METH: THE NEW DRUG IN TOWN

DRAYTON, N.D. -- First of two parts

No one is sure exactly when meth arrived. It had been long coming, spending
decades working its addiction in the Western states, incubating in the
desert and farm counties of inland California, traveling north to Oregon
and Washington, then to Alaska and Canada.

Done with its northward sprint, it moved east, to Phoenix, the Texas
Panhandle and the heartland states, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
Meth, a highly addictive stimulant similar to cocaine, always preferred
towns like Drayton, out-of-the-way places where people lived uncelebrated,
uphill lives and often had to make their own fun.

The story of Drayton is the story of many towns all over rural America,
places where the loss of manufacturing jobs, and the near eradication of
family farms, have turned once thriving communities into places more
resembling ghettos. The drug and economic despair feed off each other.

Many residents have left for jobs in Grand Forks, Fargo, Sioux Falls,
Minneapolis or beyond. And that is Drayton today, afraid of its future,
leaning hard against itself, shrinking and retreating, with another fight
it cannot afford -- methamphetamines, now the fastest-growing new drug in
America.

The Interstate Traveler

Meth has reached a transformative stage, a tipping point, in its evolution,
threatening to penetrate cities and suburbs, demographics that were
previously insulated from meth. It has become a preferred club drug in San
Francisco and New York, where it is popular with gay men, and is showing up
in suburbs like Orange County, Calif., and Long Island.

Already a problem in many upstate New York counties like Jefferson, Broome,
Cayuga and Tioga, meth is poised to do to the Northeast what it has already
done to much of the rest of the country.

"Meth is a tidal wave, crashing down on the Midwest and East Coast," said
Will Glaspy, a special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

"We were told to be prepared, because it's coming," said Insp. Dan Penny of
the New York State Police. "We're trying to get ahead of the curve on this
thing."

Like everything else that comes to this corner of North Dakota, meth
probably came in on the interstate, in the glove compartment or shirt
pocket of a red-eyed trucker perhaps, no less than three years ago,
probably no more than six.

"Meth came and it seemed like people don't want anything else," said Barb
Whelan, the state attorney in Pembina County, where Drayton is located.
"Now if you went out on the street, and you were selling a bag of meth and
a bag of coke, people always choose meth over coke. It's just becoming so
prevalent, especially with our young people."

Cut through the empty land of these high plains is a four-lane interstate,
speckled by the occasional glint of sun off the metal of long-haul trucks.
The distances are vast and raw, trenches, watering holes, the bristle of
bare trees, and the weather. Storms appear against the wall of the horizon
hours before they arrive.

More Addictive Than Cocaine

Gene Hiltner, 55, first used methamphetamines in 1997, the year a record
blizzard brought a 100-year flood. He mixed the meth into his coffee.

It worked miracles when he needed a few. The blizzard had buried his house
near Drayton, killed his pheasants. And the great flood turned his land
into a pond. When the waters retreated, he had an impossible set of tasks
in front of him: Restore his land, rebuild his home, hold down a job, pay
back huge loans. He needed a boost. Meth allowed him to skip sleep, to work
all day and all night. It got him his house back. In exchange, it ruined
his life.

Meth is as seductive as cocaine but many times more addictive. One-third to
one-half of the people arrested in cities like Honolulu, Sacramento, San
Jose, San Diego, Phoenix and Salt Lake City test positive for meth, both
the result and the symptom of lives surrendered to two-bit crime.

In 2002, Asa Hutchinson, then head of the DEA, compared the spread of meth
to a "prairie wildfire," as it was already the No. 1 drug of rural America.

"It affects the mind and body differently than any other drug we've seen,"
Glaspy said. "There's no good way to cure an addiction."

Prisons are crowded with meth addicts. The foster care system is full of
their forlorn, neglected children. Because so many addicts make their own
meth using volatile and toxic chemicals, meth has become an environmental
problem.

Small Towns Vulnerable

It has and continues to ruin thousands of lives in relative obscurity,
partly because so much of the damage done by meth happens in small towns
like Drayton, places already in economic decline, and paid little attention
by the rest of the country. So the meth rampage has not gained the full
notice it might have were it an affliction of large Northeast cities, and
perhaps if it were not the affliction of mostly poor, white people, the
object of more ridicule than sympathy.

According to the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, about 12
million people, or 5.3 percent of the U.S. population, reported using meth
at least once. Most are between the ages of 26 to 34. Among high school
students, meth usage is estimated at 10 percent, among college students 12
percent, among young adults (19-28) 15 percent.

Admissions for the treatment of meth addiction have increased more than
fivefold in 10 years, according to the Department of Health and Human
Services. In 1992, 14,554 people entered treatment for meth addiction. By
2001, the number increased to 80,678.

Drayton Falls Victim

Meth is easy to make, cheap to procure, and packs a terrific high. The
interstates became the veins for its spread. Truck drivers both used and
sold the stuff. Meth "cooks" taught others to make the drug in makeshift
"labs," which can be set up in kitchens, barns or simply as a couple of
jars and some tubing behind a bush. Most made enough for themselves and
their friends, selling what was left to finance their habit. Meth stayed
clear of most cities, preferring small towns and farming communities like
Drayton, which afforded the seclusion and the materials needed to make it.

