EASY TO MAKE, THE HIGHLY ADDICTIVE SUBSTANCE METHAMPHETAMINE IS PLAGUING
ALABAMA'S RURAL TOWNS AND CITIES WITH VIOLENCE

Police Officer Eric T. Leddick stopped the swerving Nissan Sentra on
Halloween night 2000 in Bayou La Batre. He thought the driver was
drunk. A five-gallon plastic can and a ventilator mask lay on the
front floorboard. Leddick grabbed the red container, thinking it was
gasoline the men had been inhaling.

"You know when a steam kettle blows?" said Leddick, 30, an ex-Marine.
"That's what it did. It burned and blinded me and I stumbled back. I
started to push on my chest because I couldn't breathe. I thought that
was it."

The liquid inside the container was anhydrous ammonia, used to make
the drug methamphetamine, a stimulant known as speed or crank. The
chemical vaporized on contact with the air. Leddick vomited on the
roadside and passed out. He was taken to the hospital and the men were
arrested.

That was Bayou La Batre's introduction to the drug.

"The next day it started," said Leddick, who has since left the police
department. "There were car chases. Daylight thefts. It was out of
control. Everybody was doing it."

The highly addictive drug has overrun rural towns and cities in
Alabama during the last year, bringing with it a plague of violence.
The volatile chemicals leave a reeking, toxic environmental mess that
costs thousands to clean up. The methamphetamine explosion literal and
metaphorical has caught law enforcement underfunded and
understaffed.

"Our problem is getting assistance when we need it," Limestone County
Sheriff Mike Blakely said. "You go kicking the door down and you'll
blow yourself up. Most of the time we don't have the personnel or
resources to deal with it."

The drug doesn't look like much: shards of crystal resembling ice. But
when smoked or injected, meth produces a powerful euphoria. The high,
which lasts four to 12 hours, is the result of huge amounts of
dopamine and adrenaline being released into the body. It causes
aggression, delusions, nervousness, insomnia and extreme paranoia.
Long-term effects include kidney, lung and liver failure.

"You feel like you're on top of the world," said Melvin Sydney Fleming
Jr., 32, who awaits trial in Andalusia on charges of trafficking
methamphetamine.

Fleming, who quit using meth after his arrest last year, could not
stop fidgeting behind the thick glass that separates his jail world
from that of his visitors. He constantly fiddled with his hat and a
key dangling around his neck, the drug still playing havoc with his
attention span.

"You don't have any cares," Fleming said. "The only thing that is
going to stop meth is jail. It got everyone I know, and most of them
are in jail."

Covington County, which includes Andalusia, has jailed more than 350
people roughly equivalent to 1 percent of its population on
meth-related charges since Sept. 1, 2000.

"It's mind-boggling," said Andalusia Police Chief Wilbur William, who
has two detectives assigned to the 22nd Judicial Drug Task Force.

The unit, with two sheriff's deputies and an officer from the Opp
Police Department, was created Sept. 1, 2000, to combat the county's
meth problem. It confiscated 80,136 grams 320,000 doses of
methamphetamine worth about $800,000 in its first year.

In that time, the unit seized 80 clandestine labs, sometimes four in a
day.

"We didn't know the problem was that big," said Andalusia Detective
Paul Dean. "Meth has gone off the damn charts because it is so easy to
make." Makeshift labs:

The drug can be manufactured in hours in a makeshift lab of Pyrex
cookware, glass jars, coffee filters, plastic tubes and a heat source.
The basic ingredients are pseudoephedrine, which is found in cold
medicine; lithium from batteries; red phosphorus from striking pads on
matchbook covers; and iodine crystals.

Sulfuric acid, sodium hydroxide, acetone, gasoline and lye purify the
final product.

Most ingredients can be bought at Wal-Mart. What cannot, such as
anhydrous ammonia, is stolen from commercial tanks. Meth "cooks"
download recipes off the Internet, trade them in chat rooms and spread
them by word of mouth.

Greg A. Edwards, 35, was a cook in Jasper. Edwards was indicted Jan. 4
on federal charges of possession of methamphetamine, ephedrine and
ether.

You could give him 5 ounces of ephedrine and he would serve you up 5
ounces of methamphetamine in three hours. His yield was almost always
100 percent and his product pure.

"Everybody is looking for the perfect batch," Edwards said. "That's
the ultimate rush."

Because the noxious fumes can tip off neighbors and police, cooks
prepare the drug in isolated areas and dump the dangerous byproducts
anywhere convenient. Edwards cooked the drug on tapped-out strip
mining land, where nobody would smell it. A lab's odor is the ammonia
jolt of smelling salts or the stench of the world's nastiest chicken
coop, he said.

Clandestine labs are found in motel rooms and in the trunks of cars
and in cities near elementary schools and in homes.

Officers with the Cherokee County Drug Task Force stormed a trailer in
Cedar Bluff on April 20.

"You could smell the house when we approached it," unit commander Joey
Hester said. "The house was unlivable."

Hester's men found dirty syringes and food all over the
chemical-stained floor. Bottles of Red Devil drain cleaner and matches
were everywhere. The toilet? An open drain pipe leading to the septic
tank where meth waste could be quickly dumped.

In the midst of the poisonous filth, there were two small
children.

Hester charged their 28-year-old father with possession of marijuana,
methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia. A judge sentenced him to 10
years. The Department of Human Resources took charge of the children.

That was just one of many state labs disbanded during the last three
years.

