METH A RECIPE FOR TROUBLE

By now, just about everyone has heard about the abuse of a little pill
called OxyContin.

But another drug has been creeping stealthily into the region's small
towns, mountain valleys and pastoral farms, and with little fanfare.

It is methamphetamine -- a manmade super stimulant cooked up in illegal
laboratories in homes, barns and garages.

It leaves behind enough toxic waste to sicken neighbors and poison the
environment for years. Users refer to it as crank, speed, meth, ice or
crystal meth.

"Methamphetamine and oxycodone are our two biggest drug enforcement
problems," said Eric Hurt, a federal prosecutor in Abingdon. "The meth
problem is just as bad as Oxy. It's just not on the radar."

Hurt should know. Since 1999, he has spent all of his time helping local
investigators and federal agents fight the drug war in Southwest Virginia
and neighboring areas of East Tennessee.

In that time, he said, he has seen an alarming rise in the number of
illegal methamphetamine laboratories, called clandestine or "clan" labs by
law enforcement.

Agents have found illegal labs in Bristol and Bluff City on the Tennessee
side and all across Southwest Virginia -- including Grayson, Lee, Russell,
Scott, Smyth and Washington counties and the city of Bristol.

"Over the last year and a half, we have seen a significant rise in the
number of meth labs," Hurt said.

In less than two years, five significant methamphetamine operations have
been prosecuted in federal court in Abingdon, he said. Some of those
operations involved multiple lab sites or labs that were moved from one
location to another.

About 25 people have been prosecuted and another 100 meth users or
low-level dealers have been federal witnesses, he said.

A decade ago, most of the methamphetamine on the region's streets would
have come from the West Coast or the Southwest -- brought here by long-haul
truckers or motorcycle gangs.

Now, it is a home-grown problem as illegal drug laboratories sprout like
weeds across the region.

Hurt said he believes he knows why the laboratories have made their way to
the mountains.

"Meth can be produced pretty easily and cheaply," he said. "What you need
is a well-ventilated shed and a good recipe. The product here is pretty
potent because of the recipe they use."

The "recipe" needed to make methamphetamine is as close as the Internet,
where a number of Web sites provide detailed plans for making the drug.
Others have learned to make it from "cooks" who moved here from California
or Texas, Hurt said.

This region has another attribute that makes it attractive to the amateur
chemists who seek to set up drug laboratories -- wide-open spaces.

Although labs can be found anywhere, they usually are in rural locations
with few neighbors and little likelihood of accidental discovery, Hurt said.

"If you are cooking meth in a neighborhood, everybody knows it because of
the horrible smell," he said. "This area is particularly suited for meth
production because of the large expanses of countryside."

Labs around the region have been found in farmhouses, city trailer parks,
sheds and homes. Small lab operations even may be set up out in the woods,
Hurt said.

"Unless we hear about it from an informant, it's difficult to find," he
said. "A lot of cases have started with the chance finding of a
disassembled lab."

It is a problem that is not limited to this region.

In Tennessee, a state and federal law enforcement task force was formed
solely to fight methamphetamine. The head of the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration even came to the state to discuss the problem in closed-door
sessions last week in Nashville.

The task force, now concentrated in Southeast Tennessee and the Cumberland
Plateau, could be extended to Northeast Tennessee soon, said Sullivan
County District Attorney General Greeley Wells.

"There is no question this is a growth area for the meth problem," he said.
"The number of labs discovered each year has gone sky high."

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation keeps track of the number of illegal
laboratories found in the state each year.

One hundred two of them were dismantled by law enforcement agents in 1999.
That number inched upward to 168 in 2000. Last year, it skyrocketed -- with
353 laboratories busted by police.

While most of those have been clustered in other parts of the state,
Sullivan County and surrounding areas could be next, Wells said. Thus far,
just a few illegal labs have been found in Northeast Tennessee.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen at any time," Wells said. "Given
the speed it moved from the Mississippi River to the Cumberland Plateau, I
have been expecting it for the past two years."

Another problem for local police and prosecutors in Tennessee is that the
meth problem has developed so rapidly state law has not kept pace, Wells said.

Unless a raid turns up a sizable quantity of finished methamphetamine --
sold on the street as a powder or crystals -- little punishment is
available under state law.

"Unless there is meth found at a lab, it is a misdemeanor in Tennessee,"
Wells said. "There have been efforts over the last several years to raise
the punishment, ... but it has proved impossible to do because of the
fiscal notes attached to the bills."

Proposed legislation would make it a felony to operate a drug lab; to
possess the ingredients, or precursor chemicals, needed to make the drug;
and to knowingly expose a child to a drug lab. Another measure would
stiffen penalties for manufacturing the drug while possessing a gun or if
the toxic byproducts were dumped illegally.

At least one of the bills -- that dealing with endangering a child --
likely will become law, said state Rep. Jason Mumpower, R-Bristol.

"The purpose is to keep children safe whose parents are involved in the
manufacture of this dangerous drug," he said. "You look the chemicals they
use, the solvents, the danger from fire and explosion. ...

"This will make it easier for the Department of Children's Services to
remove children in these situations."

For now, most meth lab cases are prosecuted in federal court, where stiff
penalties already await violators.

"The federal guidelines for meth kick in at 50 grams. That's a mandatory
five-year sentence," said Hurt, the federal prosecutor. "For 500 grams,
it's 10 years to life."

Another big difference between federal and state laws where illegal labs
are concerned is that in state court, punishment is based on the amount of
drugs seized at the time of the raid. Federal sentences can be based on
what is called "historic drug weight," which takes into account the entire
amount of drugs prosecutors can prove was produced in an illegal laboratory.

The scourge of methamphetamine is not limited to the lives ruined by its
use. The process used to brew the stimulant leaves behind plenty of poison,
according to authorities.

The main ingredient of the illicit drug is a common cold remedy --
ephedrine or pseudoephedrine. But to turn cold pills into meth requires the
use of a plethora of dangerous solvents and other ingredients, including
lye, drain cleaner, red phosphorous, lithium strips from camera batteries,
iodine, ether and a farm fertilizer called anhydrous ammonia.

In some cases, the brew is cooked on hot plates and stoves -- presenting a
very real threat of explosion.

"A lot of labs are found when there is a fire," Hurt said. "We have a large
number of trailer fires, and I'm sure some are related to the manufacture
of methamphetamine. The trailer burns down and they call it a cooking fire."

Every pound of methamphetamine produced leaves behind six pounds of toxic
sludge -- much of which is dumped illegally on the ground where it can
leach into groundwater and wells and cause a host of problems, authorities
said.

Meth labs must be cleaned up by trained contractors in special protective
suits, and the cost can run into the thousands of dollars, Hurt said.

"Normally, the federal government is very interested in seizing assets," he
said. "But we don't usually seize meth properties. There are so many
(Environmental Protection Agency) issues, it's not worth it."

Hurt, like others in law enforcement across the South, said he fears the
problem will get worse before it gets better.

"There is a 100 percent likelihood there are people cooking meth today as
we speak that we don't know about yet," he said.