LAWS CURBING METH PRODUCTION, NOT USE

Solution Led To New Problem: Mexican Meth

DES MOINES, Iowa - In the seven months since Iowa passed its law
restricting cold medicines used to make methamphetamine, busts of
homemade meth labs have dropped from 120 a month to just 20. People
once terrified about the neighbor's house blowing up now walk up to
the state's drug policy director, Marvin Van Haaften, at his local
Wal-Mart to thank him for making them safer.

But Van Haaften, like officials in other states that have passed
similar restrictions, is now worried about a new problem: The drop in
home-cooked meth has been met by a new flood of crystal
methamphetamine coming largely from Mexico. Sometimes called ice,
crystal methamphetamine is far purer, and therefore even more highly
addictive, than powdered home-cooked meth, a shift that treatment
providers say has led to greater risk of overdose. And because
crystal methamphetamine costs more, police say thefts are increasing.

The University of Iowa Burn Center, which in 2004 spent $2.8 million
treating people whose skin had been scorched off by the toxic
chemicals used to make meth at home, says it now sees hardly any such
cases. Treatment centers, on the other hand, say they are treating
just as many or more meth addicts. And although child welfare
officials say they are removing fewer children from homes where
parents are cooking the drug, the number of children being removed
from homes where parents are using it has more than made up the difference.

As Congress prepares to restrict the sale of pseudoephedrine, the
cold medicine ingredient that is used to make methamphetamine,
officials here and in other states that have imposed similar
restrictions recently caution that the laws fall far short of a
solution to the epidemic of meth abuse.

Federal drug agents tend to describe ice as methamphetamine that is
at least 90 percent pure - far more potent than homemade powdered
meth; a "good cook" yields a drug that is about 42 percent pure, but
around 25 percent is more common.