METHAMPHETAMINE USE, LABS INCREASING ACROSS MIDWEST

EVANSVILLE -- With tears in her eyes, Denise Quintanilla begged the judge
to spare her a life sentence in prison.

"You know, this is my life, and I pray that the Lord's guiding you, you
know. I'm scared," the 33-year-old mother of three told U.S. District Judge
Richard L. Young.

Married to an imprisoned drug lord, Quintanilla was convicted last fall of
trafficking in methamphetamines, helping to funnel drugs worth $250,000
from Texas into southern Indiana.

Police say she is just one player in an ever increasing cat-and-mouse game
between methamphetamine traffickers and authorities in Indiana, Kentucky
and elsewhere in the Midwest.

In the federal court system in southern Indiana, the number of defendants
charged with meth trafficking increased from 7 percent of the caseload in
1995 to 28 percent in 2000. Elsewhere in the Midwest, meth cases have
clogged court systems and cost taxpayers millions -- up to $125,000 per lab
- -- to clean up discarded meth labs.

The problem, at least in Indiana, appears concentrated in rural areas, said
Tim Morrison, an assistant U.S. Attorney in southern Indiana.

"Will it stay there for a long period of time? I don't know," Morrison
said. "I can tell you, five years ago it wasn't here and now it is."

Indiana State Police helped seize 681 meth labs in 2001, compared with just
six in 1995, Sgt. Todd Ringle said. In Kentucky, police dismantled six meth
labs in 1996, and 268 in 2001, according to state police figures.

"We're fighting an uphill battle," Ringle said. "The numbers continue to
get higher and higher."

In the Midwest, methamphetamines are distributed about equally by two
different sources, said David Barton, director of the Midwest High
Intensity Drug Trafficking Area in Kansas City, Mo.

Organized drug rings, most from Mexico, typically import meth produced in
"super labs" in California or other Western states at a rate of 10 pounds
or more a day.

The second source is mom-and-pop cookers who buy ingredients -- cold
medicine and lithium batteries, for example -- at retail stores and produce
it in motels, vans and backyard sheds. They often use and sell the drugs,
and sometimes barter a portion for supplies for the next batch.

Both types of dealers are increasing.

Poor Man's Cocaine

Some call methamphetamines the poor man's cocaine because it is a highly
addictive stimulant that produces a euphoria similar to cocaine, but lasts
longer -- six to eight hours compared to a 20 minutes to an hour for
cocaine, Ringle said.

The price, however, is equivalent, roughly $100 for a gram, about the
contents of a sugar packet, Kentucky State Trooper Mark Applin said.

"You can smoke meth, you can snort it, you can ingest it or you can inject
it," Ringle said.

It's hard to say why the drug, dubbed "speed," "crank," "crystal-meth" and
"glass" on the streets, has become such a popular drug. But authorities say
the abundance of chemicals used to make meth -- particularly the fertilizer
anhydrous ammonium commonly found in area farm communities -- is a factor.

"It's very easy to make with a large profit return," Applin said. "It will
probably be the longest running drug problem we'll see in Kentucky in the
next 10 years."

Nationwide, the number of meth labs seized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration increased from 287 in 1994 to 1,837 in 2000, said Joe Long,
a DEA spokesman. That does not include the labs seized by state and local
authorities.

In Kansas, 702 labs were seized in 2000, compared with 189 in 1998; in
Missouri, the number rose from 679 in 1998 to 890 in 2000; in Illinois, the
number increased from zero in 1995 to 246 in 1999.

In Iowa, where retailers work with police to limit the sale of meth
ingredients, the number of seized labs has leveled off. But the demand is
being filled with the methamphetamines smuggled by Mexican gangs, said
Barton, of the Midwest task force.

"We're seeing a lessening in some part of the Midwest on the number of the
smaller retail level labs, but we're seeing that reduction in labs
reinforced with imported meth from Mexican trafficking groups, or we're
uncovering larger capacity labs," Barton said.

It touches us all

The meth problem in Indiana and Kentucky touches a wide segment of society
- -- from the farmer who needs to protect his fertilizer from theft to the
Wal-Mart sales clerk watching for customers who buy a large amount of cold
tablets containing the raw ingredients for the drugs.

Smaller-scale producers often hop from store to store to buy the needed
products. And they steal others.

The lure of drug money tears families like Denise Quintanilla's apart.

Quintanilla -- whose children are 17, 15, 13 -- was sentenced to life in
prison. The Dallas, Texas, woman maintained she is innocent. But the judge,
citing two prior felony drug convictions, said he had no choice but to lock
her up for life.

Her lawyer, David Shaw, said even if she did help traffic meth, she did not
deserve to be sentenced to life in prison, arguing that "life in prison for
passing on messages or running an errand is grossly disproportionate."

But the police on the streets, and increasingly on the rural roads of
Indiana and Kentucky, are not swayed.

Concluded Barton: "A meth cook not in jail is cooking."