METH HITS SW MISS. HARD AND FAST

It's called "Nazi dope" and "blue collar cocaine." Amateur chemists
throughout the area cook it in mobile homes, pickup trucks and deer camps.
Police officers dress up like spacemen when they raid a manufacturer. And
some addicts say their only escape is jail or death.

Virtually unheard-of four years ago, crystal methamphetamine, a stimulant
that addicts can make for themselves, has arrived in southwest Mississippi
and brought with it a kind of destruction rarely seen in other drug
cultures. The drug's popularity is surging, and area lawmen fear its appeal
will rival crack cocaine.

Meth often keeps users high and awake for days at a time, causing paranoid
delusions, psychosis and sometimes permanent brain damage. Synthetically
and inexpensively made from a variety of noxious chemicals, meth can be
snorted, injected, smoked or swallowed.

"Methamphetamine is like a hammer; it will just flatten your body," said
Danny Smith, district attorney for the 14th Circuit Court District. "It's
the latest drug that we're going to be confronted with, and this one is
perhaps more destructive than any that we've experienced in the past."

The chemicals used to make the drug, called precursors, pose threats to
meth cookers and lawmen alike.

Anhydrous ammonia, commonly used by farmers to fertilize pastures and corn
crops, arrests the respiratory system and, in liquid form, can freeze-dry
human skin. Prolonged exposure causes chemical pneumonia and possible death.

Yet meth cooks creep around the countryside looking to steal a few gallons.

Other precursors, such as lithium strips from batteries, acetone, ether and
lye make any meth lab a tinderbox. A spark from a cigarette lighter can
ignite a flash fire.

Officials call meth ingredients "precursors" because they consider
possession of two or more to be a harbinger of meth lab activity.

Unlike most illicit drug problems, meth proliferates not on street corners
but in secluded, rural areas, where the user feels safe and no one is
around to smell the cook's pungent lab.

For this reason, lawmen fear the bulk of meth activity is going undetected.

"Crystal meth is going to be the number one drug before it's over, with as
many people as are on it," said Franklin County sheriff's deputy Tony
Rouse. "Here we are in a small county, tight-knit community. For some kind
of virus to walk in and just take over? ... It's going to get bad, it's
going to get real bad.

"But it's here now. Be realistic. And it's bad. I never figured it would
come to rural counties like it has."

Statistics and anecdotal evidence bear out what Rouse and others are
claiming in incredulous and cautionary tones.

The Southwest Mississippi Narcotics Enforcement Unit, which operates in
Pike, Walthall, Lincoln and Copiah counties, notes a meteoric rise in meth
cases since 1998, when agents made three meth lab arrests and one arrest
for sale of meth, seizing a total of 8.8 grams of the drug.

In 1999, the unit made nine meth-related arrests, netting 17.55 grams.
Then, in 2000, meth activity jumped dramatically: Agents made 22 arrests
and seized 8.84 ounces, and last year they arrested 62 and seized five ounces.

"All we're doing is maintaining," said narcotics unit commander Crieg
Oster. "If we were to slack off just one month, look what would happen."

The Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics estimates that since 1997, agents shut
down three meth labs per month in the bureau's District 9, which includes
Pike, Walthall, Amite, Franklin, Lawrence, Adams, Lincoln and Wilkinson
counties.

Ronnie Harper, district attorney for Amite, Franklin, Wilkinson and Adams
counties, sees the same trend in his jurisdiction. Since 1998, he estimates
lawmen have closed down six labs and worked three cases involving
possession or sale of the finished product and 40 anhydrous ammonia thefts.
He said the area saw few meth-related crimes and no anhydrous ammonia
thefts before 1998.

"It's almost replaced crack cocaine as our major problem," said drug court
judge Keith Starrett of McComb. "It's really made a strong surge over the
last two, three years. The fact that it's cheap, it's widely available, it
has a lot longer-term effect than, say, cocaine - it's a problem in Pike
County."

Robert Daniel of Meadville, who just finished serving one year in the
Franklin County jail for anhydrous ammonia theft, said meth crimes
accounted for many of the people he served time with.

"Seems like there have been more arrested here for that than anything
else," he said. "That's been over half of the felony charges, I'd say."

Seven of the 33 cases on Amite County Circuit Court's June docket involved
meth possession or manufacturing.

"What's amazing about the stuff: Meth eats you from the inside," said
Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics District 9 director Ronnie Frazier. "I
mean, it rots your teeth from the inside out. The tissue - you see sunken
eyes, the cheekbones and stuff. It just cannibalizes from inside. I mean,
who wants to smoke, shoot something that's made of Drano, lithium? There's
no good products in there, but people are jumping on it.

"It's a problem we're going to see. It's probably going to be an
epidemic-type thing in Mississippi, probably in the next six months."

The vast majority of meth users are lower-class whites in their 20s and
30s, lawmen say, the reason why some refer to meth as "blue collar cocaine"
and use pejorative terms such as "Beavis and Butthead labs."

Crystal meth became a problem in the late 1970s, made by Mexican cartels
and popular with truckers and west coast motorcycle gangs, according to the
narcotics bureau. As recipes to make the drug became less sophisticated,
meth relentlessly spread eastward. Numerous recipes can now be found on the
Internet. The finished product sells for about $75-125 per gram.

With the exception of anhydrous ammonia, all meth ingredients and lab
equipment can be bought at Wal-Mart for $40, according to one former addict.

The drug's spread has mainly followed the availability of anhydrous
ammonia, the only precursor cooks need to steal and which is readily
available throughout the area.

"They get out into remote parts of the counties, don't have to worry about
neighbors or traffic, and they perceive that they can operate without being
seen," Harper said. "It's just apparently very easy to make. It doesn't
take a rocket scientist to do it."

Franklin County Sheriff James Newman said his deputies have caught meth
cookers who drove 31/2 hours from Mobile, Ala., just to steal five gallons
of anhydrous ammonia. Other local lawmen say many meth cookers come from
out of state and use area deer camps to make their dope. Lawmen have busted
three meth labs in Amite County this year, and each case involved a Louisianan.

"They're going to the rural communities because they know they can get away
with it a lot quicker," said Rouse, one of only four deputies patrolling
362,888 acres of federal forest and Franklin County land. "It's coming.
There's more labs in this county now. We're just waiting on the tip."

Index

US MS: Meth Hits SW Miss. Hard And Fast http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1152/a01.html

US: Meth Cooks Prefer 'Nazi' Method http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1152/a05.html

US MS: Farmers First Line Of Meth Defense http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1171/a14.html

US MS: Lawmen Fight New Battle http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n1181/a09.html