METH IN TENNESSEE

10/11/04

Todd Jarrell

Announcer: According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, seizure of Tennessee methamphetamine labs tripled and toxic meth-lab dumpsites increased 20-fold in just three years. The state now accounts for 75 percent of labs seized in the Southeast. Worse, 750 Tennessee children may be removed from toxic meth-lab homes this year alone.

Each morning this week, WPLN's Todd Jarrell will explore one aspect of this phenomenon. Today he reports on the drug's spread in Tennessee.

ROADSIDE--"Okay, Randy I got two turkey basters. RR Two what? GW Two turkey basters. Two Gulf Lite charcoal fluids 32oz. Empty." (fade under)

Jarrell: On a dark mountain road above Putnam County's Calfkiller River valley, two deputy sheriffs catalog a pile of roadside litter, their flashlights picking out items scattered from torn plastic sacks.

ROADSIDE--"Make that three charcoal lighter fluids."

Jarrell: Rubber tubing snakes beneath coffee filters and a crumpled one-gallon milk jug, but this common trash is blackened with crystals and stained red with evidence of the iodine and phosphorous used for an illegal methamphetamine lab. Deputy Greg Whittaker shakes his head as he collects this toxic litter.

WHITTAKER – "You see the ditches and the water running. It's picking up the chemicals carrying right on down to the pasture down here to where there is cattle on down below us here. These people that are doing this just don't care."

Jarrell: Cold and sinus medicines contain meth's essential ingredient – ephedrine and pseudo-ephredrine. In what is called a "cook," the pure ephedrine is processed from the tablets in several steps using household chemicals and solvents. In Tennessee, most cooks use the "Red P" method, adding red phosphorous to strip away a single oxygen atom, which turns pseudo-ephedrine into meth.

Law officers say the process is NOT chemically difficult, though it is highly dangerous, with unstable, volatile chemicals being heated repeatedly along the way.

Dr. Sullivan Smith says every ingredient needed for these crude chemical cocktails is as close as the corner store, the farm co-op or local grocery. Smith directs Emergency Services at Cookeville Regional Medical Center.

SMITH – "You need red phosphorous that comes from striker plates on matches and road flares. You need acid. And then you need solvent: You need Coleman fuel, you need ether, you know paint strippers. These are very impure, very dirty compounds. They're not supposed to be in your body. And yet people will take this stuff 'n mix it together and then put it straight in a vein with a needle."

Jarrell: Legally, methamphetamine is known as Desoxyn. Illegally, it's crank, crystal meth, ice and Tina, and has been abused for years. In powder, liquid or crystal, it is injected, snorted, smoked, added to coffee—even used in suppositories.

Most meth comes from super labs in Mexico and California, which make 10 pounds or more at a time—one ounce might be worth $3,000. But Sullivan Smith says small-batch recipes are the root of Tennessee's meth problem. Smith is also a member of Cookeville's SWAT team and has participated in nearly a hundred raids of small, amateur labs making 2 ounces of meth or less.

SMITH – "We had a fellow that came back to the Upper Cumberland area from California and he brought with him the knowledge and the desire to teach people how to make this drug and he did. He actually held classes."

Jarrell: From 1998 to 2003, the number of labs seized in America jumped 10 times to over 9,000. Last year, 730 labs were raided in Tennessee; the state now leads the nation for the first time with nearly 500 meth labs seized so far this year and dumpsites, chemicals or lab equipment found almost daily. But Smith says the word "lab" is misleading...

SMITH – "You know when you think of a methamphetamine lab you think of a chemistry laboratory, kind of like you saw in high school or in college, and that's not what we are seeing."

Jarrell: Instead they see haphazard portable labs stocked with acids and flammable fuels in plastic tubs, canning jars, and two litre soda bottles. DEA agent Harry Sommers says the labs are springing up everywhere.

SOMMERS – "We find them in apartments; we find them in mobile homes, sheds, outbuildings on large parcels of land, basements… you know, all kinds of places."

Jarrell: Sommers says the rule of thumb is that for every pound of meth produced, there's 5 to 8 pounds of toxic waste.

(ROADSIDE Nat sound "Here's your tubing…")

Jarrell: Back on the mountain road, Greg Whittaker and his fellow deputy have packed the meth-lab debris from the roadside dump in thick, plastic trash bags. But the litter is too toxic to haul away in their squad cars. Whittaker sighs with resigned frustration.

WHITTAKER – "If we don't find any evidence, there is no one to charge with it; just another officer tied up for several hours up here, waiting on a cleanup crew to pick this thing up and carry it out of here."

Jarrell: The two officers now must decide which of them will sit to wait for the Hazardous-Materials truck required to remove the lab.

It will come sometime tonight, all the way from Chattanooga.

For Nashville Pubic Radio, I'm Todd Jarrell.