TAKING DRUG FIGHT TO THE LAB

Compound: Officials Hope An Iron Additive Will Make Anhydrous Ammonia
A Lot Less Appealing To Thieves Who Steal It To Produce
Methamphetamine.

At first, Danny Akin couldn't figure out why someone would want to
steal anhydrous ammonia from the locked tanks in back of his store
near Topeka, Kan.

The fertilizer can nauseate people, burn their skin and "if you get
some in your eye, you'll probably lose it," says Akin, who manages STE
Ag Services, a farming supply business, and wears gloves and goggles
when he handles anhydrous ammonia.

But four years, untold broken locks and nearly 50 thefts later, Akin
knows why people steal the toxic substance -- to produce an illegal
drug called methamphetamine, otherwise known as speed or meth.

"People will do anything to get their high," Akin says. "I just hope
people figure out a way to stop them."

Akin's hope might be realized by Craig A. Kelly, a chemist at the
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in North Laurel. After two
years of work, Kelly has found an iron compound he believes will make
anhydrous ammonia much less useful in the production of
methamphetamine.

Farmers and law enforcement officials have high hopes for Kelly's
work, which has passed limited laboratory tests but remains to be
field tested on a large scale. Speed is one of the fastest-growing
drugs in the United States, and thefts of anhydrous ammonia have
skyrocketed in farming communities.

As thefts have increased, so have accidents -- a small Louisiana town
was evacuated in 2000 after thieves accidentally released an ammonia
cloud -- and farmers are worried about their liability in case of disaster.

"We're hoping this additive will be the magic bullet that stops these
thefts and ... we need it to happen as quickly as possible," says
Douglas Wareham, senior vice president of the Kansas Agribusiness
Retailers Association.

In the late 1990s, people discovered they could produce meth -- a
stimulant that can keep users up for days -- by mixing anhydrous
ammonia, lithium and cold medicine.

The process is simple and requires little equipment -- sometimes just
a plastic jug and a T-shirt to filter the chemicals. "Anyone who can
read can make meth," says Dale Hinz, a detective sergeant with the
state police in Michigan, where he and other law enforcement officers
have seized 160 meth laboratories this year.

Use of anhydrous ammonia to produce meth is especially popular because
farmers often store the fertilizer in large, unguarded tanks. Because
thieves rarely take more than several gallons of anhydrous ammonia at
a time, many farmers do not notice that the fertilizer is missing. And
when they do, they often shrug off the loss because the fertilizer is
relatively cheap -- about $250 a ton.

But experts say increased use of the fertilizer to produce drugs has
led to a huge jump in its black market price. A gallon has sold for
nearly $400, according to Hinz.

And growth in the use of the fertilizer has been accompanied by
enormous increases in the numbers of seized drug laboratories. In
fiscal year 1995, the Drug Enforcement Agency busted 818 laboratories.
In fiscal year 2001, the agency seized 7,447, an increase of more than
800 percent.

Anhydrous ammonia thefts are rare in Maryland because few local
farmers use the product.

But in the Midwest, where anhydrous ammonia is most commonly used, the
increase of thefts has been explosive. Kansas Bureau of Investigations
officials seized 210 meth laboratories in 1999. A year later they
seized 619, and last year they seized 847.

Meth laboratories are so common that David Hutchings, an investigator
with the KBI who often speaks at schools, tells children that he
"would be very surprised if they had not had a meth lab in their
neighborhood, regardless of what type of place they live in."

The thefts have taken a toll on farmers, who have tried to guard their
tanks with locks, fences and motion detectors with little success.

Thieves cut the hoses on one of STE Ag Services' tanks in October. And
while Akin was not happy about the $5 loss of ammonia and the $100
worth of damage to the hoses, he was more bothered by the potential
for disaster.

A cluster of houses is less than a half-mile south of the store, and
"if the thieves left a valve open and there's a wind blowing ..." Akin
trails off. "Well, I don't want to think about it."

Kansas farm experts were so concerned about such an incident that they
pushed the state Legislature to pass a law last year that gave
anhydrous ammonia sellers a four-year window of immunity during which
they are largely protected from being sued by anyone who is harmed by
anhydrous ammonia.

But farm advocates are concerned that when the window expires in 2006,
they could be liable for huge damages.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out if a meth cooker
harms someone else by leaving a valve open or something, that it would
be big trouble," Wareham says.

That is why Wareham and others are hopeful about Kelly's work, which
was financed by a $500,000 grant from the federal government.

The iron compound interferes with the conversion process and
significantly lowers the amount of meth the reaction produces. It has
proved successful in lab tests and in a small trial Kelly conducted on
a patch of corn grown at a test site on the Eastern Shore.

Some fertilizer companies have fretted about the potential extra cost
of adding the iron compound and whether it could damage farm
equipment, but Kelly estimates that the compound will add $1 a ton to
the price of anhydrous ammonia, and he says it has not affected
equipment on small tests.

Kelly hopes to test his drug-fighting anhydrous ammonia on a larger
scale within a year.

Meanwhile, thefts of the fertilizer have been so widespread in some
parts of the country that some farmers have stopped using anhydrous
ammonia.

"By the end, I thought that if I caught one of those people [who was
stealing from me] I'd want to kill them, I'd get so mad," says Rick
Piper, who farms 1,400 acres of wheat 20 miles outside of Pendleton in
eastern Oregon. Piper stopped using anhydrous ammonia about a year
ago.

Piper used to keep three tanks of anhydrous ammonia on his property
and said that he was being robbed almost constantly. While the thefts
were aggravating, Piper was more frightened that thieves and drug
users were sneaking onto his property several times a week.

"It was very, very scary to know that those people were around and
that you never knew what they were going to do, so I figured it wasn't
worth it, and I got rid of it," Piper says.

Drug enforcement officials say that the modified anhydrous ammonia
could make a big difference in their ability to combat crime by
allowing them to chase large importers, who often use other methods of
"cooking" meth, and not small-time anhydrous cooks.

"These aren't drug kingpins. Most of the time, it's somebody that's
maintaining their own addiction and a few friends' addictions, so if
we didn't have to investigate them, we could investigate other
people," says Hinz of the Michigan State Police.

That day will not come soon enough for Akin in Topeka. Until recently,
the store had not been robbed for about five months, and Akin had been
hoping that maybe the ammonia thieves had moved on. But as repairs
were being made to his anhydrous tank hoses, Akin knew his good luck
was over.

"They'll probably be back next week," he says.