METH'S POPULARITY STEMS PARTLY FROM EASE OF MANUFACTURE

It's not just the high that makes methamphetamine popular. The drug is also
relatively quick, cheap and easy to make with ingredients that are readily
available in stores.

With about $100, a good recipe and four hours of spare time, an addict can
make half-an-ounce of the off-white powder -- enough to get three or four
people high for a long weekend.

"The high lasts three-and-a-half to four hours, and it can have lasting
effects even longer," said Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma State
Bureau of Narcotics. "That's another reason it's so attractive. It doesn't
take much to keep them going for several days."

Unlike with cocaine, heroin or often marijuana, meth users don't have to
rely on a shipment from South America or Asia. Meth is typically made in
small amounts in houses, apartments or motel rooms.

"Most people are under the mistaken conception that they're making pounds
of this stuff and selling it for a lot of money," Woodward said. "These
aren't drug dealers. These are addicts."

Meth is pure pseudoephedrine, an abundant ingredient in over-the-counter
cold medicines. Before the early 1990s, meth was made with another active
ingredient and took days to create.

To make the drug, a manufacturer extracts the chemical from the pill,
removes an attached molecule of oxygen and dries the pseudoephedrine into a
powder.

Pseudoephedrine is removed from pills with acetone (found in nail polish
remover), ether (from starter fluid cans) or methyl alcohol (in
antifreeze). It takes about 600 to 900 pills for a half-ounce.

The oxygen is stripped using one of two methods -- the red phosphorous
method or the Birch method.

In the first, red phosphorous from matches or road flares are mixed with
iodine crystals (used in veterinary products) to make an acid that pulls
the oxygen away from the pseudoephedrine.

Birch method users remove the oxygen with lithium metal from commercial
batteries or sodium metal from drain clog openers and anhydrous ammonia,
which is often stolen from farmers who use it as a fertilizer.

Both processes produce a liquid called meth oil, which is then dried into
powder using hydrogen chloride gas. Makers often wear respirators in this
step to prevent the gas from burning their lungs.

Hydrogen chloride gas is made from combining salt with acid from drain clog
openers or from mixing aluminum foil and another acid commonly used in
swimming pools or concrete.

The process leaves meth that is between 95 percent to 100 percent pure and
about five or six pounds of waste -- acids, ether, anhydrous ammonia and so
on. The chemicals are often poured down toilets or dumped in fields.

"A lot of farmers, hunters and fishermen are running along these hazardous
chemicals and are not aware of what they're seeing," Woodward said.

Officers in chemical suits and respirators cleaned up 1,254 labs in 2002 in
Oklahoma, at a cost of $4.3 million, or $35 per lab, he said.