owned cooperatives and
other fertilizer dealers no longer bother calling law enforcement.

"The co-ops joke that they should just put one tank out front with a spigot
on it so (thieves) leave the other tanks alone," said Dennis Wiggins, an
assistant director at the state Office of Drug Control Policy.

Because the anhydrous ammonia is so cheap, those selling it as fertilizer
have little incentive to spend much to protect the few gallons that meth
cooks steal, Black Hawk County Sheriff's Deputy Tony Thompson said.

"They can make a lot of meth off 10 gallons, but that's not much to a
co-op," Thompson said. "Why pay $75 for a lock when they are losing maybe
$1 worth of fertilizer?"

Black Hawk County raised money from private donors several years ago and
locked up its fertilizer dealers' more than 300 anhydrous ammonia tanks.
"Before that, we had been getting anywhere from five to 15 thefts a week -
and that's just those that were reported," Thompson said. Locking the tanks
up "didn't stop meth around here at all, but it put a block up for the thefts."

Thefts of anhydrous ammonia began to climb in surrounding counties as meth
cooks combed the region for new sources. In neighboring Grundy County, one
fertilizer dealer calculated during spring inventory that his company had
lost an estimated 4 tons last winter.

A $200,000 federal grant obtained with Sen. Tom Harkin's help was used to
lock up about 4,600 tanks in a cluster of counties in southern and central
Iowa this spring. At least 26 of Iowa's 99 counties now have tank lock
programs.

"If someone is in Warren County, he'd have to drive two counties" to find
unlocked tanks, assuming all the locks are being used, Wiggins said.

Time will tell how well the tank-lock program in south-central Iowa has
worked. Thompson points out that while the locks make things more difficult
for meth addicts, they won't necessarily be "the saving grace in the meth war."

The compound that ISU is testing in some anhydrous ammonia tanks around the
state could be the next weapon in the arsenal. An additive that was earlier
thought to show promise was set aside when it was discovered that it caused
rust on the inside of tanks, which could lead to explosions.

"We're pretty darn confident right now about this other compound," Beaman
said. "We don't have any reason to doubt that this compound, when added to
anhydrous, will render the yield very inefficient. It's just not going to
yield nearly as much meth as they were able to get before."

The additive could be put to use by spring. Beaman declined to identify the
compound because the information would give meth cooks a heads-up.

The problem with locks or additives is that as soon as one chemical is
restricted, another takes its place, said Dennis Wichern, section chief of
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's unit dealing with dangerous
drugs and chemicals.

Meth makers might turn to a cooking method less common in Iowa that uses
red phosphorus instead of anhydrous ammonia. They can obtain red phosphorus
from matches.

"This battle against methamphetamine has been a push-pull for the last 20
years," Wichern said. "After one set of chemicals arises, Congress gets
legislation passed and we prevent that one. But another always arises to
replace it."