LASTING EFFECTS OF SIN CITY

Editor's Note: Five inmates serving prison sentences for
methamphetamine crimes agreed to talk to the NewsTribune about the
arrival of meth in the Illinois Valley.

Meth Addict Says Learning To 'Cook' The Start Of Self-Destruction

MOUNT STERLING -- It wasn't in farm country where Buddy Hoblit
discovered methamphetamine, but in Las Vegas.

The Oklahoma native, now 40 years old, was living in Sin City in the
mid-1990s and partying hard. He tried every kind of drug but grew
particularly fond of an illegal stimulant made from red phosphorous,
available in chemical-grade form on the black market or simply
extracted from boxes of matches.

Las Vegas was teeming with meth. Tourists ingested it to fend off
sleep and stay alert at the tables and slots for days at a time.
Hoblit and his wife Gidget (married in 1998) finally left Vegas,
hoping to escape the drug culture, and eventually settled in the
Illinois Valley around 2001.

They liked La Salle. Buddy found work without difficulty and Gidget,
who had family nearby, enrolled as a nursing student at Illinois
Valley Community College.

"We were trying to build a life here, but we still had this
sickness," Buddy Hoblit said of their addictions.

By that time, Buddy had learned how to make meth on his own. His
"friends" suckered him into letting them use a spare room to cook --
usually in exchange for a few free grams -- and he saw enough to
learn the basics of meth production. A little online research filled
in the blanks. His temptation to resume cooking was heightened by
easy access to meth ingredients.

Some states have meth laws so strict that shoppers have to show a
picture ID to buy cold medication, a source of pseudoephedrine.
Illinois, he discovered, had no such restrictions in 2001.

"We were trying to get away from this problem because it's an
addiction and it's a sickness," he said, "but now I could go out and
with $100 I could get everything I needed."

Though heroin remains the Illinois Valley's scourge, methamphetamine
has finally migrated to North Central Illinois from Missouri and
southern Illinois. Meth labs have popped up in recent years and while
police and prosecutors say the illegal stimulant has yet to reach
epidemic proportions, recovering addicts warn that it is as addictive
as heroin.

Hoblit insisted that he wasn't dealing meth, just using it for
personal consumption. He would cook it in small quantities -- no more
than 4 grams at a time -- and he and Gidget would ingest it over the
course of a weekend. However depleted they felt on Monday morning, he
said, they always reported to work or class on time. They were
discreet enough to avoid detection for years. With no addicts coming
and going in pursuit of meth, the neighbors had no idea there were
drugs on the premises.
More importantly, there was no smell; unlike most meth addicts in the
Midwest, Hoblit didn't use anhydrous ammonia.

Meth may have overtaken the Midwest states but it actually began out
west. (See sidebar.) Hoblit noticed that as meth migrated eastward
producers abandoned red phosphorous, by the late '90s tightly
regulated and more difficult to obtain, in favor of anhydrous
ammonia. Though anhydrous produces less potent meth and is more
dangerous -- the pungent gas is corrosive and poses a serious risk of
fire or explosion -- anhydrous is readily available in rural areas.

"It's all about the accessibility," Hoblit said. "If it's easy to
get, then they're going to do it."

Hoblit quietly produced phosphate meth in the comfort of his own home
- -- until the one day Gidget got into a fight with a relative.

The shouting alarmed the neighbors, who called the police. When the
cops arrived, they found pills containing pseudoephedrine and a
1-gallon container of muratic acid. In the trash outside were
containers Hoblit had discarded after producing meth three days
earlier. The pills and acid were enough to bring down charges of
aggravated participation in meth manufacturing, a Class X felony with
no possibility of probation.

Buddy was ordered held on $1 million bond, Gidget on $750,000, and
they faced up to 30 years in prison.

"I knew we were getting to the end," Hoblit said from an interview
room at Western Illinois Correctional Center, where he is serving 15
years. "I knew it was getting out of hand. You think you're adapting
to it, but it's so overpowering that people don't realize the mindset
it puts you in."

Buddy begged prosecutors to go easy on Gidget, insisting the meth
operation was his and she never once made meth. His efforts were in
vain; Gidget pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in prison,
though she could be released to a halfway house in 2007.