In 1999, authorities seized 14 clandestine laboratories in Alabama,
Drug Enforcement Administration officials said. Last year, federal,
state and local police uncovered 211. DEA agents said these numbers
were probably low because not all labs were reported.

This follows a nationwide trend: In 1994, the DEA uncovered 263 labs.
Five years later that number rose to 2,155. Meth arrests spiked from
1,944 in 1993 to 8,618 in 1999, the most recent figures available.

"Meth is a growing, growing problem," said Birmingham DEA agent Tom
Nuse. "And I don't see anything slowing it down right now."

A federally funded report predicted that "meth use and production in
Alabama ... will eventually rival crack cocaine as the most
significant drug problem."

Costly habits:

Police and business owners are caught in the drug's costly and
dangerous wake. Addicts loot businesses to keep their habits going.

Rainsville, population 4,500, learned this the hard way. Police Chief
Roger Byrd said meth addicts ransacked three stores in the DeKalb
County town and burned down another in 48 hours beginning Nov. 16.

The most damage was done to the Race Way Service Station on Alabama
75, owned by Sam and Jo Chitwood. The burglars stole thousands of
dollars worth of merchandise, including all the over-the-counter cold
drugs that contained pseudoephedrine. Then they torched the place.

"They ruined the store," Chitwood said. "These dope heads will do
anything."

DeKalb County Sheriff Cecil Reed said the Rainsville thefts were part
of a spree of burglaries committed by three meth addicts that began
Nov. 10.

"We suspected it all along," Reed said. "We can just figure it out.
When you have one burglary right after another you're dealing with a
meth head."

The rampage ended a month later with arrests of the three men. Reed
said investigators believed they were stealing cars, guns and
televisions anything they could pawn or trade for meth.

Sometimes people get hurt, too.

Paula Atkins was shot to death in Walker County near Carbon Hill in
1995. Police said she was involved in the meth trade. Dennis Lynn
Eddy, 36, was charged in March with her murder. Eddy was also indicted
in December by a federal grand jury on conspiracy to manufacture meth.

Eddy was one of 35 people who have been charged in the same conspiracy
investigation by the DEA and the Walker County Narcotics Enforcement
Task Force. An agent said authorities could end up indicting more than
100 people.

Danger increases:

So far no officer in the state has lost his or her life to a meth
addict. But with the number of meth arrests and lab seizures growing,
police say their chances of coming into harm's way are increasing
dramatically.

Covington County authorities raided a Gantt house in January 2001 and
discovered 72 guns, ranging from assault rifles to handguns, near
every door and window.

In Marshall County, about 70 percent of drug cases made by the
county's drug enforcement unit are meth-related. About one of every
two arrests turns up a gun, according to the county's Drug Enforcement
Unit.

Several times, police and suspects have drawn guns on each
other.

"It's just a matter of time," unit agent Curt Elrod said. "We take a
lot of guns from some real dangerous people."

Clarence Gene Shanklin Sr., 46, is among them.

Charged with two counts of attempted murder, he is accused of shooting
at police in Walker County after fleeing during a traffic stop. He
pleaded guilty in November to trafficking meth after police raided a
lab he was operating.

In Mobile County, Sheriff's Deputy Douglas Walley Sr. had a near-fatal
encounter with the drug March 7. Deputies were dispatched to take
Raymond Lester before a judge for psychiatric testing. When deputies
went to pick up the 22-year-old meth addict and cook, Lester opened
fire with a hunting rifle. He put a bullet through a sheriff's cruiser
windshield and fled into nearby woods. Walley caught up with Lester,
who shot the deputy in the shoulder. Walley fired back and dropped
Lester with two shots to the chin and chest.

It took three deputies to handcuff the dying man.

Penalties enacted:

State officials have not ignored the meth problem.

The Legislature passed laws in September that make possession of
anhydrous ammonia a Class B felony. It is a Class B felony to have
ingredients such as pseudoephedrine or red phosphorous with the clear
intent of producing meth.

It is now a Class A felony if a lab is found within 500 feet of a
residence, business, church or school. That charge could mean life in
prison.

Companies such as Wal-Mart are reporting suspicious people buying
methamphetamine ingredients. They have limited the number of cold
medicine packets they will sell and they require people to show
identification.

It's not enough.

Ashley M. Rich, a Mobile County assistant district attorney, oversees
the office's drug cases. About half the thousands of cases are
meth-related, she said.

"We need to dedicate more resources," she said. "We could use a few
more prosecutors and more funding. It's a large problem we all need to
all tackle."

At the base of a wall in her cramped office rests a piece of white
cardboard, about 5 feet by 3 feet, covered with 45 entangled names.
The chart, representing a meth ring in the county, looks like a spider
web and reflects a joint operation among local, state and federal law
enforcement officers.

The investigation, which has yielded several indictments, has taken
hundreds of workers' hours over six months and thousands of dollars.

There are at least two other such rings in her jurisdiction, Ms. Rich
said.

"It's a social epidemic," she said. "It's very frightening to know
that as soon as we can snuff out one organization another one pops up.
If we take this down, there will be more."

Fleming, the former meth user jailed in Andalusia, said he knows Ms.
Rich is right.

He had a wife and a successful welding business before his addiction,
which started in 1999 and lasted about a year. He spent about $100,000
smoking the drug out of a light bulb fashioned into a pipe. He dropped
40 pounds off his once-muscular frame and wrecked three trucks.

He was smoking several grams of meth a day at a few hundred dollars a
pop. Nothing else mattered.

"You don't care about the future," he said. "I didn't care if I lived
or died. That's just the way it controlled me. It's the devil's drug."