Posted on 04/05/2005 12:06:43 PM PDT by Travis McGee
FRESNO, Calif. A cross the West and Great Plains, small-town residents blame the arrival of meth abuse in their communities on the influx of local meth labs.
They are mistaken.
The reality is that 80 percent of meth comes from Mexican drug cartels operating here, in the rural expanses of Central and Southern California. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, only 20 percent of the supply is made by local users themselves.
A decade ago, the cartels in California pioneered a technique for industrial-scale production of meth that police dubbed the "superlab."
Built with commercial-grade lab equipment and fueled by hundreds of pounds of chemicals, a single superlab can churn out 100,000 or even 1 million doses of meth in a two-day production run. A typical "user" meth lab can make a maximum of 280 doses at a time.
The cartels' prodigious supply of methamphetamine, sent out across the Plains as far east as North Carolina, created a demand where none existed before. Many of the supply lines lead back to the nation's agricultural powerhouse: the Central Valley of California.
"This," said Carl M. Faller Jr., a Fresno federal prosecutor, "is Colombia for meth."
The influence of the superlabs is overlooked because although they account for the bulk of the drug's production, they represent only 4 percent of the labs. The vast majority of meth labs nationally -- 8,000 of the 8,300 seized in 2001 -- are home-user labs.
Home labs can become an obsessive outlet for users on the multiday runs without sleep known as "tweaking." The designs are primitive and vary widely. They consist of a jumble of over-the-counter pseudoephedrine, household lye and scraped-away matchbook covers. The reaction vessel usually is a jelly jar. The output might provide a cook $250 to $500 worth of meth to sell, with two weeks' worth left over for personal use.
Although tweaker labs are costly to clean up when they explode or spill, their role in supplying meth to U.S. users is minor. The main culprit is the superlab.
Bubbling glass globes
California superlabs achieve a level of sophistication, uniformity and efficiency seldom seen in tweaker labs.
The superlab's signature is a globe-shaped piece of glassware that drug agents call a "22." Designed for scientific research, the 22-liter reaction vessel could hold the contents of 11 two-liter soda bottles. The 22 sits in an aluminum cradle lined with heating coils. The cradle and globe together sell for $3,000 to $4,000.
Inside the glass ball, a blood-red brew of pseudoephedrine, red phosphorus and hydriodic acid reacts to form meth. The temperature dial is turned up to set the mixture bubbling, then down to cook. Orange hoses stretch like octopus arms from the neck of each 22 to a box filled with cat litter, which absorbs reaction gases.
Jerry Massetti, a chemist with the California Bureau of Forensic Services, recalled the first rumors of such monster labs in San Diego in the early 1990s.
"You'd wonder whether it was an exaggeration," Massetti said. "Then you'd hear similar stories of labs in Riverside, Orange County, Los Angeles."
Then the monster headed north, he said, "like a shadow passing over the landscape."
In the Central Valley, the highly standardized superlabs arrived en masse one week in July 1992, according to Massetti's notes and a journal article he wrote at the time. The labs, he wrote, "corroborated rumors about multiple tons of ephedrine being processed in this way."
The biggest Massetti ever saw came eight months later, in a Tulare County fruit-packing shed. The lab was so enormous that operators used a forklift to crush all the cans of Freon emptied during manufacturing. Twelve glass 22s were strung together, creating a capacity of 144 pounds of pure meth per batch. Cut to street purity, that could keep 21,000 serious addicts high for a week.
The labs are so standardized that the first time police found high-thread-count Martha Stewart sheets -- used to filter solid meth from surrounding liquids -- in one lab, identical sheets were discovered the next day in a lab 100 miles away. The smallest detail, down to the way in which hoses are duct-taped together, is replicated from one superlab to the next.
Police say the cookie-cutter approach reflects the guiding hand of Mexico-based drug cartels, which run the labs in California and distribute the finished product across the country.
Labor comes from migrant workers. California drug agents call these lab operators "mopes" -- police lingo for low-level henchmen.
The mopes don't use meth but hire themselves out in standing crews of four or five, available for a weekend's hard work cooking the drug. From the Central Valley, a typical crew of mopes could travel across Pacheco Pass through the Coast Range on a Friday night to the Bay Area. They'd pick up a stash of chemicals from a San Jose storage locker, then return to a small valley town such as Merced, where their employer would secure a secluded barn or farmhouse by bribing a ranch foreman.
After laying in a supply of groceries, the mopes would work for two days without sleep to monitor the delicate reaction. A misstep could cost $50,000. Some are told their families in Mexico will be killed if they speak to the police. At times, drug agents have come upon mopes in a lab padlocked from the outside.
At the end, a supervisor arrives to haul away the finished meth for delivery.
In Medford, Ore., police say 15 major dealers ferry the drugs regularly from the Central Valley. In Woodburn, Ore., police once seized 30 pounds of meth shipped directly by a top member of the Amezcua cartel in Southern California. The local dealers had customers up and down Interstate 5, from the Portland suburbs to the Grants Pass area of Southern Oregon.
