A BURNING ISSUE

Meth Use Hits Home In South Louisiana

The first time Darren used the drug, he was terrified. Terrified he might
overdose.

Terrified he might get all freaked out.

Terrified because he didn't know what crystal meth, or methamphetamine,
might do to him.

After he watched a friend do it and nothing bad happened, Darren Brown, a
Donaldsonville native, decided he would try it.

His reasoning was simple.

"I've tried other drugs, and this one didn't bother my friend," he said.
Brown said he even liked how his friend acted: hyper, excited, like he
wanted to do a lot of things.

So despite his initial fear, Brown tried crystal meth one night while
attending a party, and he liked it.

"It made me hyperactive. I wanted to do a lot of things, be active," he
said. "The high lasted a long time, and it didn't take much of the drug."

Methamphetamine, a psychomotor stimulant or "upper," is a highly addictive
drug with usage on the rise in Louisiana, one of the last areas of the
middle United States to show signs of a meth epidemic.

It's cheaper than cocaine, easily produced, leaves users with incredible
energy and prompts a longer high.

It's hooked people up for decades, but its recent popularity has soared
eastward across the United States, originating in Hawaii and California. It
has become a major problem in rural states, including Iowa, Missouri and
Kansas.

Government officials nationwide say meth ruins more lives, drains more law
enforcement agents and court systems, harms more children and wreaks more
social damage than cocaine and heroin.

And now it's here, say Louisiana law enforcement agents.

Meth usage up sharply

Arrests and drug busts in the first half of 2002 show a marked increase in
meth use in Louisiana. State officials busted 14 clandestine meth labs in
homes, garages, sheds and other locations in 2001; they had busted 60 meth
labs halfway through 2002.

North Louisiana and the Florida parishes have shown the most meth-related
activity in the state.

U.S. Attorney David Dugas of the Middle District Court in Baton Rouge said
he knew Louisiana was on the brink of an epidemic when the Drug Enforcement
Agency recorded eight lab seizures in the first six months of 2002. Local
law enforcement agencies gathered at a meth summit counted more than 50 lab
seizures for the same time frame.

"At that point, we knew we had to treat it as an epidemic," Dugas said.

The increase mimicked the nature of other states' epidemics.

Dugas said he recently has indicted people in five meth cases, but his
office hasn't released the records because of ongoing investigations into
related users, producers or drug rings. He expects to prosecute 15 to 20
cases in the next few weeks.

The Narcotics Division of the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office made
several meth arrests in the past year, and the first of those will go to
court in the next few weeks.

The Tri-Parish Task Force, covering some of the Florida parish region, saw
some of its first convictions in August, when Michael McCarroll got 30
years in prison for possession and production of Schedule II drugs, namely
methamphetamine. Meth, cocaine, GHB and Oxycodone are drugs classified as
Schedule II, meaning rarely used in accepted medical treatment.

What is Meth?

Meth is a white, odorless, bitter-tasting powder that dissolves easily in
water. It may turn different colors, commonly red, yellow and green, based
on the chemical reaction of the ingredients or materials used in the
process, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It is a
synthetically produced central nervous system stimulant.

Meth can be made in small homemade labs, called clandestine labs, or
mass-produced in a different process in superlabs, commonly found in Mexico
and in isolated areas in the U.S. West. Clandestine labs can produce
between a few ounces and two pounds in one batch, and superlabs can produce
10 pounds in 24 hours.

One reason meth is gaining in popularity is that it is easy to make.

"It's so easy to produce. Everything can be found at the local Wal-Mart or
dollar store, except for ammonia [a key ingredient in one production
method] that is being stolen from wholesale sellers and farmers," said Vic
Marler, a Tri-Parish Task Force officer, encompassing St. Tammany,
Livingston and Tangipahoa parishes.

Marler said meth's popularity in north Louisiana and the Florida parishes
is soaring as crack dealers turn to meth, making more money on a drug that
can be produced almost anywhere with simple ingredients.

Brown's story

Brown said he felt paranoid and began watching around him for others while
he was high on meth.

"I thought people were there and talking about me when I knew they
weren't," Brown said.

He said it scared him, and when he began coming down from his high, he
hated the feeling that he couldn't catch his breath and immediately went
back for more to continue the high.

Brown tried the drug a third time when the opportunity arose at a party. He
remembered the things he didn't like about meth, but he said he wanted the
fix of being high.

