METH IN THE MIDWEST

A Sinister Visitor Has Brought Unwelcome Changes To The Small Town Of
Newton, Iowa

Newton, Iowa -- It is September in Newton, Iowa, and cornfields merge into
the horizon, waiting for a combine's whirring blades. Toilet-paper
streamers dangle like tinsel in front of high-school football players'
homes during homecoming week.

Times are pretty good in Newton. Crop prices could be higher, but there is
work for just about anyone who wants it in the hometown of the Maytag
corporation.

But an intruder lurks beneath the All-American veneer.

Near the end of a dead-end street sits a small white house targeted by
Jasper County deputies John Halferty and Eric Nation. A whiff of chemicals
in the neighborhood sent investigators hunting for a clandestine
methamphetamine lab.

Within two blocks, police have found at least seven homes where meth was
being used, sold or manufactured.

Meth has changed the town of 15,000, bruised its innocence, Halferty lamented.

"I used to deliver papers on this block (but) . . . all my customers are
gone," he said. "I have new ones."

Nation knocks on the door. A woman answers, her thin face dotted with red
blemishes. Police call them "speed bumps," because they afflict long-time
users. She consents to a search, but Halferty and Nation leave after the
suspected lab eludes them.

Abuse of methamphetamine and other drugs tops the list of residents'
concerns, Mayor David Aldridge said. Sometimes, though, the fears get blown
out of proportion.

"I don't think we're going to hell in a handbasket," he said.

A few towns away in Altoona, customers new and old get a friendly, "Hi,
dear," from Maggie Edwards, a part-time barmaid at Anthony's. A sign warns
"You fight, you're barred." Walls are heavy with stock-car posters and
racing schedules.

Times have indeed changed, Edwards agrees. Meth has seeped into the town,
but other problems have surfaced as well. There have been drive-by
shootings and a bomb threat at a local high school.

The invasion of small meth labs is one of the most difficult changes for
some to accept. A few months back, police found a lab in an abandoned grain
silo nearby, Edwards said.

"Middle of the day in the summer," she said, popping another beer for a
customer.

Like most Midwest states with meth problems, Iowa's troubles involve users
and small-time manufacturers. Police say 85 percent of the methamphetamine
in the area comes from California.

In the Midwest, most meth makers favor a process dubbed the "Nazi" method,
a name that some say harkens to Germany's use of amphetamine-based
stimulants to keep soldiers alert during World War II. A key ingredient is
anhydrous ammonia, a subzero liquid fertilizer.

Pressurized ammonia tanks holding 1,000 gallons or more are targets for
thieves, who slip into fields and farm co-ops to siphon off enough caustic
liquid to make their meth.

In nearby Mingo, a man yanked a hose from a tank and spilled ammonia over
his arms, chest and groin. Police found him lying in bushes 50 feet from
the tank.

Ammonia peeled skin from his arms, chest and penis and caused nerve damage,
Halferty said. Three months later, police caught the same man stealing
ammonia again.

"They just won't stop cooking," said Jim Wingo, a narcotics officer with
the Missouri State Highway Patrol. "They're like Robocooks."

People who make meth are called cooks, even though the most common
production method in the Midwest does not require a heat source.

The Nazi method takes an hour or two compared with the "red-P method,"
which requires red phosphorous and dominates production in California. The
"red-P" recipe calls for a few different key ingredients and can take a day
or two to make, agents say.

Both methods usually convert a decongestant called pseudoephedrine into its
close chemical cousin, methamphetamine.

Midwest cooks use the Nazi method because it is simple and fast, said Jerry
Nelson, an Iowa state narcotics agent. Anhydrous ammonia is readily
available on farms, and the reaction activates when ingredients are simply
dumped into a container. Hours of heating the mixture isn't required.

Some Nazi cooks make methamphetamine in ice chests. Others have been known
to drive down the street, hanging an arm out the window, cooking meth in a
plastic cup. Though the mixture is caustic, it does not eat through plastic.

The Nazi method's major drawback is that the chemical conversion yields
less methamphetamine from each gram of pseudoephedrine, Nelson said.

As meth spread from California in the early 1990s, it arrived in Des Moines
as a working-man's drug, Mayor Preston A. Daniels said.

Methamphetamine use crosses age, gender and racial boundaries. But the
typical Iowa user is working-class, white and has a high-school education,
Daniels said.

"You have the average good old boy who works hard and parties all weekend,"
he said. "Here comes the perfect drug. I can two-step my ass off and I can
drink a half-case of beer and I'm good to go."

Users turn up everywhere, said Chuck Stocking, chief deputy in the Cass
County, Iowa, sheriff's department.

Stocking said he gave his brother-in-law a warning after hearing rumors he
was cooking meth. Later, he found his brother-in-law was still in business.

"I sent my brother-in-law to prison for cooking dope," he said.

The lure grips some at startlingly young ages.

Shane Stewart, 28, started using meth with his brothers and friends in Des
Moines when he was 13. Already drinking alcohol and smoking pot, the jump
to meth was almost inevitable, Stewart said.

"I enjoyed the paranoia. I enjoyed the delusions and illusions that came
from it, to a point," he said, adding that he cannot fully explain that
statement.

At times, when no one was speaking, Stewart heard imaginary conversations
about people stealing his drugs.

"It's like your deepest fear is coming out," he said.

School ended for Stewart when he started meth. He moved out of his mother's
home and started injecting the drug at 14. A year later, he moved in with a
30-year-old woman.

Why was a 30-year-old woman interested in a 15-year-old boy?

"Because I sold dope," he said.

Physical and verbal abuse dominated the relationship.

"I know it wasn't normal, but that was the only life I experienced," he said.

On a drive to California one time, a friend smashed Stewart in the face
with a beer bottle. Stewart doesn't know what sparked the argument.

He grabbed a pistol, aimed the barrel at his friend's head and pulled the
trigger. He didn't know that a hitchhiker the friends had picked up had
unloaded the gun.

"If there would have been bullets in it, he'd be dead," Stewart said of his
friend.

After 12 years of drug abuse, Stewart entered a treatment program at the
Powell Chemical Dependency Center in Des Moines three years ago. He says
he's living clean now, but methamphetamine still has its claws in him.

During an interview with a reporter, as he started talking about needles
and injecting methamphetamine, "I could feel the sweats coming on," he
said, nervously rubbing his palms together.

Today, Stewart is married and has two stepchildren. He worked at the Powell
center as an aide until recently and plans to seek a college degree and a
career counseling people who still fight drugs' demons.

"Where else can I put ... years of using dope on a resume?" he asked.