Patron saint of traffickers
The Central Valley offers a perfect locale for the mopes to hide their work.
Blinding dust billows across county roads. Derelict outbuildings, rusting farm implements and 100-foot stacks of wooden pallets dot mile after mile.
Through long experience, the 20-member Fresno Methamphetamine Task Force has learned the routine of catching mopes in the act.
Team members cull junk mail at lab waste dumps for addresses. They watch abandoned farmhouses where the occasional car has been seen to come and go. On a stakeout, they'll ask permission to park in a rancher's yard by saying they're investigating the theft of farm implements.
If they're lucky, they'll sneak up on what Fresno Sgt. Don Mitchell calls a "real nice lab" -- 22s bubbling, surrounded by a smell some liken to rotting citrus.
Agents tell of moonlit "low crawls" with camouflage and automatic weapons through rows of grapevines; of the leg broken in a fall through a rotting barn roof; of mopes who ran, or "leg bailed," and ones who slowed down long enough to be deported.
Whether the mopes get caught or get away, they often leave behind relics of Jesus Malverde -- the mustachioed 19th-century bandit whom Mexican traffickers have made their patron saint. The relics offer prayers like this one, printed on a container of incense:
"You that dwell in heaven near God, hear the sufferings of this humble sinner.
"Oh Miraculous Malverde, Oh Malverde my Savior, grant me this favor and fill my heart with joy.
"Grant me good health, Lord, give me peace, give me comfort, and I will rejoice."
Im curious as to why post #20 was deleted.
Thanks for the ping!
The Legions are fighting in Gaul and Germania, but our greatest enemies are walking in through the open city walls.
Much like Kali and Georgia, meth is a huge problem in Tennessee.
The vaunted burn unit at Vanderbilt is using half their bed space for meth lab burn victims
At 10K per day. Average stay 4-6 months and they never pay but fill up the unit.
I have seen one example personally of the family effect.
Very ugly.
Some drugs need to be outlawed without a doubt and meth certainly quailifies as that to anyone but the most dogmatic and naive.
As if we don't have enough major criminals in the USA, now we have to let in the rest of the world's scum, to mass produce poison for our children.
Yep. Bust out the border, level us with Mexico. Just great, if you're an oligarch living in a gated county with a private jet runway.
Bump! Good post.
A few years back I worked the graveyard shift. I have witnessed quite a few coworkers who got hooked on meth to be able to stay up at night. It amazed me how quickly their lives were destroyed by this drug. Most were fired within 3-6 months of trying meth. Once they came down from the meth, they couldn't get up for work.
My wife's best friend, a woman we've known and loved for 15 years, is now a meth addict somewhere in California. Within 2 years she lost her children, her home, and all of her real friends. We have no idea where she is. Prison or prostitute, if she's alive.
It was chilling to watch.
ping for when lucid [upper west side]
yeah,...any body tissue serving as a reservoir gets put through the wringer,...just ends up like not only trying to start the car with ether spray cans,...but then running the car on ether spray cans,...no water , no oil , just hot metal and then broken
Oh yeah, I watch Intervention too!
Plus, Airline, Gotti's, Family Plots, etc. I love A & E.
Some pics here...
http://dec.co.riverside.ca.us/misc/photos.htm
I remember back in the eighties, cocaine typically took a little under a year to wreck someone's life. Crack took less. With meth it seems almost instantaneously...it's like a high bandwidth connection to hell.
These are kids who may just have had a bad day, not bad parents or bad home life, and all of the sudden they are trapped. Hooked. First time. By the time you find out if you do, it is too late. This stuff is literally lightening fast in its addiction.
Not that a bad home life cannot contribute but anyone who blames this on bad parenting is just not dealing with reality and that attitude will put more kids at risk.
Be ALERT with your kids! Educate yourself and talk to them about the facts of how they will be introduced to meth and what it will do to their brain. The kid's life (and their brain) is damaged before they even have a chance to exercise rational judgment. Do it now. Don't wait. Don't mark even the smallest behavior change down to adolescence or assume they will "grow out of it". If you don't think this stuff is in your middle school and high school you are wrong. It is there no matter where you live. Don't be complacent or comfortable because you are a "good parent" and have a "good home life". Be vigilant.
Last, IMHO school drug awareness programs are way behind the power curve on this stuff and need to catch up fast to help the kids understand what they are faced with.
A larger part of the war on drugs must be a PR campaign, hopefully as effective as the war against cigarette use. A brief video segment from "Cops" showing meth derelicts should be enough to disuade most prospective meth users.
What was most disturbing for me to watch, is the way the body rapidly changes with meth. The person looked like they aged 20 years in six months.
Do you watch American Casino? I'm not sure if that's A&E but I love that show.
I have seen 4.0 GPA students start using meth to cram for finals in high school.
People trying to work more and not be tired.
Insecure people trying to fit in
It is one of those split second decisions that will affect the rest of your life. One can only hope that through educating your kids about the risks, they will make the right decision. As a parent, you can't protect them 24/7. You can only do the best job possible raising them and hope they will make the right choices in their life.
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