Brown now lives in a halfway house in Baton Rouge and is working to stay
clean from narcotics and alcohol.

Looking back on his meth use, he said he's still worried about the dangers
of using. He realizes now that the dealers were using the people at the
party as guinea pigs.

He questioned the purity and safety of the meth after seeing the materials
used to make it, especially the ammonia.

"I knew it was a big risk, but I did it anyway," Brown said. "I say I
wouldn't do it again while I'm clear-headed, but I'm not sure."

But, Brown doesn't fit State Police's characterization of most meth users
or some local law enforcement agents' description.

Brown, an African-American man, is in his mid-20s. According to State
Police, average Louisiana meth users are white and in their late teens,
30s, 40s and 50s. But north Louisiana is seeing a rise in college-age users.

"But drugs cross all racial lines and culture," said Lt. William Davis, a
State Police public information officer. "Everyone has a reason to use."

Although Brown snorted the meth to get his high, the drug can be injected,
ingested and smoked.

Meth causes users to become confused and sometimes paranoid, as recent
arrest records show.

A man arrested and brought to the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office
was relieved two weeks ago to learn that the image of Mel Gibson from
"Braveheart" and a large sword that he saw after his arrest were real.

The man said he was "seeing all sorts of weird things and couldn't
distinguish reality among them," said Capt. Shane Evans of the East Baton
Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office Narcotics Division.

In St. Tammany Parish, a man sleeping while he was brewing methamphetamine
in August called 911 after he dreamed someone was trying to kill him.
Police said the man appeared to be in a delusional state when they arrested
him.

Meth comes in many forms

Commonly called speed, crystal or glass, meth's most common form in
Louisiana and the United States is the powder because of the ease of
production. It's known as crystal meth and often is produced in clandestine
labs using the "Nazi production" method, named for the historical use of
the drug in Nazi-controlled Germany.

Dugas said officers must keep up with the spread of the drug and try to
stay ahead.

People are learning to produce the meth from online sources and from others.

Marler, a task force officer, said he heard of people coming from Arkansas,
where law enforcement was beginning to make a large numbers of arrests, to
throw "tailgating parties" to teach people how to cook the meth, charging
$100 to $400 per lesson.

Capt. Evans said the online recipes are easy to find but often are
simplified or incomplete processes, which can be dangerous considering the
volatile state of chemicals used to make meth.

Lithium, found in camera batteries; ephedrine and pseudophedrine, or common
cold medicines; red phosphorous, found on matches; ether; iodine; and
anhydrous ammonia are common ingredients in the Nazi-production method,
Marler said.

Utensils of mason jars, coffee filters, hot plates or other heat sources,
pressure cookers, pillowcases, plastic tubing and gas cans are common
ingredients that can be found at retail or convenience stores. Still, the
anhydrous ammonia must be stolen from farmers or wholesale distributors.

"The growing use of the Internet, which provides access to methamphetamine
recipes, coupled with increased demand for high-purity product, has
resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of mom-and-pop laboratories
throughout the United States," according to the Drug Enforcement Agency's
Intelligence Reports.

A paranoid high

A small amount of methamphetamine can produce a long-lasting high and cause
fits of paranoia.

Doctors and drug abuse institutes have identified a long list of
meth-related effects, including hypertension, aggressiveness, nervousness,
nausea, sweating, palpitations, dryness of mouth, hot flashes, insomnia,
irritability and even death.

Depending on how meth is taken, highs can occur within minutes and last up
to 24 hours.

Meth produces these highs by acting on dopamine levels in the brain.
Dopamine, a chemical messenger similar to adrenaline, plays an important
role in the regulation of pleasure. Drugs that affect dopamine typically
are highly addictive, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Meth increases the dopamine levels, while depressing receptors. After
prolonged use, normal levels of dopamine make you feel depressed, U.S.
Attorney Dugas said.

"At that point, the drug has altered the brain so much that the user needs
the drug to avoid feeling bad," said Dugas, who has studied meth for years.
He became especially interested after a convention with other U.S.
attorneys, where he learned the biggest problem facing most districts was
residents' methamphetamine use.

The federal attorneys described how users' delusions and fits of paranoia
and violence were wreaking havoc in communities as murders, suicides and
other violent acts rose.

These long-term effects also include dependence and addiction psychosis,
mood disturbances, strokes and weight loss.

