METH THREAT

The methamphetamine craze is poised to sweep across the state. Are we ready?

[INSET: Peter Mitchell 'The violence level has gone up. The quantity has
gone up. The quality has gone up. It's gotten seriously worse. Things are
desperate out here.']

One night in Chicago about three years ago, Joe was out with some friends at
a club, where he finally scored his first real bag of meth. These were
shards -- clear pieces of concentrated ice -- not the backyard battery-acid
stuff or the stepped-on bleach he got the time before that left chemical
burns in his nose.

No, this was nice, clean crystal methamphetamine, the good stuff.

Joe, who is from Madison (he asked that his last name not be used), was 19
at the time. He and a friend took the shards, smashed them up and snorted
the whole bag. As the drug melted into their soft tissue and hit their
bloodstreams, they were off, riding the supercharged wave that has come
rolling across the U.S. from the West and is now a major problem in every
state with which Wisconsin shares a border.

Joe had done a few drugs by then -- ecstasy, acid, pot, coke, heroin -- and
this wasn't like any of them.

"It was awesome," Joe recalls.

[snip]

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