METH'S GROWTH OUTSTRIPS PREVENTION EFFORTS

Missouri's 'War On Drugs' Expands From Urban Areas To Abandoned Farms

The Mid-Missouri Drug Task Force fills two rooms of the senior
citizens center in the town of Fortuna, 50 miles south of Columbia.
The center is in an old schoolhouse with creaking floors and dark
hallways. The stalls in the bathrooms are fitted with painted wooden
doors.

In the main task force office, tallies and flow charts cover the green
chalkboards. Lines are drawn diagonally from J.P. who makes meth to
A.R. who sells, and vertically from A.R. to T.R. and D.P. - all of
whom use. Across the hall is the meeting room of the Fortuna Ladies'
Knitting Club.

The task force formed in July 2002 to help local law enforcement
agencies in six rural counties surrounding Boone County combat a
growing methamphetamine epidemic. Making, selling and using meth in
those counties - Moniteau, Miller, Cooper, Morgan, Howard and Osage -
had far eclipsed the money and manpower available to keep it under
control. In Miller County alone, 60 meth arrests were made in 2002.

Missouri's "war on drugs" has moved out of the cities and into sleepy
farm towns. It has meant a staggering change for the marshals and
deputies more familiar with busting bonfires and drunken drivers than
drug dealers. Officers are being trained to deal with large-scale drug
abuse: They learn how to identify meth labs, clean up toxic dumpsites
and handle addicts who are high and often armed. A Boone County
detective says one in four meth arrests involve stolen weapons.

Police say the fight is like shadow boxing. "Cooks" - the people who
make meth - and users know the back roads of small-town Missouri so
well that they can hide from, or outrun, the police. They move their
labs from place to place, or they mask them behind a pig or chicken
farm. They make the drug in small batches, sometimes in their garages
or basements, and distribute within a small circle of neighbors and
friends.

In 2000, Congress made meth a top priority in the domestic drug war.
Congressional members were stumped about how to act on their
commitment to combat states' horrific meth problem. Missouri - dubbed
the meth capital of the nation - received $10 million in federal aid
for training and enforcement.

Since then, federal attention and money have been diverted to the war
in Iraq and a struggling economy. Meth use has taken root and
flourished - a noxious weed on which addicts, police and whole
communities are choking.

Funding an antidote The pristine hills and lakes of Missouri's Ozarks
begin in Miller County, an hour south of Columbia. Tourists come to
fish on the weekends or shop at the outlet mall. County Sheriff Bill
Abbott says that just as recreational drug use, like pot and ecstasy,
is part of the tourist culture, meth addiction has been woven tightly
into the community. He's at a loss as to how to rip it out.

Abbott has seven deputies to patrol 960 miles of paved and gravel
roads, and to protect 23,564 residents, according to the U.S. 2000
census. The county's towns - Lake of the Ozarks and Eldon - are
growing, but the area remains largely rural and, in large pockets,
poor. The median income in Miller County is $26,659 - compared with
$38,421 for Boone County, according to the MU Office of Social and
Economic Data Analysis. The county seat, Tuscumbia, doesn't have a
paid fire or police department. Two of Miller's larger towns, Eldon
and Iberia, support their own small police forces, but still rely on
sheriff's deputies for regular patrols.

The state's fiscal woes in 2003 cut into Abbott's budget.

"I got cut two deputies - road deputies," Abbott says. "It hurts. Comp
time is tearing us up. We're short handed, and I imagine other
counties are the same way."

That has made it easier for meth addicts to set up labs in the fields
and ravines around the county. So in 2002 Miller joined with five
other neighboring counties to create the Mid-Missouri Drug Task Force
and to get drug enforcement funding from the Missouri Sheriff's
Methamphetamine Relief Team, or MoSMART, a state program created in
2001. U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, R.-Mo., helped secure $3.2 million dollars
in funding from the federal government - down significantly from the
$10 million sent three years ago. The Mid-Missouri task force gets
$250,000 from MoSMART, a federal program called the Byrne Grant and
matching local funds.

