UNNECESSARY EPIDEMIC Hidden Powerhouses Underlie Meth's Ugly Spread

The Oregonian ^ | April 3, 2005 | STEVE SUO

[maestro]

......fyi....

[Logophile]

The cartels' prodigious supply of methamphetamine, sent out across the Plains as far east as North Carolina, created a demand where none existed before.

Does the supply of methamphetamine really create its own demand?

I suspect that there is something about addicts themselves that attracts them to their addiction of choice, and not the mere availability of the drug. (Even if a meth superlab were to open up next door, most people would not be tempted to use the stuff.) If that is so, then the problem is not likely to be solve by arresting the suppliers.

[Bernard Marx]

Interesting and probably closer to home than we think.

It got VERY close to home a few years ago when I lived in Pismo Beach. I noticed a newspaper story about a local man who was arrested in San Diego for buying "precursors to methamphetamine manufacture." It turned out the address was the house just behind mine.

The perp had enough volatiles stored there to level an entire city block if they'd exploded, police said. It turned out the guy was a former Cal Poly, SLO chemistry major. I think he's still doing time, but he's one of the few that was caught. Every week or two we'd read about raids on farms around Santa Maria, Paso Robles, etc. where the Mopes were arrested but never the masterminds.

[Regulator]

This is international capitalism at work! Money the hyper-violent Mexican gangs made smuggling drugs across the border has now been re-invested here! This is proof positive that free trade works...jobs came back here (albeit for illegal alien criminals) and we have a whole new industry! Gosh, back in the bad old days, only the biker gangs ran the meth labs, and they were just small timers. This here's Big Business! And they don't even have to worry about getting it across anymore.

Ain't it grand.

[Travis McGee]

If foreign gangs are ramping up poison production to the sky, I'm not going to give them a pass.

"But you'll excuse American gangs from doing so?"

When did I say that? If an epidemic of ADDED crime occurs, and it is caused by illegal alien criminals, it's worth noting.

Or do you think all of the criminals in the world should get a free pass into America, because there are already American criminals?

[Freebird Forever]

commercial-grade lab equipment and fueled by hundreds of pounds of chemicals ... They'd pick up a stash of chemicals from a San Jose storage locker

Herein lies the $64,000 question. With laws on the books everywhere restricting tweaker / cookers from procuring the necessary reagents, how are the super labs obtaining hundreds of pounds of chemicals for their production runs?

If they aren't themselves being smuggled in, some suits in the chemical & pharmaceutical industries have some 'splaining to do.

They're just as guilty as are the Mexican gangs.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Fresno ping!

[Les_Miserables]

Now you are an expert on parenting. Kids will try anything - even your perfectly raised kids. The problem with meth is they can get hooked on one try. It is insidious stuff, not to be blown off with a damnable statement like the meth users will die etc...I'm no perfect parent but I also have yet to find one. Yet my kid was trapped into this stuff by scum in a government school. Don't drop your trip on bad parenting or unhappy kids. It can happen in your own family and you not know it until it is too late. By the way, the first hit can kill. It is worse than heroin, much cheaper, and in your next door neighbor's house.

[Jim Robinson]

I think we should wall off Central California. Obviously, that is where the problem lies. Hmmm... might as well wall off Northern California too. I hear their main cash crop is weed. Oh, shucks. Southern California is no slouch when it comes to drugs. Let the walling begin. Mr Gorbachev, Put Up Those Walls!

[fishtank]

http://photos1.blogger.com/img/38/1476/640/My%20First%20Meth%20Lab.jpg

[Humidston]

General question: Is meth sometimes called "ice?" I watch Dog, (the bounty hunter) talking about "ice" ruining people's lives and wondered if this the same stuff.

[Fitzcarraldo]

where their employer would secure a secluded barn or farmhouse by bribing a ranch foreman.

I'm sure the bribes to up a lot higher than ranch foreman to allow this continue.

