Meth's Path Of Destruction, Part 5 of 7

DRUG OFFICIALS SEE RESURGENCE IN 1990S

Methamphetamine has traveled a long road: from its discovery by a Japanese
pharmacologist in 1919, to its years of use for medical treatments, to its
takeover by biker gangs who ran the blackmarket trade along the West Coast.

"Crank" became the drug's street name because bikers carried meth in their
motorcycle crankcases.

The bikers cooked meth with a chemical called P2P, short for
phenyl-2-propane. Early meth labs gave off a telltale odor, often described
as smelling like cat urine.

In the 1980s, underground chemists figured out how to make meth with
ephedrine, the active ingredient contained in widely available nasal
decongestants. Cookers mixed ephedrine with other chemicals to create
potent batches.

Congress restricted ephedrine's distribution in 1988. Several western
states, including Oregon, also clamped down on sale of the so-called
"precursor" chemical. Meth production dwindled along the West Coast. By
1990, labs all but disappeared in this state.

Meth's comeback began in the early 1990s. Cooks started using
pseudoephedrine, a compound similar to ephedrine that's found in
over-the-counter cold medicines such as Sudafed.

In 1994, drug trafficking organizations based in Mexico took control of the
West Coast meth trade by setting up manufacturing labs throughout Southern
California and the Central Valley region, said Joseph Keefe, chief of
operations for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

They pulled it off like any savvy business that retools to boost profits.

According to the DEA, the Mexican groups had long acted as drug couriers
for Colombian cartels, pumping cocaine into American cities. By making
meth, the Mexicans not only controlled production, they also eliminated
profit sharing.

As American laws tightened controls on domestic sales of ephedrine and
pseudoephedrine, Keefe said, the Mexicans shipped in tons of the stuff from
suppliers in Europe, Asia and the Far East. Traffickers then smuggled the
ingredients across the U.S. border in cars and trucks for delivery to
California cook sites.

Drug agents said the sprawling, loose-knit Mexican organizations not only
churned out high-purity meth, they also delivered the finished product,
using routes and experience gleaned from bringing marijuana, cocaine and
heroin into the United States.

In the last few years, stepped-up production of homemade meth has made the
epidemic worse than ever, officials said.

Speaking to a congressional committee in July, Keefe summed up the
predicament: "Given the relative ease with which manufacturers are able to
acquire precursor chemicals, and the unsophisticated nature of the
production process, it is not difficult to see why this highly addictive
drug and potentially explosive clandestine laboratories continue to appear
across America."

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