ORIGINS OF METH IN CHINESE PLANT

The origin of methamphetamine may go back thousands of years, but a recent
evolution of the drug has contributed to its spread in Oklahoma. The
development of amphetamine, followed by the manmade version known as
methamphetamine, may have begun in China with the ephedra plant, said John
Duncan, a chemist with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Narcotics.

The plant the Chinese know as Ma Huang was used to treat asthma and for
increased energy, Duncan said. From the plant ultimately came ephedrine,
then pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in meth.

"Chinese medicine has been using ephedra in the form of Ma Huang for at
least 5,000 years," he said.

The use of ephedra even may date to the time of Socrates and his visit to
the Oracle of Delphi, who pronounced one's fate after inhaling vapors from
a pot.

Ephedra plants grow all around the oracle, Duncan said.

"It very well might be that the Oracle at Delphi was using ephedra to
induce the psychotic states from which she eventually read your fate," he said.

In 1885, a German scientist isolated amphetamine, Duncan said, and
methamphetamine soon may have followed.

Methamphetamine also was developed by scientists during the early 1900s for
use in asthma medication and nasal decongestants, he said.

It also was given to some combatants during World War II, and Duncan said
Japanese kamikaze pilots reportedly took almost lethal doses before their
fatal mission.

"They were extraordinarily high on meth at that time," Duncan said. "Of
course that probably interfered with their hitting a lot of ships so it
probably worked to our advantage."

Meth use took off in the United States in the 1960s, fueled by motorcycle
gangs. The bikers hired college chemistry students to make the drug, paying
them by providing strippers from clubs the gangs controlled.

And the biker gang Hell's Angels apparently gave the drug one of its
best-known slang terms -- crank -- by hiding the drug in the crankcases of
their motorcycles and carrying it to a large rock concert.

Asked what they had, members reportedly replied, "Crank and it'll crank you
up," Duncan said.

By the early 1990s, the sale and possession of chemicals used to make meth
were outlawed in Oklahoma.

But other recipes for making meth, using pseudoephedrine, already were in
use in California. With those recipes, meth could be made on a kitchen
countertop or in the back of a pickup.

A purer form of the drug, called dextro-, or d-meth, emerged.

"Almost 100 percent of what we find on the street now is pure
dextromethamphet- amine," Duncan said.

The sanitary areas where the drug once was made have been replaced by what
Duncan compares with a cartoon known for its often vulgar humor.

"We started seeing people go from more pristine laboratory conditions," he
said, "to Beavis and Butt-head conditions."