UPHILL BATTLE AGAINST METH EPIDEMIC - DAY 5A

Despite increasing resources, authorities say they've been unable to
slow production or use of methamphetamine in the Inland area.

The insatiable demand for methamphetamine generates billions of
dollars a year nationwide, fueling an industry of clandestine
manufacturers undeterred by prison, poor health or the threat of death.

Despite state-of-the-art technology, expertly trained staff and
increasing financial resources, many law-enforcement experts question
whether even their best efforts will allow them to suppress the meth
trade.

"Definitely, there's no light at the end of the tunnel on this," said
Lt. Al Hearn, who heads the Riverside County Sheriff's Department's
major narcotics unit, which targets large-scale trafficking operations.

In recent years, Inland law-enforcement authorities secured millions
of dollars in grants for overtime pay and equipment to combat the
local methamphetamine trade.

They also established task forces to collect intelligence and to bring
justice to those responsible for flooding the streets with meth. But
even the collaborative two-county effort has resulted in no
discernible reduction in the amount of drugs on the street.

The efforts produce convictions - many of them - filling California's
prisons with cookers, dealers and violent addicts. Drug-related crimes
accounted for more than 37 percent of California's prison population
in 1999. But like an aggressive crab grass, new offenders sprout as
quickly as the last ones are uprooted.

Between 1995 and 1999, methamphetamine lab busts in California more
than doubled, from 965 to more than 2,000 last year.

In Riverside County, the number rose from 167 in 1995 to more than 300
in 1999. San Bernardino County authorities expect to tally more than
420 labs for last year, up from 277 in 1995.

"We're trying to do our best to dissuade people from cooking
methamphetamine, but I have not seen a decrease in the methamphetamine
cases," said Deputy District Attorney Karen Khim, who heads
prosecutions of small-time methamphetamine manufacturers in San
Bernardino County.

In fact, the number of methamphetamine manufacturing cases
handled last year by the San Bernardino County district attorney's office rose
to 726, up from 549 the previous year.

As though riding a treadmill, narcotics officers on the front lines
dutifully raid lab after lab with no end in sight.

Local police estimate that for every lab they dismantle, 20 more go
undetected.

At the heart of the epidemic lies the ferocious demand for
methamphetamine by local users - many harboring decades-long addictions.

Glen Morgan, a daily methamphetamine user for more than 21 years,
readily admits that he no longer battles his addiction.

"I've just accepted that it's part of myself," said Morgan, 38, who
works sporadically taping drywall. "It's a (messed)-up addiction, but
if I don't have it, I don't get up and go to work.

"Some people need to have their coffee. I need a hit of
speed."

On this October evening, Morgan sat in the living room of his small
and relatively tidy Hesperia apartment, reflecting on his failed
marriage, the lost custody of his kids and his countless drug arrests.

As he spoke, narcotics investigators searched bedrooms and closets,
surveying and documenting the various jars and bottles containing
chemical ingredients used to make drugs.

The handcuffs binding his wrists gave testimony to yet another time
when meth caused his luck to run out.

This time, his second felony arrest in barely three months came after
sheriff's deputies chasing a trail of counterfeit $20 bills found a
small methamphetamine lab in a bedroom. The bogus money belonged to
the son of Morgan's girlfriend, police said. The lab, capable of
producing only a few grams of drugs at a time, belonged to Morgan.

"I'm basically a good dude," said Morgan, who would be sentenced to
two years in prison two weeks later after pleading guilty to a charge
of intending to manufacture methamphetamine. "I'd like nothing better
than to quit."

But the small lab in the Hesperia apartment would be just one of
several dismantled by the drug agents that day.

As Morgan's head slipped through the doorway of a police car for his
trip to jail, sheriff's deputies sifted through another boxed
methamphetamine lab in the garage of a home less than five miles away
in Victorville. (A boxed lab is an unassembled collection of chemicals
and equipment that can be used to manufacture methamphetamine.)

Earlier that day, deputies uncovered the remnants of a large-capacity
Mexican cartel methamphetamine lab hidden in a shed behind a house in
south Fontana - apparently abandoned days, maybe weeks before.

Amid the rubber trash cans and plastic buckets, investigators found no
signs of valuable equipment, such as heating plates and 22-liter glass
cooking flasks similar to those used by professional chemists.

Also gone was the finished methamphetamine - maybe as much as a
hundred pounds - worth a half-million dollars in the Inland Empire and
twice that in other parts of the country.

Labs often are discovered after a suspect hoping to secure
lenient treatment tips officers about bigger fish nearby. Other times, finding
tiny household manufacturing operations comes as the result of a lucky
break.

On Sept. 29, Cathedral City police looking for a handgun used in
a pistol-whipping incident served a search warrant at the home of a
parolee.

Inside a converted auto workshop, officers found an extensive
methamphetamine lab containing 36 gallons of liquid methamphetamine
capable of producing more than $180,000 worth of finished drug.

On Oct. 17, members of San Bernardino County's Methamphetamine
Interdiction Team quietly followed a pair of suspected drug
traffickers to Pico Rivera in Los Angeles County.

The surveillance led to a single-story home in a well-kept
middle-class neighborhood, where officers found a large-capacity
methamphetamine lab and thousands of bottles of pseudoephedrine, a key
ingredient in the drug.

Day after day, week after week, the names and locations vary but,
increasingly, the drug of choice remains the same.

"I don't feel like we're having an impact based on my caseload," said
Marie Fournier, who prosecutes high-level narcotics cases for the San
Bernardino County district attorney's office.

Still, some law-enforcement officers remain optimistic that
public pressure and government attention to the problem will someday
help stem the plague.

More than three years ago, federal drug agents based in Riverside
launched a nationwide investigation into the massive problem of
pseudoephedrine diversion. In 1997, authorities estimated that illicit
methamphetamine makers in California may have diverted enough
pseudoephedrine to manufacture 29 tons of the drug.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration tracks so-called "rogue"
companies, which distribute off-brand pseudoephedrine that is packaged
for retail sale but almost never reaches store shelves. Nearly all
off-brand pseudoephedrine - which is not sold in drug stores or
grocery stores - goes to meth labs, drug agents said.

Large-scale suppliers sell to distributors who deal the
pseudoephedrine in large quantities to mini-markets, gas stations and
other small businesses, said Richard Keller, assistant special agent
in charge of the DEA office in Riverside. Small businesses have no
legitimate market for shipments that, at times, have totaled hundreds
of cases, Keller said.

A standard case of pseudoephedrine contains 3,600 tablets and yields
about a pound of methamphetamine.

State and federal regulations enacted in the mid-1990s restricted the
size of retail pseudoephedrine sales and instituted reporting and
record-keeping requirements.

Pseudoephedrine's street value has risen from $800 a case in 1997 to
about $1,500 today, Keller said.

When agents served search warrants in New York, Indiana and Montana
two years ago, two of the largest suppliers stopped selling
pseudoephedrine, Keller said.

But new suppliers filled the void, including some from
Mexico.

"We're seeing millions and millions of tablets at the Mexican-national
level," he said.

Several mid-level distributors have been indicted throughout the
United States. So far, none of the largest suppliers has been charged,
but Keller said he hopes that will change.

Tougher restrictions on sales are needed, he said.

Keller favors requiring a doctor's prescription for pseudoephedrine
but concedes that is unlikely.

"It's like trying to put aspirin on a prescription," he
said.

Still, he is hopeful the meth epidemic can be stopped.

"As we've seen in the past, the government has prevailed with every
kind of social crisis," Keller said. "It's not a hopeless situation."