Not so long ago, Drayton had a furniture store, two car dealerships, a
movie theater. Less than 20 years ago, you could get almost everything you
needed without leaving. In the past year, the town of about 750 lost a gas
station and two restaurants. Even the Dairy Queen closed. Its decline, tied
to that of the family farm, reduced downtown Drayton to one restaurant, one
bank, one grocery, and one gas station.

A Family Busted

In November 2001, Gene Hiltner returned from an early morning deer hunt to
find his home in Drayton surrounded by police cruisers and unmarked
vehicles, everyone from the local sheriff to the border patrol. They
greeted him at gunpoint, taking no chances because they knew he was a
hunter and owned guns. They emptied his pockets, finding a small amount of
meth. Guns still drawn, they woke up his wife, Ava, and arrested her.

About that time, their son, Aaron, then 13, came by with the school for
those not in the mood to drink, but wanting company. The store stocks what
a farmer needs to get through a winter -- tools, hoses, belts, filters,
valves, screws, bulbs -- and, as it happens, just about everything a meth
cook might need to prepare a batch of high-quality meth.

It took owner Dean Staskivige a while to figure out what exactly in his
store they're looking for, like cans of Coleman fuel, and ether, which
farmers use as starting fluid for tractors, and HEET, which prevents a
car's gas line from freezing.

The first time Staskivige saw meth was when a teenage girl came in to buy a
soda and pulled the change out of her pocket. Mixed with the coins was a
pale, yellowish rock. She became apologetic and embarrassed. She assumed
Staskivige knew it was meth and went on about how it wasn't hers, that a
truck driver had given it to her.

"If she hadn't said anything about it, I would have never known what it
was," Staskivige said. "I just thought it was a strange-looking rock."

Addressing the Problem

Just on the edge of the town grid, Roland Anderson operates a fertilizer
depot for local farmers. Large tanks of anhydrous ammonia sit in an
unfenced lot guarded, really, only by the conscience of anyone who comes by.

"Would we know if anyone was taking a little at night?" Anderson said. "No.
I would never know. Other than putting a big fence all around this place,
there's not much I can do. I'll quit selling before I do that."

Anderson, who participated in a meth education course, did take the access
hoses off the smaller, portable 800-gallon tanks, making it more difficult
for someone to siphon the noxious, pressurized liquid.

"There's not really that much I can do," Anderson said. "It has to start at
home."

As the only full-time lodgings in town, the Motel 66 tends to stay full
with executives, construction workers and pipe fitters who have come to
call on the sugar plant. Occasionally hockey teams and road crews for
country singers stop because the hotel is the last on the interstate before
the Canadian border. Spring and summer bring fishermen in pursuit of the
Red River's famous catfish; fall brings deer hunters and itinerant truck
drivers who work the beet harvest. The managers, Perry and Lori DeGeldere,
live in an apartment built into the property, with their teenage daughter.

Meth, he said, is first a family problem. "It reflects back to your home
life," Perry said. "Parents have gotten lax. Years ago, if you were a kid
and you spoke out of turn, you had to duck. Kids respected their parents.
How could you not know if your kid's on it? Our daughter has to check in
with us all the time."

With meth, however, the line between parent and child often disappears. In
December 2002, a mother and her two teenage sons were arrested for making
meth in the garage of their apartment building in Drayton. The sons were
convicted and sent to prison. The mother jumped bail and fled to Texas,
where she was eventually arrested. Police discovered meth-making equipment
in the garage and their basement apartment, which was eventually cleaned
and rented to Greg Osowski, 25, a coal handler at the sugar refinery.

The bedroom carpet is splotchy and stained and, by one wall, missing a
section where the previous tenants spilled anhydrous ammonia. The landlords
were supposed to replace the carpeting but have not gotten around to it,
Osowski said. Although the walls were painted and the carpets shampooed
when he moved in in May, he said, "the place smelled so bad it was
unbearable. It's hard to say what it smelled like. It's a smell I'll never
forget. It just reeked."

The smell Osowski could not describe came from chemicals like hydrochloric
acid, phosphine and iodine. A recent study by the National Jewish Medical
and Research Center in Denver found that toxic chemicals easily spread in
and saturate the dwellings where meth is cooked. Meth by-products were
found in the walls, carpeting and clothing of more than a dozen structures
used as meth labs. The vaporized chemicals seeped under doorways, into
ventilation ducts and even into microwave ovens.

"Children living in those labs might as well be taking the drug directly,"
said John Martyny, a doctor who conducted the study.

To address the growing meth problem in Drayton, one parent, Judy Stellon,
started a group called Drayton Citizens for Drug Awareness. To the parents
of all the students, she distributed booklets showing them how to identify
various drugs and drug paraphernalia. Her son, Ross Mapel, a 2000 graduate
of the school, has been convicted of and served prison time for using meth.

Local businesses donated money to pay for the cost of distributing
literature. The school raised funds with a bake sale. The money paid for
the booklets and for drug testing kits.

"We're the only town in this state that has gone this far," said Mayor
Ardis Olsen, who also runs an accounting business in a building she shares
with a truck mechanic. "We think this way of life is worth fighting for."

TOMORROW: Meth and an Oklahoma trooper's death