Considering he manufactured meth for personal use, Hoblit said he
thinks his own sentence was excessive.

He said there is a disparity between what heroin and meth addicts
get, citing an instance where a known heroin dealer/user drew a much
shorter sentence than his.

However, Brian Vescogni, the assistant public defender who
represented Gidget, said Buddy Hoblit ran into two problems.

The meth materials were seized in a multi-unit dwelling and two
minors (relatives of Gidget's) were on the premises, making Hoblit
eligible for sentencing enhancements.

"He was going to prison," Vescogni asserted. Vescogni said the
effects of meth use were alarming. Gidget, he recalled, appeared in
court sickly and emaciated, and her appearance noticeably improved
after she was taken into custody and cut off from her supply. "Just
as heroin is more addictive than cocaine," Vescogni said, "I think
meth is more addictive than heroin."

Hoblit said that if he were released he would go to schools and tell
children not to try methamphetamine, and then urge legislators to
further restrict cold medication, a source of pseudoephedrine,
imposed in other states. As dangerous as anhydrous ammonia is, he
said, the real problem is pseudoephedrine, without which an addict
simply cannot make meth. As long as cold medication is available over
the counter, addicts can make meth.

"If it's accessible to me, think about the guy who has the $150,000
home and has the capability to make pounds of it," Hoblit said. "It
would be like rats in the street. It would overtake the crack, the
cocaine and the heroin problem that's in La Salle right now."

Hoblit is currently housed at a high-medium facility 50 miles east of
Quincy, where he swelters in a 6x12 cell with no fan. He tries to
keep himself in shape with calisthenics and passes the time reading
except for a job cooking in the prison kitchen two hours a day.

Gidget, 34, did not acknowledge an interview request by the NewsTribune.

Buddy said his wife, with whom he corresponds by mail, is doing well
in a drug rehabilitation program at Lincoln Correctional Center. He
has no such program and hopes to be transferred to Dixon or Sheridan
for drug treatment.

"It's doing wonders for her," he said enviously. "I know I've got to
do my time, but I know I need drug treatment.

"I wish I'd never tried it," he noted, "but if there's one day I
could take back, it would be the day I learned how to cook. If I had
not learned how to cook, I would not be here today."

[Sidebar]

Meth's Long History

1997. That's when methamphetamine arrived in Illinois.

But meth isn't new. During World War II, the Nazis produced
anhydrous-based meth and added it to candy bars to keep their
exhausted troops going. The Japanese gave phosphorousbased meth to
kamikaze pilots, who introduced meth to the South Pacific.

Since then, meth has crept east into Hawaii, California and in the Midwest.

The drug got a major boost from a student at Southwest Missouri State
University who researched different production methods and offered
lessons at $5,000 a pop.

"I'm sure it would have gotten here somehow, but he really
jump-started meth in Missouri and the Midwest," said Master Sgt.
Bruce Liebe, methamphetamine program coordinator for Illinois State
Police in Springfield. State police recorded 24 meth labs in 1997. By
2000, there were more than 400.

"Over the past three years, we've seized more than 1,000 meth labs
each year," Liebe said, "and that's just state police -- it doesn't
count municipal and county police."

Meth makers still argue over which variation is more potent: the red
phosphate meth favored by the Japanese or the anhydrous ammonia meth
devised by the Nazis. But the anhydrous meth is a less complicated
formula and the availability of anhydrous ammonia at Illinois farms
makes it far more prevalent in the Land of Lincoln.

Not in the Illinois Valley, however.

Brian Towne, first assistant La Salle County state's attorney, said
meth has yet to reach epidemic proportions in North Central Illinois.
The number of meth cases resulting from busts, he said, remains in
the single digits.

Credit for that, oddly enough, goes to heroin. Though meth lasts
longer than heroin and can be made cheaply, making it is also very dangerous.

Heroin is more accessible because of the area's proximity to Chicago
and appears, judging from the number of court cases, to be the area's
illegal drug of choice. "Far and away, heroin is much more apparent,"
Towne said.