METH USE ON RISE, ESPECIALLY BY TEENS

Crime: The cheap, easily produced stimulant has become enemy No.1 in the
war on drugs.

Drug users love it because it provides a cheap high that can last up to 24
hours.

Dealers love it because it is so easy to make.

And most of the nation's methamphetamine supply is made in California -
from mom-and-pop operations working out of kitchens or bathtubs to
sprawling, organized-crime-controlled warehouses producing hundreds of
pounds a day.

So it is not surprising that methamphetamine is the key target of the
state's Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.

Attorney General Dan Lungren said drug use among teenagers in California,
as well as nationally, is on the rise again after steep declines in the
1980s.Much of that is because of alarming rises in methamphetamine use.

The drug is so readily available that the price has fallen from a high of
$15,000 a pound a few years ago to a low of $5,000 a pound now, federal
drug enforcement officials say.

"In the area of fighting drugs, particularly among our young people, we are
not seeing the successes that we saw in the last decade," said Lungren, the
GOP nominee for governor.

Lungren's agency received an $18 million federal grant in January to beef
up methamphetamine enforcement efforts.

The state agency and its task forces have shut down more than 4,300 drug
labs since Lungren became attorney general in 1991. Still, enforcement
officials have no way of knowing how much more methamphetamine is out there.

"There are no hard statistics, because we're dealing with covert
activities," said George J. Doane, who heads the state's drug-enforcement
bureau.

Bill Ruzzamente, an assistant supervising special agent for the DEA in San
Francisco, said the state is getting "beat up" in the war against
methamphetamine.

The industry is mostly controlled by Mexico-based organized-crime groups,
Ruzzamente said. The state has become as synonymous with the production and
supply of methamphetamine as Colombia is with the exportation of cocaine,
said Tom Umberg, deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy.

"Meth is far and away the most dangerous drug on the horizon," said Umberg,
a former Orange County assemblyman.

Methamphetamine is made from relatively cheap over-the-counter ingredients.
The resulting drug can be smoked, snorted, eaten or injected. Smoking it
can produce a high that lasts a full day. Cocaine, in contrast, produces a
high that lasts about 30 minutes and is more expensive.

The use of cocaine has dropped 70 percent since its peak in 1985, while
methamphetamine use has increased dramatically.

Ruzzamente credited the state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement for doing a
good job in fighting the war.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski