METH IS INVADING CAROLINAS

Frightening, Devastating, Spreading

Methamphetamine has started what officials fear will be a long and
devastating burn through the Carolinas.

Just three years ago, law enforcement found 42 clandestine meth labs,
mostly in the rural N.C. mountains and South Carolina's Upstate. Last
year, they uncovered 304.

Now officials are preparing for the drug to spread deeper into the
Piedmont, bringing the potential to ravage more families and
communities.

Shannon Sawyer's experience with meth illustrates why police and
social workers call the drug one of the worst problems they've seen in
the Carolinas.

Sawyer, 32, first used methamphetamine at a party about eight years
ago. Back then, it was hard to find in Robbinsville, in the far west
corner of North Carolina. It cost the same as cocaine, but it produced
a longer and more potent high.

By 2000, Sawyer was using daily, and his wife started, too. They
ignored their four children, and the family lived without electricity
for months. Shannon Sawyer lost 80 pounds.

When their destructive ride with meth ended, the Sawyers had each
served prison time, and their children were in foster care.

"You would think that a person could will themselves to stop," Shannon
Sawyer said. "But it becomes bigger than you are."

Police have made occasional meth arrests in the Carolinas since the
1980s. But already this year, 58 meth labs have been found in North
Carolina, with 27 in the 10 counties bordering Tennessee. In South
Carolina, there have been about 75 busts this year.

Now recovering, the Sawyers are trying to get their children back, and
they worry about what meth is doing to other families.

Meth has become such a problem in Robbinsville -- population 780 --
that their preacher mentioned it in a recent Sunday sermon. Residents
no longer leave doors unlocked and power tools in their yards. Addicts
are stealing cold medicine, which is used to make meth, from the
Family Dollar.

"I'm amazed," Shannon Sawyer said, "that it hasn't killed
somebody."

Spreading Eastward

Methamphetamine -- also known as crank, crystal, glass and speed -- is
a powerful stimulant that targets the brain's pleasure center, giving
users a prolonged, manic high. A Japanese pharmacologist developed meth
in 1919, and German and American soldiers used it in World War II to
combat fatigue. But it didn't become a street drug until the 1970s,
when biker gangs in California were among the first to set up labs.

Bikers and long-haul truckers who used it to stay awake carried it
East. It hit the Midwest in the 1980s and the Southeast in the 1990s.
Meth has generally followed a pattern, taking hold first in rural
areas where it's easier to hide odors and waste from labs.

For about $400, meth manufacturers, or "cooks," can buy everything
they need from hardware or grocery stores to make $6,000 of the drug.
They mix highly flammable chemicals -- including lighter fluid,
kerosene, lye, lithium from batteries and red phosphorus from the
striker plates of matchbooks -- to produce powder or crystals in five
or six hours.

When finished, cooks dump the waste in toilets, yards, garbage and
streams. Last month, a Dumpster in Asheville caught fire as sanitation
workers moved it, not knowing it contained gallon jugs of meth lab
waste.

Waste dumping is especially dangerous in rural areas, where most
residents depend on wells for their drinking water, said Van Shaw, who
runs the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation's Clandestine Lab Response
Unit. The SBI doesn't know of anyone getting sick from contaminated
water, Shaw said, but agents have seen dead grass and other plants
where cooks have dumped waste.

Cooking can contaminate a home and everything in it. The fumes also
damage respiratory systems -- especially in children, who are more
prone to develop chemically induced asthma and pneumonia.

Last year, law enforcement officers found a total of 69 children
living in 177 homes where meth labs were busted in North Carolina.

According to a 2002 U.S. Justice Department report, 35 percent of
children from meth homes tested positive for the drug through
secondary exposure, Shaw said. Children born to meth-addicted mothers
go through withdrawal just like adults. For weeks, even months,
they're in pain and inconsolable.

Social workers in Watauga County, which has had the most lab busts in
North Carolina, frequently destroy children's clothes, blankets and
toys to reduce the risk of exposure to contaminants lingering in the
fabric.

"With all the normal things that went with crack -- home invasion,
robbery, burglary -- (meth) adds an environmental threat to anybody
exposed to the cooking process," said SBI agent Rick Hetzel, who's
helped bust dozens of labs. "Nothing is properly disposed of. It's as
bad as anything you're going to see. I can't think of anything worse."

Takes Root in Rural Areas

The drug worked its way into Georgia and Tennessee in the late 1990s
and, recently, into the rural Carolinas. Recipes have spread by word
of mouth and occasionally via the Internet.