Capt. Terry Everett, 60, runs the task force. He's a former Los
Angeles Narcotics Unit officer who moved to California, Mo., in
Moniteau County, for retirement. He worked part time for the sheriff's
department. As the meth problem in mid-Missouri grew, many thought him
the perfect guy to head up the fight against it. He agreed.

His eight officers come from each of the six counties and are
dedicated solely to drug enforcement. They follow leads across the
region, keep track of key players and wait for opportunities. From
July 2002 to July 2003, the task force found 95 labs and made more
than 450 arrests.

That's a significant boost to the arrests other deputies and local
police have made. But according to Everett, it's barely made a difference.

"We're probably not even getting 10 percent of them," he
says.

Meth labs in Missouri are mobile, and often are moved before police
can hunt down the rumors and tips and trails of stolen ingredients
leading to them. For example, Everett says, for the past few years
most meth-related arrests in the six-county area could be traced back
to labs in Miller County. But when drug agents stepped up patrols
there, the meth cooks moved operations and more arrests traced back to
labs in Moniteau County, Everett says.

"There are paper trails," he says. "But as far as where the money
goes, (with) your mom-and-pop operations, the money tends to stay
right there," Everett says.

Tracking meth's tracesEverett and his team find remnants of drug use,
such as chemical and glass waste, far more often than they find users
or labs. They stumble into property crimes, child neglect and spousal
abuse more often than the drug itself. Tracking meth is like following
a trail of breadcrumbs left at the edge of a deep wood.

One such crumb is often damaged farm equipment. In the small town of
Lone Elm in Cooper County, seven white tanks, or "wagons," of
anhydrous ammonia line the shoulder of a country road gleaming in the
sun. They wouldn't be difficult for a meth "runner" or "spider" -
someone who gathers the ingredients for meth cooks - to spot. The
pressurized liquid ammonia in the tanks is meant for use as a crop
fertilizer. But Cooper County Sheriff Paul Milne says spiders break
into the tanks, stealing enough anhydrous to make a small batch of
drugs. Blue labels on the tanks explain how to transfer the product,
and what to do if it comes in contact with the eyes, throat, lungs or
skin. Inhaling it can freeze the lungs; touching it freezes the skin.

Eldon Kirshner, a co-op manager in Lone Elm, says meth addicts hit his
tanks as often as twice a week.

"It's not (so much) the product we're losing," he says. "It's all the
damage they're doing."

Addicts rip the locks and valves off the tanks to get to the
anhydrous. Kirshner tried making locks with PVC pipe and chains to
cover the valves, but to no avail. He says it costs as much as $500
each time he has to replace the valves and locks. The fertilizer
itself only costs $1 a gallon. Anhydrous tanks have become a prime
target for stakeouts by the drug agents. Milne and his deputies will
camp in the fields near a co-op for days, waiting for spiders. A new
state law makes it a felony to release anhydrous ammonia into the
atmosphere; any release that results in serious injury or death can
bring a prison sentence of 20 years to life. So if the cops can't find
the labs, they concentrate on catching runners in the act of stealing
ingredients.

Milne says he's spent several days on stakeouts without seeing a
thing.

"Couple of weeks ago I sat (across from Lone Elm for) six nights," he
says. "The one night I wasn't there, they got hit."

Addicts also steal common convenience store fare to make meth:
batteries, lighter fluid, nail polish remover, cold tablets. Boone
County detective Ken Kreigh says runners crush boxes of cold tablets
flat and shove them down their pants, fitting 10 boxes in each leg.

And rural sheriffs are now confronting violence more often, prompting
some to add bulletproof vests to their standard equipment, according
to William J. Renton Jr., special agent in charge of DEA at the St.
Louis Division. In 2002, in southern Dent County, Sheriff's Department
Chief Deputy Sharon J. Barnes, 48, was shot and killed during an
attempted meth raid.

