2ND HUGE GEORGIA DRUG FIND POINTS TO PATTERN, OFFICIALS SAY

ATLANTA -- Just six days after federal agents set a Georgia record by
confiscating 187 pounds of crystal methamphetamine buried behind a
home in Buford, federal, state and local law enforcement officers
found 341 pounds of the crystals in Gainesville, Ga., the authorities
announced Wednesday.

Executing a search warrant on Aug. 22, officers found packages of
methamphetamine crystals, which look like broken rock candy, hidden
in the closets and the garage and under freshly disturbed mounds of
dirt in the backyard. They also found 300 marijuana plants, three
sets of digital scales and a gun.

The stash was the sixth-largest supply of methamphetamine confiscated
in the United States since 1970, said Ruth Porter-Whipple, the group
supervisor of the Atlanta field division of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The discovery and the brazenness with which drug dealers seem to
operate in North Georgia have alarmed drug enforcement agents and
confirmed Atlanta's emerging role as a hub for the distribution of
crystal methamphetamine, called ice.

"What we're seeing a flood of, particularly in Georgia, is the ice,"
Ms. Porter-Whipple said. "We have watched the seizures steadily
increase, which would be indicative of what's out there and available."

Large shipments of mass-produced crystal methamphetamine, almost
exclusively imported from Mexico by large drug cartels, have all but
erased gains made by new state drugs laws that limit the sale of cold
medicines and other household ingredients used to make the drug in
the United States, according to the 2006 National Drug Threat
Assessment, an annual report released by the National Drug
Intelligence Center, the federal agency that documents the traffic
patterns of illegal drugs through the United States.

"Mexican criminal groups appear to be using Atlanta as an emerging
distribution center from which methamphetamine shipments are
transported primarily to Midwestern and Southeastern drug markets,"
said Michael F. Walther, director of the center.

The primary entry points for Mexican drug runners had been Arizona
and California, and the distribution of methamphetamine, a highly
addictive nervous system stimulant that causes euphoria and appetite
loss, had been mostly concentrated in the West and Midwest.

That pattern, though, has started to change as the drug networks have
taken note of Atlanta's central location and "demographic
significance," Ms. Porter-Whipple said.

In the Gainesville case, prosecutors have charged three brothers,
[Names redacted], and a fourth man, [Name redacted], with possession
with intent to distribute methamphetamine. [Names redacted] have been arrested.

Agents are still looking for [Names redacted].