But East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Capt. Evans said users don't see beyond the
short-term effects, which include increased attention and activity,
decreased fatigue and appetite, euphoria, increased respiration and
hyperthermia.

"They just don't see the cooks having no teeth or wrinkling prematurely,"
Evans said.

Users see they have the energy to complete tasks, don't have to stop and
eat, and aren't tired or fatigued.

As other stimulants, meth produces these same behavioral and physiological
effects, such as how it accumulates the neurotransmitter dopamine and how
this excessive dopamine concentration produces the feeling of euphoria.

However, it's quite different from other stimulants, such as cocaine, in
the way it acts on the body.

Meth is man-made and has limited medical use; cocaine is plant-derived and
used as a local anesthetic in some surgical procedures.

"In contrast to cocaine, which is quickly removed and almost completely
metabolized in the body, methamphetamine has a much longer duration of
action and a larger percentage of the drug remains unchanged in the body,"
according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

This means meth stays in the brain longer, prolonging the stimulant effects
and killing more brain cells.

"Like it or not, it just makes you stupid," Evans said.

State Police bulk up

Meth now is competing with marijuana as the state's drug of choice,
according to the DEA, and state law enforcement is reacting to the change.

Law enforcement is receiving more training in looking for, identifying and
busting meth labs. The number of seizures have increased from one lab each
in 1996 and 1997 to 14 labs each in 2000 and 2001, according to the DEA.

State Police, city and parish police departments and task forces highly
trained in catching methamphetamine users don't deny they're missing busts
because of some officers' lack of education. However, they say they're
arresting more people and disposing of more meth labs.

"Where GHB is of the new century, meth is the speed of the new millennium
because it can be made here," Evans of the Sheriff's Office said.

Livingston, Tangipahoa and St. Tammany parishes are being inundated with
meth production and use, as well as north Louisiana, likely because of
their largely isolated areas, Davis with State Police said.

Evans said the areas of increase show the movement of the drug and recipes
for production across state lines from Arkansas and Mississippi. "Law
enforcement agents were amazed by the meth stories in neighboring states,"
Evans said. "Our agents often are sent outside Louisiana for school and
training," he said, which has helped improve the number of arrests.

Davis said State Police has teamed with local law enforcement agencies in a
"constant sharing relationship" to educate residents -- kids, moms, school
bus drivers, executives, anyone who'll listen -- about awareness, the drug,
manufacturing of it and dangers.

"Sometimes we're too sheltered in our own world and need to hear about
what's going on," Davis said.

The rapid rise of the dangerous drug and production methods calls for
people to be more educated and help law enforcement, he said.

Meth's increase in the state also has called for a new system in reporting
the number of arrests and busted labs. State Police now is the
clearinghouse for all law enforcement agencies in Louisiana before the
state's information is sent to the El Paso Intelligence Center, a DEA
cooperative established to collect, process and disseminate intelligence
information concerning illicit drugs.

EPIC helped state law enforcement agencies start to track meth on a more
uniform basis.

"Snags still exist in the reporting, but more cases are coming through with
numbers of arrests and labs located and destroyed," Davis said.

Dugas with the U.S. Attorney's office said it has been difficult getting
law enforcement agents to fill out the EPIC reports, so the numbers
reported certainly are smaller than actual figures.

"But we've fixed the problem substantially as we're starting to get in
reports," Dugas said.

The cases reported predominantly are of clandestine labs, though there are
signs of the drug originating outside the state, he said.

Interstate 10, a general drug pipeline from California to Florida, probably
is the main source of meth entering the state, Dugas said about an area
that law enforcement agents have to become more keen about looking for
signs of traffickers and asking questions.

Campus police keep watch of approaching meth problem

A custodian at Southern Methodist University in Texas made a discovery late
last month that most Louisiana university police officers say they might
never catch.

While cleaning in a music practice room on SMU's campus, the custodian
found a box filled with a Bunsen burner, two open containers still with
residue inside and a flask.

SMU Chief of Police Aaron Graves said this bust is the first of its kind on
the SMU campus. He said officers are familiar with controlled substances in
general but may not have thought anything of the materials found other than
the location of the chemicals was alarming.

In Texas, 575 meth labs like the SMU one were found in 2001 and reported to
the Drug Enforcement Agency. However, during that same time frame,
Louisiana reported only 14 meth labs.