The Mark Twain National Forest sprawls over a quarter of Dent County
where, in 2002, the Missouri Highway Patrol reported only eight meth
labs found - one of the lowest concentrations in the state. But that
same year, in the county's largest town of Salem, two cooks got into a
brawl over 1.5 pounds of meth. During the fight, one of the cooks
killed two people and fled. Barnes, a nine-year veteran who ran seven
cattle farms with her husband, was assigned to bring him in.

Renton says he was told that several people in Salem knew the meth
cook and didn't think he was violent. Barnes and another deputy got a
tip that he was at his house. When they arrived, a woman opened the
front door; the meth cook was standing behind her.

"He was all tweaked up, and he shot through the door," Renton
says.

Barnes was shot in the head and torso. She died next to her
car.

"There has been a virtual explosion of crime in rural America, and
most of it has been attributed to methamphetamine, methamphetamine
abuse and its side effects," Renton says.

Cleaning up the chemicals For every 10 hours Everett's officers spend
on a drug bust, he says five are spent on cleaning up an abandoned
lab. Hazardous material training has become part of the law
enforcement routine.

"In the past if somebody was using cocaine, the worst you might have
to clean up is a needle," he says. "Now we've got all these containers
and materials they mixed it in."

The Koch Crime Institute, a Kansas-based methamphetamine crime
research group that partners with the Midwest High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area, reports that for every pound of meth made, five
pounds of toxic waste are left. Despite that, Brad Harris of the
Missouri Department of Natural Resources says damage to the
environment hasn't been significant in the state, because most of the
labs are so small. Cooks often pour their residue down the drain,
where it is flushed through wastewater treatment systems.

In Boone County, the Columbia Fire Department's hazardous materials
team performs the cleanup. But in more rural counties, like Miller,
deputies don chemical suits and do the clean up themselves. They
dismantle the hoses and empty what's left in the glass jars and
plastic bottles into sealed containers. The coffee filters are thrown
away; the rubber gloves and lighter fluid are boxed up.

Much to the frustration of drug agents, they can spend more time
cleaning up after drug addicts than catching them. In October, Kreigh
had identified a lab in a home in Boone County and was ready to make a
bust. But while his officers sat poised to move, he sat in his
windowless office waiting for a warrant. While he waited, the cooks
moved their operation.

A week later, in another part of the county, a resident was driving
down a gravel road when he noticed something suspicious in the creek
bed. He called police and they found a few garbage bags: lab waste
and, maybe, the hint of a lab nearby. Kreigh came with three officers
and a team of specialists in hazardous materials. The spot was off the
highway a few miles. It was a cool October day, and the creek looked
like a good place to hide a lab. But the officers found little for
their troubles but leftovers: coffee filters, glass Mason jars, empty
Prestone Starting Fluid cans and rubber gloves.

They bagged up the waste and tagged the glass jars as evidence. They
shot the propane tank, half full of anhydrous, six times to
depressurize it before the team hauled it away.

Intensified meth laws With meth use growing so pervasive and
enforcement so elusive, the General Assembly and courts have stiffened
penalties against addicts and cooks, hoping to serve as a deterrent
and to keep meth makers out of circulation longer. Laws went into
effect last year in Missouri to target the ingredients needed to make
meth: No more than three packages, or six grams, of pseudoephedrine
decongestant - found in common cold pills - can be purchased at any
one time, and all products that contain the drug must be kept within
10 feet of a store's check-out register or tagged with electronic
monitoring devices.

Possession of meth is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. A person
caught stealing ingredients used for meth can also face up to 10 years
in prison. A cook caught making 30 grams or more can be sentenced to
20 years to life in prison. Cooking within half a mile of a school or
a home with children can bring life in prison.

But some counties are using drug courts, which sentence addicts to
treatment and parole rather than prison, in the hope they'll get clean.

Kreigh, of Boone County, says it doesn't seem to matter how long meth
users are locked up. In his experience, as soon as they are back on
the streets, they are using again. Meth is that powerful.

"We'll bust them for cocaine usage and very often they'll shut down,
slow down, go into rehab, get away from it. And we don't see them for
a while," he says. "We'll arrest someone for meth, and it's not
uncommon to arrest them again the next weekend for cooking. We've done
that more than one time."