SHARP DIP NOTED IN METH LABS, BUT NOT IN AVAILABILITY OF DRUG

Back when he started cooking "crank" five years ago, Ryan Spencer had
little trouble shopping for ingredients.

He bought or stole pseudoephedrine pills by the boxful. He would hop
from pharmacy to pharmacy, gathering enough of the cold and allergy
medicine for a decent batch of methamphetamine. For iodine he would
drop by the local feed store. Red phosphorous proved harder to find,
so Spencer would soak matchbook strike pads in acetone and scrape it off.

That was until lawmakers and police clamped down on bulk sales of
pseudoephedrine and a host of volatile chemicals used to make the
potent stimulant known as "meth," "zip," "Tina" and "hillbilly crack."

Spencer, 27, who started smoking meth when he was 13, responded like
any sensible crankster might. He stopped cooking and bought from
dealers, selling some off to subsidize a $80- to $110-a-day habit.

"The way it is now, it just seems they'll catch you" cooking, said
Spencer, who lives in Antioch and recently completed a 90-day
treatment program. "There's very little payoff. Meth, especially in
Antioch, is way easy to get."

State crime data suggests that meth cooks like Spencer have quit in
droves. And Contra Costa County, once the Bay Area's notorious hotbed
for meth labs, has seen the sharpest drop in lab seizures of any
California county that recorded 15 or more lab busts in 2000, a Times
analysis of the data shows.

The crackdown on precursor chemicals is one factor. But a bigger one,
say authorities, may be the flood of cheap and stronger meth coming
north from "superlabs" in the Central Valley and Mexico.

And from those labs comes "ice," a purer, crystallized form that
resembles shards of glass. Ice is most often smoked, a method that
fuels worse meth addiction problems, meth researchers say.

"Why get caught making meth when you can wait for your ice to come in
from your dealer?" said Jackie Long, special agent supervisor for the
state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.

The drop in lab activity locally means fewer contaminated homes and
less dumping of toxic chemicals in streams and creeks. But meth
remains widely available, and if anything, the problem has only grown
worse, say drug agents, prosecutors, treatment providers and health officials.

Now, 35 percent of people admitted to Contra Costa County-funded
addiction treatment programs cite meth as their primary problem, up
from 17 percent in 2000, county data shows. Meth is by far the
leading drug for people who undergo treatment in the county, whether
by choice or under court order.

Throughout the region, police in the late 1990s would turn up scores
of labs in motel rooms, storage sheds and homes. Much of the activity
was centered in east Contra Costa County.

The number of clandestine labs seized in California fell 86 percent
from 2000 to 2005, according to the Western States Information
Network, a national database.

And Contra Costa saw a 92 percent decline over the same period,
recording just six meth lab busts last year, according to state
Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement data.

Police and prosecutors credit laws placing limits on the amount
people can buy and retailers helping track sales of common chemicals
used in making meth.

They also cite the 2001 shutdown of Alpha Chemical, a Concord company
they say knowingly sold bulk red phosphorous and iodine to meth cooks
across the region.

"I would say more than half of these small-capacity labs were getting
their chemicals from them," said Cmdr. Steve Ladeck of WestNET, a
drug task force in West Contra Costa County.

A federal judge last year convicted owners David and Carol Conkey of
San Ramon on charges of drug conspiracy and possession and
distribution of chemicals used to make meth. David Conkey, 60,
received a one-year state prison sentence and three years of
supervised release. Carol Conkey, 62, was sentenced to three years of
probation.

"The common guy who could go down to the store and buy everything a
few years back can't do that anymore," said Cmdr. Norm Wielsch of the
Contra Costa Narcotic Enforcement Team, or CNET, which works in central county.

State narcotics agents also shut down a Hayward chemical supply
company that supplied materials to larger meth lab operators, Ladeck said.

But Long, who oversees the state program, doubts that the drop means
meth cooks have quit.

A shift in priorities after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the state
budget crisis gutted the state agency's staff from 75 agents to just
15, he said.

Only in the new state budget have many of those positions been
restored, he said. Regional task forces, such as CNET, also lost
personnel as local agencies pulled back under budget pressure.

One indication that meth labs continue to thrive in California, said
Long, is that lab seizures fell nearly 50 percent from 2004 to 2005,
but the number of lab dump sites slid only 11 percent.

Also, while seizures at the Mexican border increased 54 percent,
indicating a supply shift to Mexican cartels, the amount of meth
seized in the state rose 118 percent, Long said.