METH USE: AN EPIDEMIC IN SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN

Driving back to his Hartford home, Denny Shelton Jr. carried papers that
would make him a dark version of Johnny Appleseed.

As far as authorities can figure, Shelton brought the first recipes for
homemade methamphetamine to Van Buren County. Although the law caught up
with 30-year-old Shelton and his accomplices in August 1999, the homemade
meth seed was planted.

"The tree of meth ends up coming back to any one of them," said Lt. Bryan
Stump, commander of the Van Buren County Sheriff's Department's Narcotics Unit.

Nearly five years after Shelton's trip back from Missouri, Van Buren finds
itself at the center of Southwest Michigan's growing meth problem,
routinely called an epidemic by public health and law enforcement officials.

In 2003 Van Buren logged 262 arrests for possession or manufacture of the
high-intensity stimulant, which has nearly unprecedented addictive
qualities. Only two years before, there weren't enough meth cases for the
drug to warrant its own category in Van Buren County's arrest statistics.

Meth stands to overtake marijuana in Van Buren's arrest figures. It already
has left cocaine in the dust.

Meth has a similar following in Allegan County, and meth making and use
appear to be on the rise in Berrien County. Meth worries have prompted Cass
County officials to seek a half-mill tax for drug enforcement in the Aug. 3
election.

But beyond the substance abuse and law enforcement issues, meth brings a
series of environmental and public health hazards not seen with other
illegal drug trends.

"As a (public health) professional, when I first started hearing about meth
out West, or in Missouri and Arkansas, I thought those people had problems.
But now it's staring me in the face," said Sandra Wagner, chairwoman of Van
Buren County's Methamphetamine Task Force.

'Discount' cocaine

Methamphetamine, as the name suggests, is a variation of amphetamines, a
class of drugs long used legally to fight fatigue and suppress appetite.

Amphetamines, also known as "speed," have a lengthy history of abuse.

Homemade speed and meth have been around for decades, but production
exploded in the late 1980s and early '90s, especially on the West Coast and
in Hawaii.

Also in the early '90s, a meth variety called "cat" was being made and used
in Upper Michigan.

Stump said that in the years before Shelton's 1999 trip, Van Buren County
narcotics officers were beginning to seize high-grade "Great White" or
"pharmaceutical meth" that was made in Kalamazoo. Lower grades were being
shipped in from other states and Mexico.

Stump said Van Buren authorities knew then it would be a matter of time
before meth would be made in Southwest Michigan.

Narcotics Unit Detective Dan Perkins said road patrol officers in late 1998
and early 1999 were starting to find meth lab equipment and ingredients
during routine traffic stops. But the officers usually did not recognize
the significance of their finds.

Although meth is an amphetamine, its users generally see it as a cocaine
alternative.

"Part of the appeal is it's a cheaper, more effective high than coke," said
David Fatsinger, director of substance abuse programs for the Van Buren
County/Cass Health Department.

For about $25, a meth user can stay high for two or three days, while $25
worth of powdered cocaine will last little more than a few hours, said
Gary, a former coke and meth user in Buchanan who asked that his real name
and age not be used.

Like cocaine, meth is most often snorted as a powder. But it also can be
dissolved in water or injected or smoked. Meth smokers take in the fumes
created when the powder is burned. It also can be made in chunky or crystal
form.

Meth's most immediate effect is a burst of energy.

"It gets in you and gets you going," said Gary, who is on probation for a
meth possession conviction. "My mind was going so fast, thinking about a
thousand things at once."

In Iowa, for example, meth earned a reputation as a "soccer mom" drug,
helping middle-class housewives maintain their hectic schedules.

What may be most stunning is the drug's addictiveness.

"In 30 years in mental health, I've seen all the (drug) epidemics come and
go, but the biological effects of this drug seem to me more long-lasting
and profound -- if that's the right word," Fatsinger said. "I think it's
really more difficult for people to get it out of the system."

Van Buren County Circuit Court Judge William Buhl said defendants in most
drug cases tend to lay off the drugs after arrest. But meth is a different
story.

"I've never seen so many people fail drug testing between arrest and
sentencing," said Buhl, who has spent nearly 30 years on Van Buren's bench
and was the county prosecutor before that.

Other notable effects are paranoia and hallucinations, and the two often mix.

A frequent meth paranoia/hallucination experience is "crank bugs" or "meth
bugs," said Deputy Jamie Zehm, a meth specialist with the Berrien County
Sheriff's Department. Meth users imagine that insects are causing the skin
irritation created when the toxins are sweated out. The constant scratching
can leave their skin raw and pockmarked.

