IOWA BEARS DEEP SCARS FROM AN INTRACTABLE WAR

Encouraging Statistics Belie Region's Struggles Against Addictive, Ruinous Meth

LAURENS, Iowa -- Methamphetamine has claimed every tooth in Dennis
Patten's head, which is why his face is caving into his jaw and why
just about everything south of his neck is falling apart.

The squat Patten is a 28-year veteran of Iowa's drug wars, 25 of them
spent as an addict, and the last three as an uncertain just-say-no
convert torn by gnawing cravings for the drugs that have crippled him.

"I can't honestly say that if you dumped some [meth] right here," he
said, tapping a couple of fingers on a table in front of him, "that
I'd turn it down."

Like Patten, Iowa is struggling with meth.

In the two years since the state enacted a law limiting the
availability of pseudoephedrine, a major ingredient in the manufacture
of methamphetamine, the number of homemade meth lab incidents across
the state has plummeted. At the same time, though, investigators say
imports of a more powerful form of meth called "ice," from the
Southwest U.S. and Mexico, are soaring.

"Ice trends in Iowa over the last three years have an eerie
resemblance to the explosion of meth labs in our state in preceding
years," a recent state report said.

And in Iowa as well as the Midwest, it's not clear that anyone is
winning the drug war. In 2006, the Midwest had six of the nation's top
10 states in the number of meth lab incidents, according to the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration.

It's not even clear that the drug-clean Patten, who weighs 387 pounds,
down from 450, can say he's winning. As a result of prolonged drug
abuse, he suffers from congestive heart failure, diabetes, emphysema
and short-term memory loss. At 44, he has already had two strokes.
Doctors would like to perform a gastric bypass operation to get
another 150 pounds off him, but they aren't sure Patten's heart could
handle the stress. The cartilage in both his knees is shot and his
breathing is labored and difficult, which is why Patten carries a
small oxygen tank with a clear plastic hose that wraps around his head
and clips to his nostrils.

"If I run into someone who's used [drugs], I get cravings," Patten
said, silently acknowledging that, as drug counselors point out, 9 out
of 10 meth addicts fall back into meth abuse.

The battle against illegal drugs is often measured in numbers--grams,
ounces and pounds, street sale value, state and federal dollars
available for drug investigations, and arrests and
convictions.

But numbers alone often obscure the struggles of police agencies
battling the gopher-hole-type challenge of illegal drugs and of
addicts trying to recover from years of addiction and the physical
toll on their bodies. Addiction produces its own set of numbers, such
as rising health-care costs, increased caseloads at drug treatment
centers, more children exposed to drugs and higher rates of burglaries
and domestic abuse.

'Do you want to look like me?' By one measure, Patten is a victory
because he has stopped taking drugs and vowed to stay clean. He
lumbers to health clinics, offering himself as a human testimonial of
what not to do. There is no masking the damage to Patten and other
addicts who agreed to talk about their years with meth.

When asked what he tells his 5-year-old son Jere about the dangers of
drug abuse, Patten said, "Well," and paused, apparently losing his
train of thought. He looked quizzically at his common-law wife, Kathy
Crapser, and asked, "What do I tell him?" It would not be the first
time Patten would lose his way in a 30-minute conversation.

He recovered and explained he "has a hard time focusing on questions."
He remembered where he was and said, "I tell him this is what happens
when you take drugs. 'Do you want to look like me?' "

Iowa is a sparsely populated state, ranking 30th nationally, with just
under 3 million people. But the combination of wide-open spaces and a
good road system has helped make Iowa and other agriculture-oriented
states in the Midwest a haven for homemade meth. Just about any farm
will have anhydrous ammonia, a key ingredient in fertilizer and in the
production of meth.

Bob Cooper has intimate knowledge of the gently warped farmland and
back roads of this region of northwest Iowa because he skillfully used
them to manufacture and sell meth and, by hiding in cornfields,
repeatedly eluding capture by authorities who spent years chasing him.
Meth "became a way of life," said Cooper, who can still methodically
explain his production method, from the pills and the blender to the
drain cleaner and a shot of salt. He pocketed a thousand dollars a
week making the stuff.

"They were on my heels. They never could catch me," said Cooper,
barely hiding his satisfaction.

Winning battles, losing the war The law caught up with Cooper in late
2000. He was convicted of manufacturing and selling meth and spent 42
months in prison. Now 32, Cooper is trying to put his life back
together in Laurens, the tiny hometown of Alvin Straight, famous for
the 240-mile trip he took on a lawn mower to visit his sick brother in
Wisconsin. That was in 1994, shortly before Cooper got into the meth
business.

Cooper's tattooed arms draw attention away from the anhydrous burns on
his wrists and forearms. He talks slowly and complains of forgetting
things. "I have to write stuff down," he said. His physical damage is
limited to memory loss, a single lost tooth and cavities. He also lost
custody of his four children, whom he is allowed to visit every other
weekend. Sipping a Pepsi at a pizza restaurant downtown, Cooper says
prison has changed him. He's now working to become a counselor at a
halfway house in South Dakota, to try to persuade kids to stay away
from drugs.

Cooper's younger brother Bill has not been as fortunate. Bill Cooper,
large like his brother Bob, is 31 and started taking meth when he was
19. "I did it to fit in," he said.

Cooper works 70 to 80 hours a week at a wood-pallet factory he started
and as a supervisor in a beef-jerky factory. He said he quit meth
"cold turkey."

Today he suffers from high blood pressure. He passes blood and is
seeing a nephrologist. His wife, Amy, 27, was on meth for one year. No
family trouble, job trouble or emotional stress led to their drug use,
they said. They just did it.

"I think the drug problem is getting worse. They're afraid to admit
it. It's everywhere," Bill Cooper said.

There has been a big drop in homemade meth lab incidents, and that,
said Gary Kendell, director of the Governor's Office of Drug Control
Policy, has reduced the threat to the environment and to children.

"But we still have a real problem," Kendell said, pointing to a rising
number of adults treated for substance abuse other than alcohol--up 36
percent since 2000. Over the same time period, cocaine and crack
cocaine seizures have soared.

At the Clay County Sheriff's office, in Spencer, Investigator Casey
Timmer tries to put the progress into perspective. "I think we win the
battles we get into, but I don't know if that's winning the war,"
Timmer said.

Patten's war is more personal. He says there's not much more doctors
can do for him. He can't do a lot of physical work because it puts too
much strain on his heart. He and his wife have had to make new friends
because their old ones are either still on drugs or in jail.

Patten says he's available to anyone who wants advice about drugs, but
the phone doesn't ring often.

His wife added, "It's usually someone asking if this is a good price
for an 8-ball"--a street term for an eighth of an ounce of cocaine.