ROOTS OF DESTRUCTION

Methamphetamine Labs Growing Wild In Rural East Tennessee

ALTAMONT, Tenn. -- The fabled outlaw tradition of East Tennessee has taken
a volatile turn with the addition of methamphetamine into a cultural mix
that has traditionally revolved around moonshine and marijuana, authorities
say.

Beginning in the Sequatchie Valley in the mid-1990s and slowly spreading to
the northeast, large-scale methamphetamine use has cut an epic swath
through the fabled hills and hollows that once sheltered corn stills and
pot patches.

So far, the meth epidemic has sent thousands of Tennesseans to jail or
prison, taken nearly 500 children from their parents and cost taxpayers
millions of dollars in environmental clean-up costs.

A largely rural phenomenon, the tide of meth use has spread throughout the
Cumberland Plateau and is now crashing through Anderson County and points
further east, straining law enforcement and social service agencies to the
breaking point through sheer weight of numbers.

And the epidemic shows no signs of letting up soon, according to U.S.
Attorney Russ Dedrick, who prosecutes federal criminal cases in the Eastern
District of Tennessee.

"We see problems with marijuana and cocaine and its derivative, crack
cocaine, in the metropolitan areas," Dedrick said. "As you get into the
rural areas, you see marijuana and methamphetamine, and methamphetamine is
the major danger. ... We see the harmful effects of methamphetamine as
being a larger potential problem, so we want to keep a handle on it."

From retail customers who suddenly find themselves unable to buy cold
tablets in bulk to the social workers who must scramble to find homes for
children torn suddenly from their parents, the impact of meth is becoming
more visible with each passing day.

And federal authorities say they know exactly where, when and how the
current epidemic began.

Putting down rural roots

Until the past decade, meth trafficking was generally associated with
outlaw bikers, truck drivers and shady chemists out to make a quick buck,
according to Dedrick.

"In the past, we saw ... trained individuals in chemistry who were involved
in the production of large quantities of methamphetamine in a laboratory
environment in a building or the back of a house where they actually had
test tubes, burners and such," Dedrick said. "That was 15 to 20 years ago.
We were able to find those people pretty quickly. ... We don't see the
biker gang involvement now, because we don't see a lot of biker gangs.

"People that went across the country and used methamphetamine to stay
awake, they just kind of dropped it off across the country from California.
We saw large methamphetamine problems develop in the Plains states, like
Kansas, Arkansas, Nebraska. ... They are kind of the forerunners of this
problem that has developed."

Meth is generally distilled from over-the-counter cold medications
containing pseudoephedrine. Over time, meth distributors and addicts
figured out ways to manufacture the drug on their own, presaging the
epidemic of back-room "meth labs" that have bedeviled dozens of East
Tennessee communities in recent years.

It's in the rural areas that meth has taken hold. While there are
undoubtedly meth users in Knoxville, for instance, officials from the
Knoxville Police Department say they have yet to discover a single working
lab in the city.

Anderson County authorities, on the other hand, have busted 45 labs since
January, and Cumberland County saw 36 in fiscal year 2002-03, according to
agency statistics.

Authorities say the main reason meth labs keep popping up in rural areas is
because they draw too much attention in urban areas. Strong chemical smells
reported by neighbors have tipped off police to dozens of labs. It's far
easier to operate with impunity in the middle of the woods than in an
apartment complex in the middle of town.

It was precisely these factors that led several would-be meth traffickers
to the mountains west of Chattanooga in the early 1990s, an area
crisscrossed by hundreds of miles of narrow roads and no major urban centers.

'Appleseed' phenomenon As far as federal authorities can tell, the current
epidemic stretches back to a methamphetamine lab that was raided in
Missouri in 1993. The lab's owners -- identified in federal court documents
as Robert Opdyke and Donald Zike -- fled to Lincoln County, Tennessee.

Opdyke's parents lived in Fayetteville, records show, and the two men
allegedly set up shop there and were able to produce at least 13 pounds of
methamphetamine between Sept. 1993 and Oct. 1994. They also charged a fee
to teach others how to make the drug, and their business flourished until
they were indicted by a federal grand jury almost three years later.

Simultaneously, men in neighboring communities came up with similar schemes
and imported "cooks" from California to start their own methamphetamine
operations in Grundy, Franklin and Marion counties, according to federal
records.

Local police and sheriff's departments initially looked at the rise in meth
use as an isolated problem, but a pair of U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration agents in 1995 and 1996 "began to understand that several
groups had organized around a primary cooker" to produce the drug,
according to one federal report. The first indictments -- against Opdyke,
Zike and alleged co-conspirators -- began in March 1996 and ended with the
men serving prison terms ranging from 70 to 130 months.

But the damage had already been done. The knowledge of how to make meth
cheaply from easy-to-find items like pseudoephedrine, red phosphorous,
crystal iodine and lye had been readily absorbed by a community predisposed
to shrug at the law.

"These counties are large in area, largely rural and mountainous, with
sheriff's offices and town police departments that are short staffed and
have very limited budgets," the report notes.

"The counties are poor, with no real industrial base and thus below average
incomes. These counties have a history of moonshine activity, marijuana
cultivation and (automobile) chop-shop operations. Thus, it comes as no
surprise that manufacturing methamphetatmine would fit in and be wildly
popular."

The knowledge of how to make meth was passed on by word-of-mouth, traveling
northeastward through the state as users gave recipes to friends and
relatives in adjoining communities.

Authorities have dubbed the process the "Johnny Appleseed phenomenon," and
statistics show that it has been devastatingly effective: Since 1998, the
first year that detailed records were kept, 122 meth labs have been found
in Grundy County, 57 in Sequatchie, 225 in Marion, 112 in Warren and 103 in
Franklin.

