WAR ON DRUGS WILL CONTINUE TO INTENSIFY

1998 burst upon Southeast Missouri when a mobile home exploded in the town of Bertrand in the early morning hours of New Year's Day. Preliminary investigations indicated the source of the explosion and subsequent fire was a makeshift methamphetamine laboratory in the bathroom. A man and a woman were arrested in connection with the manufacturing of the drug.

Less than a year earlier the man was arrested, along with an alleged accomplice, in Vanduser in connection with another "meth lab." That laboratory exploded, too, heavily damaging the home in which it was set up. Neither man resided in the home, but were using it solely for their lab.

A woman was sentenced to prison for endangering the welfare of a child when police discovered her eight-year-old, severely handicapped, son lying neglected in bed. The discovery came after police raided the Burfordville house looking for a meth lab. Police said the house was dirty and had a heavy smell of ether. A jar of acid was discovered in the closet and chemicals were found on the floor within easy reach of other children.

Another Cape Girardeau County woman was sentenced to five years in prison on several charges, including endangering the welfare of a child. When police raided her home, they found her eight-year-old son along with needles, syringes, narcotics and the materials and equipment common in methamphetamine manufacturing. The woman's husband was also sentenced to prison for attempting to manufacture the drug.

A Southeast Missouri lawyer, who was once both a Cape Girardeau County assistant prosecuting attorney and city attorney for Cape Girardeau, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year in jail for possession of a controlled substance -- methamphetamine. The charges against him originated in Stoddard and Bollinger Counties. But before he was sentenced, he was arrested in yet another county -- Butler -- and charged with manufacturing meth, a charge which he denies.

The list goes on.

Virtually unknown to drug traffickers in the region during the early years of this decade, methamphetamine or meth -- also known as crank, ice or crystal --has become the drug of choice for dealers in the state. Long a problem in the West and Southwest, especially in California, the drug spread to the Midwest partly because it is simple to make and partly because there's so much money to be made from the manufacturing and selling of the drug.

Cape Girardeau Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle, whose office has seen a steady increase in the number of meth-related cases, said recently, "The single biggest problem facing law enforcement in the future is methamphetamine."

Last year, Gov. Mel Carnahan told members of the Missouri Press Association that the state had become the "Meth Mecca." In his State of the State speech, Carnahan called meth "a monster" that "lurks in our homes, our barns, our sheds, our cars and hotel rooms."

According to figures supplied by the U.S. Department of Justice, in 1992 only three meth labs were seized in the entire state. In 1993, the number was nine. By 1996, 250 labs were seized and last year more than 400.

Southeast Missouri ranked second only to Kansas City in the number of meth labs in the state. In a 16-month period through 1995 and into 1996, the SEMO Drug Task Force seized 74 labs in the area. Stoddard, New Madrid, Ripley, Butler and Dunklin counties had the highest number of labs busted over that period of time. Mississippi County ranked seventh.

Recently, Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Ferrell estimated about 60 percent of the Southeast Missouri cases that come through his office in Cape Girardeau are directly related to the manufacturing and distribution of methamphetamine.

Prosecutor Swingle said that police reports and the pre-sentence investigations prepared by probations officers show a direct relationship between drugs and criminal activity.

"A conservative estimate would be that 80 percent of the cases we prosecute either involve someone using, manufacturing or distributing drugs or someone committing crimes to get money to buy more drugs," Swingle said.

"If we ever get a handle on the drug problem, we will see a decrease in crime," he said.

Just when law enforcement and prosecutors felt as if they were beginning to win the war against cocaine, with fewer possession and distribution charges coming through the prosecutor's office, methamphetamine evolved as the drug of choice, Swingle said.

Shutting down the meth problem presents a greater challenge to law enforcement, Swingle says, because of how the drug is manufactured.

"Cocaine comes from plants that are only grown in the mountains of South America, so it's easier to control where it's coming from. But meth may be manufactured by anyone with the materials and the recipe," he said.

A number of proposals have been offered statewide as a way of combating the meth epidemic in the future.

Earlier this year, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon challenged the legislature to enact tougher meth laws to shut down the rampant trafficking in the state.

Among his proposals are increased penalties for possession; expansion of the list of over-the-counter products used to manufacture meth that must be registered when purchased in bulk; increased support of programs targeting troubled juveniles; and fast-track drug courts that would expedite drug cases keeping drug dealers off the street.

In his State of the State speech, Gov. Carnahan announced an increase of $3.3 million for tools and training to fight meth. He proposed toughening the laws against manufacturing and trafficking, boosting law enforcement resources and expanding treatment for meth addicts.

Missouri Republicans offered their own idea for fighting the growing meth problem in the form of $10,000 bounties for information leading to the destruction of a meth lab and the arrest and conviction of the lab operators.

"We have a crisis in the state of Missouri," said Rep. Patrick Naeger, R-Perryville, one of the bill's sponsors. "We think this problem is so bad we are willing to put this kind of money into it to eradicate it."

Others have questioned the feasibility of the bounty just from a financial standpoint.

"The bounty has some appeal to it," said Prosecutor Swingle, "but they better have a huge amount in the pot because given the size of the problem it will become quickly bankrupt."

Swingle went further to say that he didn't think there was a major need for new legislation except further controls over who is buying massive amounts of the materials used to manufacture of the drug.