[rdcorso]

This is one drug that surprisingly never made it big in CT when I was growing up.I still worry now though because I have two children entering their teens.This story just adds another reason to the already long list we have for getting our border security under control.

[spodefly]

Two of the largest meth labs busts in US history have occured here in Georgia in the past 4 months. Both were found in otherwise law-abiding neighborhoods made up of families and children.

Both were operated by what the local papers called "Mexican Nationals". I suppose calling them "Undocumented Workers" or "Migrants" or "Immigrants" just didnt seem appropriate considering the circumstances, yet they couldn't manage to call them what they really were -- illegal aliens, here to cook up the Meth that Americans don't want to make.

[Dante3]

Our soldiers should not be dying in Iraq. They should be protecting our borders and deporting illegals.

[durasell]

The addiction thing is a process. I agree that the first steps are a choice, the kind of thing that sneaks up on people. I consider myself lucky to have avoided drugs/addiction in my youth since so many people smarter than me fell to them...

[Serenissima Venezia]

It would be nice if President Bush would get as angry about the fact that Mexican drug cartels are operating within the U.S. as he is about American patriots defending our borders against the influx of these cartels (and other criminals).

ditto. Yet another reason to close our southern border.

[TKDietz]

I think you are probably right. I'm kind of a statistics nut and the crack cocaine statistics tell an interesting story. Crack cocaine use has fallen to low levels in this country. Even though crack use is much lower than it used to be, according to the National Survey on Drug Use & Health, young whites are several times more likely to use crack cocaine than young blacks of the same age. However, when you look at the statistics for older blacks who were of that "partying age" back in the 80's when the crack epidemic hit, they are far more likely to use crack than whites of the same age demographics.

Crack hit the black communities in the 80's like meth is hitting low income whites today. It looks like the younger blacks saw what crack did to their parents, older siblings, older friends and so on, and they don't want any part of that. That's why young blacks are far less likely than whites of the same age to use crack. The dangers of that drug have hit home for them.

Hopefully young whites will see what meth is doing to their older counterparts. I think this is happening to some extent. As part of my job as public defender, I handle all of the juvenile cases in a county where the meth problem is really bad. These young kids, even the ones who like to drink and smoke a little weed, seem to have a pretty good idea just how bad meth is. They see it ruining the lives of their parents and others close to them and they don't have nice things to say about that drug. Less and less of the younger folks around here appear to be using it.

The problem is that just as it was with crack, even when the meth problem starts to fade, we are going to be left with a lot of meth addicts, many of which will never get off the stuff. Dealing with them will present problems.

Did you know that we used to have a much worse heroin problem in this country than we do today back in the early part of the twentieth century? We had more addicts then than we do now, far more if you look at the per capita numbers rather than the raw numbers. Today we have a relatively low number of heroin addicts in this country. We don't even really have heroin where I live. Between the lawyers in my office we have a combined experience of 67 years handling criminal cases and none of us has ever had a heroin case (we've each handled thousands of pounds worth of pot cases and between us we've probably handled several hundred pounds worth of meth and cocaine cases just in the last few years). Heroin though is almost unheard of around here. I think a big part of the reason why heroin use is so low in this country is that we've had a big problem with it here before and everyone knows that it is an extremely addictive drug that turn you into a junkie. Almost no one questions that as propaganda. Collectively we've learned the hard way that heroin is really bad stuff.

[TKDietz]

It's the same stuff. Generally, "ice" is meth that is run through an additional process to "glass it up." That makes it look fairly clear and fairly crystal like. It's generally smoked rather than snorted or injected. Any meth can be turned into ice. Contrary to popular belief, it is not necessarily stronger than the regular stuff. It can even be weaker.

[El Gato]

Police say the cookie-cutter approach reflects the guiding hand of Mexico-based drug cartels, which run the labs in California

Wonder why they run them in California instead of the northern states of Mexico. Surely it's easier to bribe Mexican officials, and the locals who object are much less likely to be armed to the teeth, or armed at all for that matter.