DANGER, SPEED TRAP

Methamphetamine production has spread to North Carolina's rural areas. Law
enforcement needs the tools to stop it.

A blight is moving east across North Carolina. Like blue mold on tobacco,
labs for making the stimulant known as speed or meth are cropping up in
rural areas and with results that are devastating to individuals and families.

So seductive is methamphetamine's effect on the human brain that most human
experience can't compete with the chemical response the drug produces. In
their euphoria, users can be content without sleep or food for days. But
the good times only roll for so long. Eventually, they are punctuated with
anger, panic, paranoia and sometimes violence while the drug rots teeth and
ruins kidneys.

Hospital emergency rooms have seen meth cases increasing for years around
the country. But the blight is just beginning to take hold here, with five
meth-producing labs unearthed in 1999 and 22 found last year, as The N&O's
Craig Jarvis reports. Attorney General Roy Cooper worries that the State
Bureau of Investigation won't be able to quickly find, investigate and shut
down meth labs if the General Assembly slashes its budget. The rest of us
should worry, too. North Carolina must maintain an unfriendly climate to
prevent the use of this drug from spreading misery.

So far, a federal drug task force has helped keep meth use at bay in this
state. Three major investigations over four years have sent major players
to prison. Besides, the raw chemical materials are not as readily available
here as in states along the Mexican border.

Yet, officers concede a greater sophistication in the labs they've shut
down recently than in the past. Some operators are self-taught cooks, but
others are chemists with advanced degrees. For producers, the profits can
be every bit as alluring as the drug is for users. An ounce can bring
$1,500 to $2,000.

The acute addiction caused by meth is expensive to break, and even more so
to feed. Lives are ravaged as surely as the bodies of the addicts
themselves. Even the physical damage may not heal quickly. Recent research
has found that addicts who were clean for up to 11 months still had memory
and coordination deficiencies related to brain changes caused by meth.

North Carolina has been fortunate that the U.S. Attorney's Office in
Raleigh has been able hold off this scourge even as it has taken hold in
Tennessee and other states. Continued prevention of meth addiction must be
the goal. The task force lacks manpower to keep up with all the reports of
small labs. So far, though, the SBI has responded to 45 calls on suspect
labs this year, and its severest test may well lie ahead. Tar Heels are
counting on the legislature to do what it takes to shut down the meth
merchants as fast as they open for business.