NEW METH FORMULA AVOIDS ANTI-DRUG LAWS

This is the new formula for methamphetamine: a two-liter soda bottle,
a few handfuls of cold pills and some noxious chemicals. Shake the
bottle and the volatile reaction produces one of the world's most
addictive drugs.

Only a few years ago, making meth required an elaborate lab - with
filthy containers simmering over open flames, cans of flammable
liquids and hundreds of pills. The process gave off foul odors,
sometimes sparked explosions and was so hard to conceal that dealers
often "cooked" their drugs in rural areas.

But now drug users are making their own meth in small batches using a
faster, cheaper and much simpler method with ingredients that can be
carried in a knapsack and mixed on the run. The "shake-and-bake"
approach has become popular because it requires a relatively small
number of pills of the decongestant pseudoephedrine - an amount easily
obtained under even the toughest anti-meth laws that have been adopted
across the United States to restrict large purchases of some cold medication.

"Somebody somewhere said 'Wait this requires a lot less
pseudoephedrine, and I can fly under the radar,'" said Mark Woodward,
spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs
Control.

An Associated Press review of lab seizures and interviews with state
and federal law enforcement agents found that the new method is
rapidly spreading across the American heartland and is contributing to
a spike in the number of meth cases after years of declining arrests.

The new formula does away with the clutter of typical meth labs, and
it can turn the back seat of a car or a bathroom stall into a
makeshift drug factory. Some addicts have even made the drug while
driving.

The pills are crushed, combined with some common household chemicals
and then shaken in the soda bottle. No flame is required.

Using the new formula, batches of meth are much smaller but just as
dangerous as the old system, which sometimes produces powerful
explosions, touches off intense fires and releases drug ingredients
that must be handled as toxic waste.

"If there is any oxygen at all in the bottle, it has a propensity to
make a giant fireball," said Sgt. Jason Clark of the Missouri State
Highway Patrol's Division of Drug and Crime Control. "You're not
dealing with rocket scientists here anyway. If they get unlucky at
all, it can have a very devastating reaction."

One little mistake, such as unscrewing the bottle cap too fast, can
result in a huge blast, and police in Alabama, Oklahoma and other
states have linked dozens of flash fires this year - some of them
fatal - to meth manufacturing.

"Every meth recipe is dangerous, but in this one, if you don't shake
it just right, you can build up too much pressure, and the container
can pop," Woodward said.

When fire broke out in older labs, "it was usually on a stove in a
back room or garage and people would just run, but when these things
pop, you see more extreme burns because they are holding it. There are
more fires and more burns because of the close proximity, whether it's
on a couch or driving down the road."

After the chemical reaction, what's left is a crystalline powder that
users smoke, snort or inject. They often discard the bottle, which now
contains a poisonous brown and white sludge. Dozens of reports
describe toxic bottles strewn along highways and rural roads in states
with the worst meth problems.

The do-it-yourself method creates just enough meth for a few hits,
allowing users to make their own doses instead of buying mass-produced
drugs from a dealer.

"It simplified the process so much that everybody's making their own
dope," said Kevin Williams, sheriff of Marion County, Alabama, west of
Birmingham. "It can be your next-door neighbor doing it. It can be one
of your family members living downstairs in the basement."

A typical meth lab would normally take days to generate a full-size
batch of meth, which would require a heat source and dozens, maybe
hundreds, of boxes of cold pills.

But because the new method uses far less pseudoephedrine, small-time
users are able to make the drug in spite of a federal law that bars
customers from buying more than 9 grams - roughly 300 pills - a month.

The federal government and dozens of states adopted restrictions on
pseudoephedrine in 2005, and the number of lab busts fell
dramatically.

The total number of clandestine meth lab incidents reported to the
Drug Enforcement Administration fell from almost 17,400 in 2003 to
just 7,347 in 2006.

But the number of busts has begun to climb again, and some authorities
blame the shake-and-bake method for renewing meth activity.

The AP review of 14 states found:

. At least 10 states reported increases in meth lab seizures or
meth-related arrests from 2007 to 2008.

. The Mississippi State Crime Lab participated in 457 meth incidents
through May 31, up from 122 for the same period a year ago - a nearly
275 percent increase.

. Several states, such as Oklahoma and Tennessee, are on pace this
year to double the number of labs busted in 2008.

The director of Tennessee's meth task force said the pace of lab busts
in his state is projected to be about 1,300 for 2009, compared with
815 for all of 2008.

Some states lack a central database to monitor cold medicine sales, so
meth cooks circumvent state laws by pill shopping in multiple cities
and states - a practice known as "smurfing" that allows them to stay
under restrictions placed on sales.

Traci Fruit, a special agent with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation,
said law enforcement officials are becoming increasingly frustrated
because there's no way to tell who is buying what "unless we go from
store to store ourselves and pull up the records."

Historically, rural states like Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas have
been hotbeds for meth use because an important ingredient in the
traditional method, anhydrous ammonia, was easily available from tanks
on farms where it's used as a fertilizer. But the new formula does not
need anhydrous ammonia and instead uses ammonium nitrate, a compound
easily found in instant cold packs that can be purchased at any drug
store.

Data from the Justice Department and the DEA data suggest the method
could only be in its early stages, and "shake-and-bake" labs have
recently been discovered as far north as Indiana and as far east as
West Virginia.

States surveyed by the AP also included: Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas,
Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama,
Georgia, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

While many law enforcement agencies are just learning how to spot the
new labs, other states are rushing to close loopholes in laws limiting
the sale of meth ingredients.

Mississippi Sen. Sid Albritton, said that state's law - modeled after
Oklahoma's - forces buyers to show identification and makes stores
keep a log of cold medicine sales. But the problem in Mississippi is
lack of technology to instantly log purchases in a central database.

"You have to understand going in that drugs are an evolutionary
process," said Albritton, a former police detective and narcotics
officer. "The day after we pass a law, they are going to look for ways
to circumvent that."