TARGETING AN 'ALL-AROUND' MENACE

He was unshaven. His wide-open eyes warily scanned the room, darting
back and forth like a lizard's. He drummed his fingers on a table and
tapped his toes on the floor.

He was "tweaking."

The young man's disheveled appearance and paranoid behavior -- a side
effect from taking methamphetamine -- is becoming a disturbingly
common sight in Chicago's Lake View neighborhood, police say.

Methamphetamine, known as "ice" or "crystal," was found mainly in the
gay nightclub scene on the North Side until a few years ago. But the
circle of meth users is widening, as evidenced by a skyrocketing
number of arrests for possession of the drug this year in the Town
Hall police district on the North Side, officials say.

"It's all around," said the man, who is gay. "You can stay high for
two days, full of energy. And sex is great on meth."

He first found his methamphetamine contacts in 2001 when he surfed
Internet chatrooms. He met people who admitted to doing drugs and were
willing to "party and play."

Now he uses methamphetamine to stay up for 48-hour stretches and do
computer work for his job.

"I do more work than anyone else," he said. "But it's a real problem
if you party on the weekend and need to work on Monday. You're
extremely tired and irritable when you come down from it. All you want
to do is sleep."

And sometimes, you need to be rushed to the hospital. Emergency room
admissions in the Chicago area because of methamphetamine abuse rose
from three per 100,000 in 1995 to eight per 100,000 in 2002.

Police crackdown

Robert Stasch, a Chicago Police lieutenant who supervises plainclothes
tactical officers in the Town Hall District, said his team is cracking
down on methamphetamine to prevent history from repeating itself.

In the 1980s, crack cocaine became popular on the West Coast. Then
Chicago's gangs discovered it. By the early '90s, crack was king in
Chicago and murders soared as dealers fought for street corner markets.

"I believe that meth is the crack cocaine of the 21st century," Stasch
said. "Our biggest fear is that gangs will start dealing this. The
gang-bangers could stand out there for three days without sleeping and
sell it on the corners. That is why we are concentrating on it now."

This year, Town Hall cops have made 19 arrests for meth possession,
compared with eight over the same period in 2003, Stasch said.

"Our informants are telling us it is hard to penetrate the dealers
because we have hit them so hard they are cautious about who they sell
to," he said.

Methamphetamine, made in clandestine labs everywhere from California
to Downstate, is an off-white powder that is snorted, smoked or
injected. A gram retails for about $330 here, according to the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration.

It's more expensive per gram than crack cocaine, another
stimulant.

"But you will get a high that lasts four to five times longer than
cocaine," Stasch said. "That's why it's popular."

Lucrative product

Methamphetamine is lucrative for dealers, attracting a wide
cross-section of people to the business. On Friday, a Chicago Public
Schools teacher was arrested with about $17,000 of methamphetamine in
his apartment, along with the "date rape drug" GHB and drug
paraphernalia, police said.

"The guy who looks like Joe Schmo with the bookbag is the guy selling
the dope," said Nenad Markovich, a Town Hall tactical officer.

The arrests involve big money: On July 1, police arrested a man with
$38,000 of methamphetamine, as well as other drugs, a gun and $5,000
during a traffic stop. The vanity plates on his Cadillac Escalade
read: "ONTRPNR."

Last year, a Hollywood movie executive was caught in a methamphetamine
sting. Now he is in federal prison serving an 18-month sentence. He
was convicted of smuggling about an ounce of meth from Los Angeles to
Chicago.

"Meth, as far as I am concerned, is an epidemic, not just in the gay
community, but in the rural areas," said the executive, who requested
anonymity, in a telephone interview from prison.

"The drug is running rampant there [in Chicago]," he said. "People
don't do coke anymore in the club scene. Why do a major amount of coke
when you can do a line of meth?"

FACTS ABOUT METH

Cost: About $330 a gram in the Chicago area
History: Popularized on the West Coast by the Hells Angels motorcycle club
Appearance: Generally a cloudy white powder that can be snorted, smoked or
heated for injection
Potency: Extended highs that can last 48 hours
Dangers: Addictive, can lead to erratic behavior and overdose
Geography: Many Chicago Police arrests have been in the Lake View area, but
fears are the drug could expand to other parts of city