IN HEARTLAND, METH IS SCARIER THAN ANTHRAX

Today, amid the frenzy over anthrax, it's possible to lose sight of another menacing scourge: methamphetamine.

Methamphetamine, or meth, has come upon us with less fanfare than anthrax. But it sure has come upon us.

Meth is a "recreational drug," an efficient, cost-effective one.

Its high, an energetic, dinner-can-wait, sleep-can-wait feeling, is similar to that of the fabled crack cocaine. Meth and crack cocaine are similarly addictive, too. They are the two drugs lab animals will "self-administer until death," says the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Meth offers way better value than crack cocaine. Ten dollars of crack cocaine gets a person stoned for half an hour; $10 of methamphetamine gets a person stoned for the whole afternoon.

Crack cocaine still is the chief scourge, drugwise, but meth is poised to overtake it. Meth already has overtaken crack in Terre Haute, says Chad Hilton, an Indiana State Police trooper who patrols western Indiana. "Where I am, it's far bigger than crack," he says.

Hilton was one of 50 state troopers in Indianapolis last week to learn how to deal with the meth "labs" that are becoming ubiquitous around the state. He and the others are the newest members of the State Police's "clandestine lab team," which means they can go in and bust up a lab and do it safely (meth labs can blow up without much prodding) and in such a way that preserves evidence for the trial.

Until last week, the clandestine lab team had 40 members. Now it has 90.

It's a sad thing to have to more than double the size of your lab team. But it's sensible. In 1995, police statewide took down six labs. Last year they got 427. So far this year, the State Police alone have busted 420. Next year, predicts Eric Lawrence, the State Police's director of forensic analysis, the number could reach 800.

It used to be a rural phenomenon, the meth lab. Southern Indiana was the hotbed. Somebody (me, actually) one time nicknamed meth "cracker cocaine," and it's a decent joke, except that now meth is a serious problem.

There didn't used to be meth in northern Indiana. Now there is. There didn't used to be meth in Indianapolis. Now there is. "There's no reason to believe there aren't meth labs in every county," says Lawrence.

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., last year wrangled $750,000 from the feds for Indiana's battle with meth. About $50,000 of it went into last week's training.

Busting up today's meth lab takes considerably more skill than busting up yesterday's moonshine still. You have to wear chemical-resistant suits and breathe through air-purification devices. You have to because it's dangerous work and also because OSHA says you have to.

"Overwhelmingly," explains Trooper Hilton, "the chemicals they use are dangerous and combustible."

Hilton hasn't yet dismantled a lab, but he has been involved in raiding a few. It's not pretty, he says. "The people I've arrested looked like Charles Manson, real thin, really . . . wasted."

They often place booby traps around their labs. John Mull, a State Police explosives expert, lectured the newest lab team members about pipe bombs, shotgun shells rigged to explode, even sharpened stakes.

"The meth cooker is also a meth user," says Lawrence. "They develop a paranoia. They're not rational."

And now the State Police lab squad has more than doubled in size.

Sometimes it's rational to be paranoid.