As bad as the situation may seem to be in the communities around Knoxville
region, Dedrick said the problem isn't nearly as bad as what's happened
west of Chattanooga.

"It's the exact same problems, but really on a smaller scale," he said.

A mountain of a mess With a population reckoned at less than 14,500 in the
2000 census and a per capita income of only $12,039, Grundy County is both
sparsely populated and relatively poor -- fertile ground for the types of
criminal enterprise that many rural Tennessee areas are known for.

The Grundy County Sheriff's Department has a grand total of nine patrol
officers, including Sheriff Robert Meeks. Only two deputies are available
to patrol the county's roads at night, plus a single night-shift officer
each in the small towns of Monteagle, Tracy City and Palmer.

The department's criminal investigations unit -- which consists of Lt.
Dennis Womack -- operates out of a cluttered trailer beside the jail.
Located only a block or so behind the county courthouse in the tiny
community of Altamont, the department's physical appearance is that of a
relic from another age.

Locals refer to their community as "The Mountain," but Internet searches on
Grundy County quickly turn up a more colorful nickname: "Meth Capital of
the Southeast."

Womack shakes his head and scoffs when asked about the sobriquet, saying:
"We were once called the car theft capital of the Southeast, too."

But Womack also says he can remember when it was something of an event to
actually have a prisoner booked into the jail. Nowadays, however, the jail
averages more than 30 inmates on any given day, and much of the crime
problem in Grundy County stems in one way or another from meth.

"It hit this mountain and just exploded," Womack said. "I don't know how
many people we've sent to state and federal prison. ... Up here, there are
plenty of areas to cook in, especially out in the woods where a lot of it
is done. We don't have enough personnel to go out and hunt them."

Womack remembers that at first meth labs were found "only occasionally --
then all of a sudden we'd get two a day sometimes. ... They started getting
smaller. They used to carry them around in big green plastic containers,
but then they got small enough to fit in a backpack."

Womack has plenty of stories about meth addicts and the psychosis that
often accompanies long-term use of the drug. He talks about one man who cut
off his own thumb while in the throes of a psychotic episode and shows
photographs of one dead addict who was covered in sores.

"If someone gets on a binge, they stay up for days and days," Womack said.
"They stay up for so long they're dreaming although they're still awake."

Because the chemical process that generates meth is highly toxic and can
pose an explosive hazard, specially trained teams have to be called in each
time a lab is found, Womack explained.

The average clean-up bill is $3,300, he said, which is paid for by the DEA.

"That's a lot of money," he said. "If we got two labs each day, there's no
way this county could afford that."

Womack said that meth-related fires and other dangerous situations have
become so common that he doesn't even hesitate when he hears the pitched
wail of a fire engine.

"Now if there's a fire, then the first thing I think is that it's a meth
lab," he said. "Of course, that's just my way of thinking, not everybody's."

In 1999, the problem got so bad that Sheriff Meeks sent an urgent letter to
Dedrick asking for help. Meeks' appeal for assistance led to the creation
of the South/East Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force, a joint effort by
local, state and federal agencies to combat the problem in 41 counties in
East and parts of Middle Tennessee.

"I don't know what I would have done without Russ Dedrick," Meeks said,
adding that the meth problem seems to be receding after reaching a high
water mark in 2000. "They stay away from the (production of) quantity now.
We've still got some party dope going around, but the quantity's gone."

When asked how many people in his community have ended up in jail or
prison, Meeks replied: "Lord knows how many. ... We've sent at least 50
into federal custody, and easily hundreds in state court. It's ruined a lot
of families' lives."

Diane Easterly, who oversees foster-care operations for the Department of
Children's Services in Grundy, Franklin, Marion and Sequatchie counties,
said caseworkers have investigated 96 meth-related referrals involving 181
children during the past 11 months. Of that number, DCS has filed 16
petitions to remove 31 children from their homes because their parents were
cooking or using meth, she said.

But the number of children removed from their parents' custody is actually
much higher because they are often given to a relative, eliminating the
need for DCS to actually file a petition in court, she said.

"If we get a referral and the family is really involved in drugs, often
they will make a placement with grandma or someone and we won't get
involved," Easterly said. "We do not have many referrals involving meth
that aren't validated."

A new criminal culture Despite East Tennessee's history of embracing
illegal drugs, Dedrick said he believes there are far more differences than
similarities between today's meth addicts and yesterday's smugglers.

One obvious difference is that while the moonshiners and pot growers of the
past might have used their own products, most of what they made was
exported for profit. The typical meth lab, however, is operated by users
whose main concern is feeding their own addiction.

Insofar as large-scale methamphetamine trafficking is concerned, East
Tennessee is sometimes used as a distribution point for groups importing
the drug from Mexico and other areas but those groups have little or
nothing to do with the rash of clandestine labs, Dedrick said.

One recent example was the recent "Westward Ho" indictments, where 34
people were indicted for allegedly running a $5 million drug conspiracy
that spanned from Mexico and Texas to Georgia and East Tennessee. In that
case, the defendants are alleged to have sold thousands of pounds of
marijuana, more than 500 grams of meth and more than 100 grams of cocaine.

"I would say it's a new thing in terms of culture overall, both in terms of
how it's spread and the people involved in it," Dedrick said. "Some of the
same individuals were involved previously with marijuana, cocaine, car
theft ... We do see a criminal element involved in this, but on the other
side we see individuals who come from depressed areas, jobless individuals.
.. It's a new type of culture we're trying to deal with."