Local law enforcement recently focused on educating campus police
departments of items associated with meth and its production.

"Campus police officers probably wouldn't recognize the materials used to
make meth," said Capt. Ricky Adams of the LSU Police Department.

Adams said his officers haven't had training with methamphetamines. He said
that when it comes to narcotics, he usually refers questions and cases of
narcotics to Evans.

LSU administrators on campus, including Dean of Students Kevin Price, say
they also are aware of news reporting the rise in meth use, although they
haven't seen evidence of it on campus yet.

Nonetheless, Price said the cost of having meth or a meth lab on campus is
steep. Beyond criminal charges, students also may be removed from the
University for violating the school Code of Conduct for illegal
manufacture, sale, distribution, possession or use of illegal substances.

Though no absolute punishment exists for breaking this code, Price said
students who have come through his office for alleged manufacture, sale,
distribution, possession or use of illegal drugs, mostly marijuana, have
been kicked off campus. But if they dispute the charge, they may request a
due process hearing.

Other in-state schools have similar codes of conduct concerning drugs that
lead to disciplinary action, and law enforcement at most have had greater
training than at LSU.

Police at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Southern University and
Southeastern Louisiana University have had varying degrees of training in
looking for methamphetamines or clandestine labs and items used in
producing meth at home or in small locations. None reported any on-campus
arrests or busts related to methamphetamine.

Police at the University of Louisiana at Monroe and Northwestern State
University could not be reached for comment. However, Davis said users in
their early 20s are beginning to increase in north Louisiana.

Capt. Harold Todd, assistant director of campus police at Southeastern
Louisiana University, said his officers participated in drug identity
courses and met with representatives of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Todd said with the rising number of meth lab busts in Tangipahoa,
Livingston and other parishes surrounding SLU, the campus police department
has been more aware of drug use on campus but still received no complaints
related to meth production or use.

Meth gains edge moving across Midwest, nation

What's described in Louisiana as a growing problem ranks dismally in
comparison to other states' busted labs and meth seizures.

According to numbers reported to the Drug Enforcement Agency for 2001,
Louisiana had 14 clandestine meth lab busts and 1.4 kilograms of meth seized.

In the West, where the epidemic began, California reported 1,872 labs and
1,282.3 kilograms, and Oregon reported 584 labs and 54 kilograms.

As the drug moved eastward and inundated the Midwest, states such as
Missouri showed numbers nearly doubling some reported on the West Coast.
Missouri reported 2,207 labs and 14.8 kilograms, while Iowa reported 553
labs and 79.7 kilograms.

Compared to surrounding states, Louisiana had drastically lower numbers,
possibly indicating a slow entrance of meth into the state, law enforcement
agents not addressing the problem thus not producing the busts, agents
doing such a good job that labs are difficult to start or a severe lag in
reporting the busts to the DEA.

Texas reported 575 labs and 451.9 kilograms. Arkansas reported 366 labs and
9.2 kilograms. Mississippi reported 201 labs and 1.5 kilograms. And Alabama
reported 163 labs and 17.2 kilograms of meth.

Regardless of the numbers, the rise and spread of meth in communities and
across the United States has hit record highs, according to the DEA. As
East Coast states still see lower numbers, similar to those in Louisiana in
2001, law enforcement must prepare for the inevitable meth rise in their areas.

DEA officials in Louisiana say meth is going at $100 to $150 per gram,
about the same price as cocaine in the area.

U.S. Attorney Dugas said the progression of the drug across states has
helped the more eastern states, including Louisiana, in determining how to
address the expected problem.

"We don't have to reinvent the wheel," Dugas said. "We were able to get up
to speed pretty quickly with [other states'] help."

Conclusion

Evans said clubs, which mostly are located away from campus areas,
especially in Baton Rouge, are beginning to show signs of meth use among
attendants. Marijuana arrests on and near campus occur most frequently,
Evans said, "but we're watching."

"We're now seeing young people at clubs mixing GHB [commonly known as a
date-rape drug or downer] with meth, the new speed [or upper]," Evans said.

This mix could be dangerous because of the countering effects on the body,
he said.

Evans and federal agents said they're pleased meth use hasn't caught on yet
with the college crowd.

"At that age, you don't want to get caught up in the federal system," said
Dugas, referring to the consequences of 20-year-olds getting busted for
meth use. "We'll be looking."