DRUGS ARE DEALT DAILY IN ST. CHARLES COUNTY

Cocaine, LSD, marijuana, methamphetamine, heroin, ecstasy and
psilocybin: Believe it or not, these are commonly used drugs in St.
Charles County.

As a police reporter, I've seen many felony arrests for
methamphetamine and marijuana and maybe a few charges for cocaine.
But LSD and heroin? And just what is psilocybin anyway? (It's an
ingredient found in several varieties of mushrooms - "magic mushroom"
is the slang.)

Sgt. Rick Gerger, a former member of the St. Charles County Regional
Drug Task Force, says all these drugs are out there and being dealt
on a daily basis. Gerger spoke at the St. Peters Citizens Police
Academy on Monday night at the police station. He now is clean-cut,
except for a mustache, and he says he looks drastically different
from his days with the task force.

From 1994 to 1997, when he was with what is commonly called the MEG
unit, Gerger wore his hair down to the middle of his back, had a
beard and a few earrings and drove a beat-up Pontiac Trans-Am. His
daily dress consisted of flannel shirts and blue jeans.

"I bought drugs from people who look just like the people in this
room," he said. These included schoolteachers, clergymen and business
owners.

He said the hardest part of the job was turning off the drug
trafficking lingo - which often consisted of four-letter words in
regular conversation - when he was off duty. He also said the job
often cut into off-duty activities like running errands.

"I can't tell you how many loaded carts we left in the middle of
Schnucks," he said. "But when they call you, you have to go."

Gerger said that many of the crimes committed in a community are
drug-related. In other words, most criminals are stealing, committing
burglaries and robberies for one reason - to get money to buy drugs.
It's these users who are some of the most dangerous criminals because
they'll do anything to get their next "hit" of a drug.

The most common drug may be marijuana, which has a whole line of
paraphernalia that is perfectly legal to buy and own. It is legal
because it's marketed as a product used to smoke tobacco.

Gerger said that marijuana is a big problem in this state because
Missouri has many rural areas where the drugs can be produced, and
Missouri is accessible because of its interstate highways. In fact,
Missouri is the No. 1 producer of domestic marijuana.

One sidelight about drug dealers and their trade is that they are
among the few people in America who use the metric system on a daily
basis. Possession of marijuana becomes a felony when a person is in
possession of more than 35 grams of the weed, so drug dealers make
sure they sell by the ounce, or 28 grams.

Gerger said that many people arrested for growing marijuana claim
they are growing it for personal use only, but this doesn't pan out
when you do the math. For instance, if a person has grown one 8-foot
tall well-manicured plant, each foot of the plant will yield one
pound of processed marijuana. There are 454 grams in a pound and a
joint or marijuana cigarette usually has 1 gram of weed in it. So 454
grams times 8 feet of plant is 3,632 joints or about 10 joints a day.
This type of usage would be extreme even for a heavy user.

If any other of the drugs are found by police, a trace amount is
considered a felony. Gerger said the main difference in the drug
trade today versus the '60s, is the purity of the drugs. He said
marijuana is five times more potent today than it was then. Drug
overdoses on heroin are becoming more common because users can't
measure the potency of the drug and are using too much.

Gerger said the heroin is so potent today that several people have
died from using it before they got the needle out of their arms. He
said the drug had been scarce when he started on the MEG unit but now
is popular.