Policing a Rural Plague:

METH IS RAVAGING THE MEDWEST

Why Is It

There is trouble on music Mountain Road. In the wooded
hills at the edge of Hot Springs, Ark., a red pickup truck and a white
SUV pull into a gravel driveway.

Out of the vehicles jump six big men, moving like they mean
business.

One wears camouflage trousers and has a menacing tattoo on his neck:
parental advisory.

Another has a goatee, his stocking cap pulled low. They are clutching
handguns.

These are plainclothes detectives on a hunt for poison--methamphetamine.

Rapping on the front door, the cops are invited inside.

Looking around, it doesn't take long for them to find telltale signs
of a meth lab: household chemicals used to "cook" the drug. They also
found three little kids--2, 3 and 5--sitting at a kitchen table eating
oatmeal for breakfast. Police slapped the cuffs on Tony Tedeschi, 41,
a bedraggled, rail-thin figure of a man with greasy hair and open
sores on his arms, a familiar sign of a meth user--"tweakers," the cops
call them.

The use of meth is soaring, with no end in sight.

In the past year police busted more than 9,300 meth labs nationally, a
nearly 500 percent increase since 1996. Meth is making its way to the
East Coast, but the problem "has exploded" in the middle of the
country, says Rusty Payne, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement
Administration. "Meth is now the No. 1 drug in rural
America--absolutely, positively, end of question." In Tennessee,
Missouri and Arkansas--among the states with the worst problems--meth is
overwhelming law-enforcement efforts to combat the homemade drug.

Meth can be smoked, snorted or injected.

It produces a high that lasts for days. It also leads to delusions,
sleeplessness and extreme paranoia. Once popular among outlaw biker
gangs, police say meth nowadays is used by women and men, from
teenagers to people in their 70s. Some shift workers sought the drug
to keep them awake.

Some women tried it for weight loss.

Feeling under siege, people in little towns are growing impatient: why
can't the police stop this stuff? "The public is on our butts,
griping, 'You're not doing enough'," says Rick Norris, the coordinator
of a drug task force in Garland County, Ark. "And they should gripe."
The Garland County unit busted 100 labs last year. With more
resources, Norris says, it could have doubled or tripled that number.

The unit is spending nearly as much time and money on meth as it
spends on every other drug combined.

If everybody knows about meth, why is it so hard to
police?

First, all the ingredients are legal and easy to find at a
drugstore--camp fuel, iodine, drain cleaner and, most important, cold
medicine.

Remedies like Sudafed contain pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient
used to concoct the drug. Big chains, including Wal-Mart and CVS, have
enacted policies limiting quantities that can be sold per customer.

Makers of meth tend to be mom-and-pop operations simply making enough
for personal use, like the old booze stills, so cops can't simply
choke off a major supply by targeting a big dealer.

Covert operations in rural areas are difficult since everybody knows
the cops in small towns.

Busts are very time-consuming--typically six to eight hours--since
police must wait for hazmat specialists to cart away the chemicals.

To make a charge of meth-making stick, cops generally must find a meth
lab in operation. "The courts say we've got to catch them red-handed,"
says Norris. For that reason, police were not able to charge Tedeschi
with anything more than possession of drug paraphernalia with the
intent to manufacture, a charge that often brings only probation.

Tedeschi was taken to the Garland County Detention Center and released
on $10,000 bond. He awaits trial.

Making meth can be deadly.

Nationally, meth labs caused more than 200 fires and explosions last
year, according to the DEA. Back on Music Mountain Road, Det. Cory
BeArmon got that point across. "How can you do this with kids around?"
he screamed at Tedeschi, the boyfriend of the kids' grandmother. "What
if it'd blown up and killed one of them? I'd be here on a murder
charge." For a cop waging war on meth, it was just one battle. So many
more await.