STATE OCCUPIES METH EPICENTER

80% to 85% of total meth supply comes from California, Congress is told.

WASHINGTON -- Methamphetamine production is so rampant in California
that the street price of the highly addictive stimulant is running at
25% of the national average, and dealers are marketing packets of the
drug to elementary school students for as little as $5 and $10,
witnesses said at a House hearing Thursday.

"California is completely flooded with methamphetamine," Ron Brooks,
chairman of the National Narcotic Officers Associations Coalition,
told the House Government Reform Committee's drug policy panel. "It
is cheap. We're seeing it in junior high schools and upper grade
schools."

The grim national assessment of the drug's spread targeted California
as the chief production epicenter.

Even $10 worth of meth can produce a powerful high, said Fresno
County Sheriff's Department Sgt. Rick Pursell.

"The price has gone way down," he said. "It used to cost a couple
thousand for an ounce. Now, you can get an ounce for about $350."

Joseph D. Keefe, chief of operations for the Drug Enforcement
Administration, said that between 80% and 85% of the drug's total
production comes from California "super labs" operated by tightly
knit Mexican drug trafficking cartels.

Methamphetamine, though illegal, is distilled from commonly available
chemicals used in agriculture and nonprescription drugs. That makes
it easy to produce the drug, although the byproducts are dangerous
and toxic, and typically illegally dumped.

The drug sells nationally for about $100 a gram, but its abundance in
California has pushed prices down to as little as $20 a gram.

Methamphetamine is cheaper in the Valley because it is produced
locally, but meth producers have been leaving the Valley for greener
pastures. A price around the Valley can range between $5,000 and
$7,000 per pound, but on the East Coast the pound price is about
$20,000.

"We are starting to displace some of these organizations and groups
into Northern California and they are starting to impact Oregon and
Washington," said Robert Pennal, special agent supervisor for the
state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement and commander of the Fresno
Methamphetamine Task Force. "We still have a serious problem because
we are processing so many hazardous dump sites, a direct indicator of
large-scale meth activity."

Pennal said his agency has closed fewer meth labs this year than last
year because the cartels have moved away. "They are also getting
better and better at hiding these things," Pennal said. "The more we
take them off, the more they learn about us, and they are constantly
changing things."

It takes little money to produce a serious high from methamphetamine.

"Twenty dollars can buy enough to stay high all day," said Henry
Serrano, police chief in Citrus Heights, a Sacramento suburb.

Serrano said Sacramento County has the highest rate of
methamphetamine-related hospitalizations in the state.

Citrus Heights also has one of the most aggressive programs in the
country to combat drug use, and Rep. Doug Ose, a Sacramento
Republican who sits on the House panel, cited it as one of the few
encouraging developments in the escalating battle against the drug.

Serrano said the program involves training police to better recognize
people who are high on drugs, collaborating with the psychiatry
department at University of California at Davis on an effective drug
education program, getting drug education materials to users, and
instituting measures to protect children and elderly people living
with drug-addicted caretakers.

Serrano said that the most effective preventative tool Citrus Heights
has found so far is to show young students "before and after"
pictures of addicts, who typically age quickly, are gaunt and suffer
disfiguring dental and skin problems.

Said Pennal: "It is such a powerful central nervous system stimulant
that it's very difficult to have someone who goes into treatment get
off the drug the first time."

Brooks said that he has been disturbed by the number of children
caught in the methamphetamine crisis. He said 795 children were found
inside labs raided in 1999, and 647 children were found last year.

In 1997, a California congressional delegation obtained $18.2 million
for a two-year federal law enforcement program to combat
methamphetamine production, boosting total spending to fight the
drug's production to more than $150 million a year.

So deep is the concern in Congress about the spread of the drug that
more than 60 members have formed a House caucus to address
methamphetamine enforcement and prevention funding issues.

The scope of the meth problem was detailed in an 18-page special
section published last year in The Bee newspapers in Fresno,
Sacramento and Modesto. Ose added the report to the House hearing
record Thursday.