HARDER TIMES FOR METH MAKERS

Canada, Anti-Terror Efforts Have An Impact.

A new law in Canada and heightened anti-terrorism security may be putting
the squeeze on methamphetamine manufacturing in the Central Valley, law
enforcement officials say -- and squeezing it into neighboring countries.
Federal and state drug agency sources also say there is increasing evidence
of links between meth trafficking in California and the financing of Middle
Eastern terrorist organizations.

The Canadian law, which went into effect in January after more than a
decade of discussion, requires licenses for people who import, export, buy
or sell pseudoephedrine. The synthetic chemical compound is used mainly in
cold and allergy medicines and is a key ingredient in the production of
meth. Pseudoephedrine is heavily regulated in the United States. Before
January, however, and much to the chagrin of American police, it was
relatively easy to obtain in Canada.

Smuggling rings based in Michigan and other parts of the Midwest regularly
moved tractor-trailers full of pseudoephedrine pills from Canada into the
United States and sold them to meth producers in California.

A case of 75,000 pills might sell for $18,000 and produce eight pounds of
meth that might sell for $48,000 wholesale.

But law enforcement agents say the new law has combined with tighter border
controls spurred by terrorism threats to make it tougher to smuggle the
"precursor" chemicals to clandestine California labs.

"Before, they were literally crossing the border with tractor-trailer loads
of pseudoephedrine in tons," said Bill Ruzzamenti, a federal Drug
Enforcement Administration agent who directs the nine-county Central Valley
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program. "Now, we are seeing
the Federal Express-type shipment of maybe a hundred pounds."

In response, however, outlaw motorcycle gangs in British Columbia and
sophisticated "poly-drug" groups in Mexico are making meth in those
countries, where it is still easier to obtain the ingredients than in the
United States. The meth is then smuggled into the vast U.S. market.

"Ten pounds of meth is easier to get in than 100 pounds of
pseudoephedrine," Ruzzamenti said.

"We're seeing more and more 'finished' meth coming in from across the
borders. It's too early to tell how big or how much that will take away
from the market here in Central California, but I think it's a harbinger of
things to come," he said.

For more than a decade, California, especially the Central Valley, has been
the mother lode for making meth, a drug that can be intensely addictive,
trigger intense paranoia and shattering violence in its users, and cause
irreparable brain damage.

Because production of the drug is a relatively simple process, thousands of
amateur chemists set up small operations often referred to by cops as
"Beavis & Butt-head labs," a reference to the moronic cartoon characters.

Those labs are dwarfed in production by "super labs" controlled by
organized crime groups. Those groups are believed to be dominated by
Mexican nationals who are based in California and ship meth all over the
country.

The combined result has been a Valley pandemic of meth-related crime and
environmental messes caused by the dumping of the toxic wastes that are
byproducts of meth production.

Government efforts to stem the flood have escalated in the past two years,
with more funding, the creation of specialized law enforcement groups and
several major international sweeps of precursor smuggling rings.

Three weeks ago, U.S. and Canadian drug agents culminated an 18-month
investigation by arresting 67 suspects around the country and confiscating
34,000 pounds of pseudoephedrine. The busts, called "Operation Northern
Star," grew out of another major sweep in January 2002 that resulted in
more than 100 arrests and the seizure of 60,000 pounds of pseudoephedrine.

The sweeps have had some impact on the street, officials said, driving up
meth prices. They've also driven down the drug's "purity" because meth
makers "step on," or dilute their product to make it stretch further. A
favorite dilution agent is MSM, a substance primarily used to increase
joint flexibility in horses.

But the meth industry is nothing if not flexible.

In the past year, Valley drug cops say, meth labs have become smaller and
more streamlined. Manufacturers are compartmentalizing various stages of
the production process at different sites, lessening chances of detection
and of losing all of the inventory in the event of a raid.

Dealers are also diversifying.

"What's really different around here is that even the small-quantity
sellers will have two, three, four different varieties of crank at
different purity levels, which they're selling at different price ranges,"
said Sacramento County Sheriff's Sgt. Bob Risedorph, who is with the
California Multi-Jurisdictional Methamphetamine Enforcement Team (Cal-MMET).

"I guess the longer you sell something, the more variations you need to have."

The post-Sept. 11 scrutiny of terrorist activity has put more of a
spotlight on pseudoephedrine smuggling groups with connections to the
Middle East.

For years, small Central Valley markets were sources of pseudoephedrine.
Law enforcement agents said some grocers, many of them with Middle Eastern
roots, sold large quantities of cold pills literally out the back door to
meth makers.

When new state and federal laws helped crack down on the practice,
according to Ed Manavian of the state Justice Department's California
Anti-Terrorism Information Center, some of the same grocers formed groups
with friends and relations in the Midwest to smuggle pseudoephedrine in
from Canada.

An analysis by the center of 74 major meth-related investigations in
California in 2000 and 2001 found the primary pseudoephedrine trafficking
groups were Yemeni, Jordanian or Palestinian.

Many of the groups have used the same financial networks used by terrorist
organizations to funnel and launder money. The networks, called "hawalahs"
(Arabic for "word of mouth"), rely on oral agreements to honor each other's
financial obligations without leaving a paper trail.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy says it has identified at least
12 foreign terrorist organizations with links to drug trafficking.

Manavian declined to say whether there is evidence the drug groups were
subgroups of terrorist organizations, or whether they were just showing
their political sympathies by making contributions to the cause.

"What I can say is that we know that money from the illegal trafficking of
drugs in California is making its way back to the Middle East to support
terrorist activities," he said.

That stance has been disputed by attorneys for some of those arrested in
the national meth sweeps of the past two years.

"There is no evidence to that; it's pure speculation," said Mark Werksman,
a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles who is representing a Chicago
resident accused of conspiracy to sell pseudoephedrine to California
customers. "No defendant has admitted to it in court or out of court to my
knowledge."

No matter how Valley meth makers manufacture the drug and where they make
it, or what they do with the money, law enforcement officials say the one
sad constant is the abundance of customers.

"Except for marijuana, which everyone on drugs uses, meth is still the drug
of choice here," said Risedorph, of the Sheriff's Department. "We still see
plenty of cocaine, plenty of heroin, but meth dominates."