Series: 4 Of 10

TRAFFICKING IN TRAGEDY

Meth's Misery: The Illicit Methamphetamine Trade In Douglas County

LOOKINGGLASS - The pile of trash strewn about a dry creek bed in October
hardly seemed to call for a hazardous materials cleanup crew and a police
investigation.

Found by construction workers at the intersection of Coos Bay Wagon and
Flournoy Valley roads near Lookingglass, the trash pile included canisters
of fairly common household chemicals such as denatured alcohol, Red Devil
lye, lighter fluid and camping fuel.

Other items aroused more suspicion, if only for the condition in which they
were found: a grocery bag full of matchbooks missing their red phosphorous
striking plates, two dozen used-up cold medicine packages, iodine-tinged
coffee filters, and an empty Gatorade bottle stained white with residue.

Still, there wasn't much to suggest the debris bore the slightest
connection to an illicit drug trade that consumes hundreds of thousands of
dollars in county law enforcement resources every year.

The discarded chemicals were used to make methamphetamine, police say. The
narcotics detectives in charge of cleaning up the leftover lab admit it was
hardly a sinister-looking crime scene.

What is remarkable, they said, is there are probably dozens of such sites
lying undiscovered in other creek beds, forests and hillsides around
Douglas County.

"Some of the things that make Douglas County so appealing ... the rural
nature of the county, the remote areas of the county, are what are so
appealing to the manufacturers and the dealers of meth," said Douglas
Interagency Narcotics Team Commander John Hanlin.

"It makes it easier to conduct drug trafficking business without having
your neighbors looking down on you every minute of the day .. (and the
cooks) don't have to worry about someone smelling all the odors of the meth
lab or seeing all the traffic."

That doesn't mean that meth production is confined to the rural wilds of
the county, however.

On Nov. 24, a monthlong police investigation culminated in the seizure of a
lab being run out of a trailer in southeast Roseburg. Seven people were
arrested on methamphetamine charges after Terri Lynn Savas' trailer was
raided at 1932 S.E. Eddy St. DINT officers clad in the white suits worn by
hazardous materials teams allegedly seized denatured alcohol and other
materials used to manufacture the drug.

"If you cook or deal methamphetamine, eventually we will learn about it and
we will come," Hanlin said.

Greatest drug threat

Methamphetamine use in Douglas County and the rest of Oregon has exploded
since the early 1990s. It poses the most serious drug threat to the state
of any controlled substance, according to a report prepared by the
federally funded High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program.

HIDTA tracks drug enforcement efforts in seven Oregon counties shown to
have the most serious drug problems, including Douglas, Jackson, Deschutes,
Marion, Clackamas, Washington and Multnomah.

Methamphetamine has steadily risen to become the most popular drug in the
HIDTA counties in the last five years, according to the report, and Oregon
consistently ranks among the top 10 states in the nation for the number of
meth labs seized annually, with 530 in 2002.

DINT has seized 20 labs in Douglas County so far this year, up from 14 in
2002. Four of those 20 were partial labs, where some of the precursor
substances needed to make methamphetamine were found.

"They would've been labs, we just got on them before they got there,"
Hanlin said.

In 2000, 29 labs were seized.

"The most common meth labs that we have around here now are red
(phosphorous) and iodine labs," Hanlin said. "They're generally called
red-p labs, or tweaker labs, because meth tweakers - people who use and
abuse the drug - typically around here are the ones who make meth using
this method."

The lab seizures contributed to the recovery of a staggering quantity of
methamphetamine this year, most of it seized in a 30-pound Drug Enforcement
Administration bust in November.

Including the DEA case, more than 16,732 grams of meth have been seized in
major drug operations this year, which would yield about $836,600 if sold
on the street. DINT alone has seized almost 3,000 grams, which is way up
from the 703 grams they seized in 2002.

Interestingly, the number of people arrested by DINT on
methamphetamine-related charges has gone down over the same period - from
143 in 2002 to 131 so far this year. " The reason you'll notice that the
amount of meth seized is higher and the number of arrests is lower is
because we are going after the bigger players," Hanlin said. "We're trying
to go after the bigger guys and dry up the supply."

The drug's availability on the street is scarcely suffering, however, as
even law enforcement officers will attest. Part of the reason for its
prevalence is the ease with which it is made.

"You can get the recipe right off the Internet from a variety of sources,"
Hanlin said.

The red phosphorous method involves the use of ephedrine or
pseudoephedrine, red phosphorous, iodine, camping fuel, fuel-line
antifreeze, drain opener, and other substances.

Manufacturers can get pseudoephedrine from cold and allergy tablets bought
at the supermarket and then distill the tablets down to their active
ingredients using a solvent. Red phosphorous is often obtained by stripping
the striker plates off matchbook covers, which can then be combined with
water, iodine and the pseudoephedrine and heated up again in a subsequent step.