The rural N.C. mountains and S.C. Upstate offer features that once
attracted moonshiners: forbidding terrain and independent folks who
mind their own business.

With about 8,000 residents in the far west corner of the state,
Shannon Sawyer's home county of Graham is among the smallest of the 10
mountain counties.

In his early 20s, Sawyer began to abuse alcohol and cocaine. In the
mid-'90s, a friend offered him a line of meth at a party. Sawyer said
he started using "just to fit in with the crowd."

At that time, meth cost about the same as coke, $100 per gram. A line
of coke got him a half-hour high. A third as much meth lasted three
hours.

"Two to three days after you quit, you're still going," he
said.

"Hyped up" on meth, Sawyer said, he could work construction jobs for
about 13 hours a day and then spend a few more hours in his cabinet
shop. He also had an increased sex drive.

Sawyer fits the profile of the classic Carolinas meth user, officials
said. He is young, white, a small-town resident with limited education
and a blue-collar career.

Sawyer said he understands why users become cooks. The prospect of
easy money and an accessible supply is hard to resist.

"I feel like we're going to see more of it," Caldwell County Sheriff
Gary Clark said. "It fits right in with the times. ... Folks are out
of work, and they see an opportunity to make money selling something
that, unfortunately, is sought-after right now."

N.C. officials haven't even begun to estimate how much meth has cost
taxpayers over the last two years in overtime, lab work, care for
children and other costs, the SBI's Shaw said.

At least one member of the SBI's lab unit must be present at every
bust in the state. The SBI has equipment and training most sheriff's
offices don't have, and it administers federal money used to clean up
meth lab sites. Cleanup sometimes involves tearing down a house and
hauling the soil away for incineration.

Cleanup alone costs from $3,000 to $50,000 per lab. North Carolina
spent $329,300 cleaning up meth labs last year, according to the
federal Drug Enforcement Administration. South Carolina spent
$314,200. Those numbers are expected to rise; Tennessee recorded more
than 500 busts and spent $934,930 last year.

Even with the federal government picking up the cleanup tab, the
effects of meth use are straining the budgets of small counties.

County social services departments are spending an increasing amount
of money on foster care, attorneys' fees and expert witnesses for
meth-related child abuse cases.

Toll on Children

Some of that money has gone to care for Shannon and Kathy Sawyer's
children. Their 1-year-old son lives in a Graham County foster home
with his 3-year-old sister.Graham County Department of Social Services
expects to spend about $84,000 on foster care and $59,000 on
attorneys' fees this year, largely a result of meth cases. That's
about 15 percent of the $952,000 the county spends on social services.

In many counties, children from meth homes are taken to hospitals for
respiratory, neurological, liver and drug testing. But smaller towns,
such as Robbinsville, have no local hospital. Social workers there
have resorted to taking kids to their own homes to shower and change
clothes.

"It really puts a major burden on a poor county," DSS Director Bobby
Cagle said.

Adult users are part of the burden, too. North Carolina's state-run
drug treatment centers can't keep up with the crush of users, said Flo
Stein of the N.C. Division of Mental Health, Developmental
Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services.

For the Sawyers, it all ended in early 2003, when Graham County
authorities arrested them. Shannon Sawyer was caught during a February
raid, and Kathy was arrested in March when officers found meth in her
car during a traffic stop, Detective Scott Caldwell said.

Now, the couple attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings on Mondays,
counseling sessions on Fridays and church whenever they can.

"Eventually," Kathy Sawyer said, "we both sobered up enough to realize
they could take our kids, and that we might never have them again."

While Shannon Sawyer was in prison last year, his 14-year-old daughter
from a previous marriage was severely injured in a wreck while
joyriding with a man twice her age. She's recovering in a rehab center
in Arkansas.

Shannon can't shake the guilt over his absence. He remembers his
daughter saying she'd like to try meth to understand why he abandoned
his family.

He has a new goal to fight the temptation to use again.

"That's a definite motivator, trying to get those kids back," he said.
"It's a terrible thing to say, because we both love our kids very
much, but when you're at the height of an addiction, your love is the
drug."

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HOW BAD IS METH?

Methamphetamine's potential for harm extends far beyond
users.

. Toxic fumes from meth labs can cause respiratory illness, especially
in children.

. Chemicals used to make meth are flammable and sometimes
explode.

. Dumping lab waste can pollute the environment.

. Fighting meth is straining budgets in smaller Carolinas
counties.