The condition and appearance of meth users who come before the court are
without precedent, Buhl said.

"I don't see very many brain-damaged cocaine users. The alcohol users (have
brain damage) after many years. But the meth (damage) is so immediate,"
Buhl said.

Meth defendants are often jittery in court, Buhl said. Their eyes are
sunken and cheekbones prominent.

And after the tremendous highs, users can experience tremendous lows in
which they sleep for two or three days.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse's Web site, long-term
effects can include strokes.

Meth users can suffer fatal overdoses, NIDA reports, though no deaths have
been attributed to meth use in Southwest Michigan. One death has been
attributed to meth making.

Who's using this stuff

It's hard to say how many people have experimented with meth, use it on a
regular basis or are addicted, Fatsinger said. He said meth users seldom
seek treatment before they're arrested and ordered by a court to be tested
for drugs.

He said the meth users he meets talk as if "everybody knows everybody" in
Van Buren County's meth culture, but the actual number of users likely
makes that characterization inaccurate.

A 2000 NIDA survey indicated that 4 percent of Americans have at least
tried the drug.

Van Buren County's Detective Perkins said meth is most prevalent in the
county's eastern half.

"One guy we arrested said he could stand at a corner in Decatur and point
to every other car and say, 'Yeah, he's doing it,'" Perkins said.

"You talk to (users) who come in and say, 'Everybody's doing it."

As with other illegal drugs, meth has spawned a user stereotype: young,
poor, white and rural. Meth has been labeled "hillbilly cocaine" or
"hillbilly heroin."

"There's a lot of jokes about 'Bubba labs' and 'Beavis and Butthead labs,'"
Fatsinger said.

But health and law enforcement authorities warn that about the only part of
the stereotype that holds true anymore is "white."

"You'd be surprised who's using this stuff," Berrien County's Deputy Zehm said.

Zehm, along with Van Buren officials, say meth use is growing more
prevalent among middle-class Southwest Michigan residents.

"Generally, the people we arrest are the lower-class level. But is that the
predominant user? I can't say that," Zehm said.

Narcotics investigations generally target felony-level makers, sellers and
processors.

For crack cocaine, much of that activity has taken place in poor, black
neighborhoods in Benton Harbor, Benton Township and South Haven. But
investigators have long noted that many crack buyers are white and smoke
the drug in the comfort of their St. Joseph and Stevensville living rooms.

A similar trend is seen with meth, officials said.

The meth lab and sales operations uncovered in the last five years in
Southwest Michigan generally have been in garages, houses and mobile homes
set back from rural roads. Shelton made meth in a friend's shed in rural
Hamilton Township, Lt. Stump said.

But the rural nature of meth making is fading.

Narcotics officers have twice shut down meth labs in the same house in a
residential neighborhood across the street from the Van Buren County
Sheriff's Department offices in Paw Paw.

On Dec. 29, St. Joseph Township police uncovered a meth lab in a garage
along Royalton Heights Road, in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

Berrien County's first meth raid, in August 2000, shut down a lab in a
residential neighborhood in Berrien Springs.

Meth also has been made in motel rooms and even in cars.

. and why

On the surface, the idea of snorting a white, crystalline powder through a
pen barrel would seem absurd.

But people do it.

"There is no real good, easy explanation for that," said Colleen Lerret, a
substance abuse counselor for the Berrien County Health Department.
"Everybody seems to have their own reason."

Some people are looking for fun, and others are looking for relief from
life's pains, she said.

Although meth is highly addictive, not everybody who uses it becomes an
addict, she said.

"Each person is different in what their trigger is," Lerret said.

Fatsinger, of Van Buren's health department, said meth users believe the
drug gives them energy and focuses it, enhances their sex lives and gives
them power over others. And making meth can make them a few extra bucks.

"Those are pretty powerful reinforcers," Fatsinger said.

In the long run, the drug proves expensive in its toll on health and cash,
Fatsinger said, and addicts care about nothing more than getting their drugs.

The good news is that addiction is getting more attention from medical
researchers.

"Every day we're learning something about brain chemistry and how the brain
works and about the biology of addiction," Fatsinger said.

Fatsinger said that with the right knowledge, perhaps scientists can
develop medications to block cravings.

"Hopefully we're moving away from the moral failing" explanation for
addiction, Fatsinger said. "There may be some moral failing in (addicts')
personalities, but that's not the primary problem