FOX VALLEY BRACES FOR RISE IN METH USE, LABS

Fox Valley law enforcement officers rarely arrest methamphetamine users,
and even less frequently do they bust meth labs.

Yet.

"I am sure it is coming," said McHenry County Coroner Marlene Lantz. "It
will be here."

Coroners in the suburbs like Lantz already have seen a few deaths from the
synthetic drug often used as a cheap substitute for cocaine or ecstasy.

Officials fear more deaths, whether from the addiction or the violence it
breeds, could be on the way. They also fear the crime, identity theft and
mail fraud that often follow the drug trail.

"This is the fastest-growing drug in the United States right now," said
Mark Warpress, special agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency in Chicago.

According to the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 12.4 million
Americans, or 5.2 percent of the population, reported using meth.

"It has totally devastated Missouri," Warpress said. "It has totally
devastated Iowa. It has totally devastated central and southern Illinois.
And now, we are seeing it in northern Illinois."

In preparation for a scourge officials hope won't happen, but might, DEA
agents and narcotics task force members have been giving seminars to area
law enforcement officers to teach them how to spot meth users and meth
labs, which involve household products easily overlooked.

The Aurora Youth Department, members of the Kane County drug court task
force and area Red Ribbon groups have started formulating community
pamphlets on the dangers of the drug in case use spreads.

Officials who say the western suburbs are a microcosm of middle America are
taking a look at their neighbors struggling with meth use and bracing for
the worst.

"Whatever trend you see there, we get," said McHenry County Sheriff's Sgt.
Greg Leitza.

As recently as 2002, nine Midwest states housed nearly half of all meth
labs reported seized by in the United States by law enforcement officials.
Illinois ranked sixth for labs behind Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and
Tennessee, according to the Illinois Attorney General's Office.

The number of labs could be even higher. Police agencies aren't required to
submit meth arrests or laboratory seizures to a single organization, making
it difficult to get a handle on the extent of the problem.

Many police departments and the state's annual law enforcement report don't
differentiate methamphetamine from other controlled substances in arrest
statistics.

Still, according to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority,
arrests by multi-jurisdictional drug units for methamphetamine have jumped
from zero in 1998 to 1,400 in 2003. While the arrest numbers have risen the
geography also has shifted.

Between 1998 and 2002, submittals of methamphetamine to state drug labs for
testing by police has risen 4.3 percent to a total of 6.1 percent of test
submittals in urban counties and 31.6 percent to a total of 43.4 percent of
submittals in rural counties, according to the justice authority.

Some of the increase may be attributed to an increase in labs and their
locations.

In 2003, the Illinois State Police and DEA found two labs in Cook County,
one in Kane and two in Will. That same year, those agencies seized a total
of 1,099 labs, an increase of 114 percent since 2000.

Although, suburban arrests remain sporadic, recent high-profile crimes tied
to the drug have shined a light on the emerging threat.

In July, McHenry County deputies arrested an Elgin man for running a meth
lab out of a Crystal Lake Cemetery.

In April, Joe Foreman shattered his ex-wife's skull and kidnapped and
killed his mother in-law in Batavia. During his confession, police said he
told them he was on a meth binge.

That confession brought back memories of Mark Drezek of Island Lake who
terrorized a Long Grove couple for 10 days in 2001, burning down their
Bartlett business and attempting to burn down their home. Prosecutors said
regular meth use helped fuel his anger. He was sentenced in 2002 to 10
years in prison.

"The violence associated with methampthetamine is absolutely incredible,"
Warpness said.

Snorted, injected or mixed in a liquid, meth tricks the brain and body into
thinking that it has limitless stamina while actually draining the energy
needed to maintain the body's vital organs and functions.

The bursts of energy and euphoria are followed by severe depression, brain
damage and often violent paranoia, experts say.

According to a study by Alex Stalcup, a doctor with the New Leaf Treatment
Center in California, 90 out of 100 people would become addicted to
methamphetamine after ingesting it twice.

The drug has swept through rural areas of the country where poor and middle
class residents in their 20s and 30s flock to it because it can be made
anywhere and can be as cheap as $20 a gram.

However, with a price tag of $80 to $100 a gram in Chicago, according to
the DEA, it has been slow to catch on in the Illinois suburbs where people
can buy also chose between a gram of heroin for $100 to $200 or a gram of
cocaine for $75 to $100.

Master Sgt. Jim Winters, a member of the North Central Narcotics Task
Force, thinks the delay may be because of the Fox Valley's proximity to
Chicago and all the other drug choices that come with it, including heroin,
ecstasy and cocaine.

In the last two years, police have arrested meth users in Naperville,
Aurora, Elgin and St. Charles. Substance abuse clinics in Elgin and Aurora
report a handful of meth addicts each, something unheard of only a year ago.

Five of the teens in Kane County's drug court are there primarily for
problems with methamphetamine.

And those teens say they know more people using, mostly affluent teens from
the Tri-Cities and Aurora, as young as 14 years old.

"It is very different from what we have heard about meth," said Mike Moran,
executive director of Breaking Free, a substance abuse clinic in Aurora and
Naperville. "Here it is associated with clubs and raves."

Police still aren't sure exactly where users are getting their drugs though.

Thefts of anhydrous ammonia from DeKalb and McHenry County farms have
picked up, particularly at the Farm Service Agency grounds near Marengo.

"They could be driving down from Rockford to steal the stuff, we don't
know," Leitza said. "We do know they need that ingredient to make meth."

The labs that have been found in the last two years in Bartlett, Rockford
and Crystal Lake have been small. Even the large bust in February of 391
grams of meth in Aurora, is a far cry from the superlabs on the West Coast.

Officials hope it stays that way.

"If somebody up here starts manufacturing it and selling it, it will catch
on," Warpness said.

Meth: Source of drug is not clear to authorities