The highly toxic chemical mix goes through a series of additional chemical
reactions and filtering processes before the methamphetamine is done and
ready to be "purified," or whitened, using ether or acetone.

"It's just a brew of toxic chemicals," said Douglas County Deputy District
Attorney Jeff Sweet. "They're getting what they wanted, but even that's
just nasty."

Occupational hazards

The whole process can be completed in less than a day, provided nothing
blows up.

"The biggest hazard with these labs is fire. In fact, to a meth cook that's
a bigger hazard than getting caught by the police, is the risk of
explosion," Hanlin said. "You're cooking meth on a burner of your stove,
and the material you're trying to cook off is this white sludge sitting in
a gallon of camping fuel, and you're evaporating that on your stove, and
these people smoke ."

"And they're high while they're doing it," chimed in Sweet.

The gases produced in the manufacturing process can also be deadly.

"If you overheat it you can produce phosphine gas, which can just flat-out
kill you," Sweet said. "We've seen a video of a hotel room where a maid
walked in and they (the methamphetamine manufacturers) were just dead."

To evade detection, meth cooks may increase the danger to themselves and
others by using duct tape or towels around the edges of doors and windows
to prevent the fumes from leaking out. Motel rooms are popular with meth
cooks because they can make their product and then leave without a trace.

"It's not that hard necessarily to do a cook in a hotel room, contaminate
it, and leave it and not get caught," Sweet said.

Hanlin and Sweet displayed photographs of a lab left behind in a motel room
by a sloppy clan of cooks, who left sludge-filled coffee filters, stained
bed comforters and dirty Pyrex dishes in their wake. The drugs were mixed
in the room's bathtub and sink, and the toxic chemical byproducts were
simply washed down the drains.

Once a lab has been discovered on a piece of property it must be disposed
of, cleaned up and deemed suitable for habitation by the state, costing the
owner several thousand dollars. Labs also are commonly found in homes,
businesses, trailers, the woods, or even stashed inside a backpack or the
trunk of a car.

Smurfs for hire

In response to the proliferation of methamphetamine manufacturing in
Oregon, legislators have passed laws to limit the availability of the
substances used to make it. Called precursor laws, they regulate the sale
of such substances as anhydrous ammonia, red phosphorous, concentrated
iodine, and cold and allergy medications.

"The precursor laws have been very ... beneficial in making it more
difficult to get pseudoephedrine, iodine ... and red phosphorous," Hanlin said.

Meth users say the laws have done little to choke off the supply of the
drug on the street, however.

"There's just ways around all that," said recovering addict Andrea York of
Roseburg. "I've never known anybody to have a problem getting what they
needed ... you have a hundred junkies all ready to do whatever you ask them
to do" so they can get high.

Meth cooks will employ other users, sometimes called "smurfs," to go from
store to store buying the chemicals they need to make the drug.

"Smurfing is a term ... used to describe people running around purchasing
under-the-radar amounts of pseudoephedrine, iodine" and other precursor
substances, Sweet said.

Their activities are often noticed by security guards at local retail
stores. The head of security at one grocery store, who requested his
identity and that of his employer be kept secret, sees them on a regular basis.

"A lot of them were stealing it off the shelves," the security guard said.
"I see somebody pull up and then they'll come up separately, or you might
see them in the aisle discussing what they're going to get, and then
they'll split up and go to different registers."

The man, who also works security at other retail stores in Roseburg, will
note their descriptions and the frequency with which they buy the cold
medicine and pass the information along to police.

"They're doing a pretty good job with some of the tips that we give them,"
he said.

Imported meth

In spite of the relative ease with which the drug can be made, most of the
methamphetamine circulating the county is imported from bigger cities north
and south of here, which are distribution hubs for manufacturers in
Washington, California, Mexico and sometimes Canada.

"There's a big influx of methamphetamine coming up from Mexico ... through
illegal aliens or through individuals who still have ties to Mexico,"
Hanlin said. "We don't have that big of a Hispanic population here in
Douglas County so we don't really see it quite like they do in some of the
areas like Medford, and up north of us, but it comes through here obviously
because we're right in the middle of it."

The HIDTA assessment reports the majority of the meth supply in Oregon is
controlled by Mexican drug trafficking organizations. It may be smuggled
via rail cars, personal vehicles, bus lines and commercial vehicles. Police
have even found it hidden between stacks of lumber on logging trucks. Much
of the methamphetamine is run up and down Interstate 5, and many of the
labs themselves are mobile.

"With the decrease of the full complement of Oregon State Troopers on the
highways, comprehensive interdiction of these rolling meth labs will
consequently be diminished," states the report.

Meth facts

. Douglas County spends over $460,000 every year on the Douglas Interagency
Narcotics Team, which spends almost 70 percent of its time working meth
trafficking cases.

. The average price of a gram of methamphetamine in Roseburg is $50; an
ounce goes for between $400 and $800; with an ounce of crystal meth, a more
pure form, going for $1,000-$2,000