METH MAKERS TAKE TO THE HIGHWAYS

OAK GROVE, Ky. (AP) - Last November, a car ferrying a container of farm
fertilizer exploded on Interstate 24, backing up traffic for miles through
this southwest Kentucky community.

It was no farming accident. The fertilizer was anhydrous ammonia - a key
ingredient in methamphetamine. The car turned out to be a rolling meth lab.

Driven from their homes and motels, meth makers are increasingly taking to
the roadways, mixing their bubbling brew in drug labs inside
tractor-trailers, rental trucks, cars and even on motorcycles.

Meth cooks see them as a way to avoid detection. Cruising the highways
allows them to disperse the rotten-egg smell the labs produce and keep the
waste out of their homes.

"If they're moving, it's easier to hide," said Lt. William Sparks,
spokesman for the Oak Grove Police Department.

Nationally, the number of labs found in vehicles increased from 869 in 1999
to 1,307 in 2001, and the number of vehicles found with chemicals or
equipment used to make methamphetamine increased from 30 in 1999 to 624 in
2001, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. But because there
is no mandatory reporting requirement, it is difficult to gauge the total
number of roving labs.

Methamphetamine is a powerful drug that is often snorted or injected and
makes users feel euphoric, energized and powerful. Addicts can go days
without sleep, and the drug's downside includes irritability, paranoia,
aggression and violence.

It has become a popular new drug in recent years because it is so easy to
produce - and conceal.

Typically, truckers hauling the meth labs or chemicals used to make the
drug are carrying the illegal items along with legal cargo, said Cheyenne
Albro, director of the Pennyrile Narcotics Task Force in Hopkinsville, Ky.

It's the volatile nature of the chemicals used to prepare the drug that
makes the labs so dangerous. Nationally, one of every five meth labs is
discovered because of an explosion, Mr. Albro said.

Of the 2,000 chemicals available to make the drug, at least half are
explosive, Mr. Albro said. He estimates that in western Kentucky up to 20
percent of the meth labs are mobile.

Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson, during a recent stop
in Lexington, Ky., said meth producers are being forced to come up with
more innovative ways to hide their labs because law enforcement agencies
are more aggressive in making arrests.

"That includes keeping them in the trunks of their cars, or in trucks or
vans so they are more mobile and less easy to track," Mr. Hutchinson said.

Other meth makers do not want to contaminate their own homes with
meth-making residue and fumes.

"The chemicals are so dangerous, it gets into the walls and the curtains,
and people have poisoned their own families just to make a buck - if they
don't blow themselves up in the first place," said Oak Grove police Lt. Sparks.