EXPERTS: METH IS KING IN EAST TEXAS

It's highly marketable, provides an intense rush and can be made
inside a car, a bathroom or in the woods without attracting unwanted
scrutiny.

During the past five years, its manufacturers have increased the
quality, the potency and the danger of the illegal drug. They've also
attracted attention from law enforcement officers on the federal,
state and local levels.

Those officers say that as is the case in much of East Texas and
increasingly in the rest of the country, meth is fast becoming the
drug of choice in Gregg County.

"Forty-nine percent of the organization's drug arrests this year have
been meth-related," said Longview Police Sgt. Keith Sloan, field
supervisor for the County Organized Drug Enforcement Unit. "We expect
60 to 70 percent of our arrests in 2006 to be meth-related."

A year ago, crack arrests still topped meth arrests, 38 percent to
32.6 percent. CODE is on track to exceed 120 arrests from
methamphetamine this year, he said.

"We've seen an increase in meth in the last 12 to 18 months," said
Longview Police Chief J.B. McCaleb. "Most of it has been crystal meth.
Very little of the other forms (such as powder). It's now passed up
crack here."

While production is down in some parts of Texas, Sloan says the
heavily wooded areas of East Texas provide lots of privacy for
manufacturers. That, combined with interstate corridors that run east
and west and north and south through the Longview area, will make it
hard to get meth out of this part of the state anytime soon. The drug
can be "cooked" in 30 to 45 minutes, depending on quality.

"Unlike cocaine, which derives from the coca plant and is grown only
in South American equatorial countries, methamphetamine is a
combination of chemicals and other ingredients available anywhere,"
Sloan said.

Longview might not be that close to the Mexican border, but U.S. 59
and U.S. 259 provide a corridor for potent meth being produced in that
country, Sloan said.

Longview is equally suited on a west-to-east path with drugs coming
through the Juarez/El Paso area, on either Interstate 10 or Interstate
20, all the way through East Texas to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia
and South Carolina.

Gregg and Harrison counties are greatly affected by those corridors,
Sloan said. Houston and Dallas, he says, are the major distribution
points for all drugs entering Texas from Mexico.

He says that for every load of drugs that is found on the
Texas-Mexican border, it's estimated that at least 10 to 15 loads
enter undetected.

"With no regulation or governmental control, the Mexican cartels are
now moving away from importing cocaine from South America to exporting
methamphetamine throughout the world," Sloan said.

Though it was once called the poor man's cocaine, Sloan said the
methamphetamine users no longer fit a particular stereotype. Its
customers include men and women, and people who are white and black,
rich and poor.

One positive sign for law enforcement personnel is the cooperation of
businesses that have taken ephedrine products such as Sudafed off open
counters. Ephedrine is a key component in the manufacturing of meth.

The products can still be purchased, but in stores such as Wal-Mart
and Kmart, purchase records are kept. Sales are denied after roughly
the equivalent of two boxes of Sudafed per month. Smaller retail
stores often keep records at their checkout counters.

"We used to see a lot of shoplifters with boxes and boxes of
pseudoephedrine products," Sloan said. "But we're not seeing a whole
lot of that lately."

By making the ephedrine more difficult to obtain, law officers and
retailers believe local manufacturing will be greatly affected.

"We have about a dozen items that have pseudoephedrine in them," said
a pharmaceutical spokesman for a Longview Wal-Mart store. "But you
can't buy any of them without proper identification. I'm sure we've
lost some sales, but not a great amount."

Sloan says the Longview area is getting about half its methamphetamine
product from Mexican cartels and other places, and is producing about
half on its own. In the past, the majority of meth on the streets came
from small drug labs because small-time operators could easily obtain
all the materials they needed at retail outlets.

Mexican cartels have a huge advantage because they can buy ephedrine
in huge quantities at low prices without interference from the law.

Even with the cooperation of the retail establishments, the local drug
makers aren't out of business. The same kind of products can still be
purchased from online pharmacies, though federal officials are trying
to do what they can to crack down on those sites.

"Everybody is in this fight to make this a better place to live,"
Sloan said. Law enforcement agencies in Longview and Kilgore work
closely with Drug Enforcement Agency task forces from Tyler, as well
as with Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents.

What Is Meth?

- - The Office of National Drug Control Policy describes methamphetamine
as a highly addictive stimulant that can be injected, snorted, smoked
or swallowed. Methamphetamine users feel a short yet intense "rush"
when the drug is initially administered. The effects of
methamphetamine include increased activity, decreased appetite, and a
sense of well-being that can last from 20 minutes to 12 hours.