Scattered (6 page)

If anything, this made it easier for methamphetamine manufacturers to obtain what they needed. Mail-order services allowed buyers to purchase hundreds of bottles of ephedrine tablets at a time. The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) estimated that 48 000 25-milligram tablets of cold medicine were needed to extract one kilogram of pure ephedrine. This kilo could then multiply many times in the hands of a street cook.

In 1993 the US Congress passed the
Domestic Chemical Diversion
Control Act
, which regulated ephedrine. It also allowed prosecutors to build a case against people who were buying large amounts of ephedrine without having to prove that there was criminal intent. Simply having the ephedrine in sufficient quantities could be enough to establish guilt.

But the 1993 Act, while shutting down or at least restricting access to ephedrine, did not cover pseudoephedrine. Again, this was the work of the drug companies, who knew that pseudo-ephedrine was the newer, cheaper, more widespread active ingredient in medications like Sudafed and Sinutab.

Meth users, if they'd known at the time, would have rejoiced. Pseudoephedrine produces a more potent ‘right-handed molecule', d-methamphetamine, rather than l-methamphetamine produced from ephedrine (for the difference, see page 85). As a result of the 1993 Act, the quality, availability and ease of production of meth actually increased.

The
Methamphetamine Control Act
of 1996 was the US Congress's first attempt to focus on the specific drug. It brought pseudoephedrine under its umbrella. In a compromise on packaging, the drug companies would now sell pseudo-ephedrine-containing tablets in ‘blister packs'. The logic was that the labour of popping pills out of blisters, rather than pouring them straight from the bottle, would discourage meth cooks. Nice logic, it failed to take account of the kinds of mindless repetition beloved of meth users; across America, users involved in production would happily sit for hours popping Sudafeds out of blister packs, as if Congress had sent them a gift.

However inventive law-makers and law enforcers are, they are always playing catch-up. When the trafficking of metham-phetamine across borders became illegal, American organised crime groups would load up Mexican immigrants with pseudo-ephedrine-containing tablets and bring them across the border with the legal precursor, rather than the illegal finished product. The pills would then be converted into methamphetamine in Californian and Texan labs. The profits were extraordinary. According to the DEA in the early 1990s, a $500 purchase of pseudoephedrine pills could yield $20 000 worth of crystal meth. Mexican cartels, already well established in the cocaine, heroin and cannabis trade, widened their business to crystal meth. When American law enforcement officials were able to interdict the traffic of cold medicines across the border in 1995–96, the cost of street meth went up, purity went down, and the number of presentations of meth psychosis and other health and criminal effects declined. But in the next few years, when the Mexican cartels got hold of greater quantities of powdered pseudoephedrine directly from the factories in India that were making it, usage flared again. In 1998–99, when these supplies were shut down, meth use dropped off. An investigation by the
Oregonian
newspaper in 2004 was able to correlate, with astonishing precision, peaks in the supply of the precursor chemicals with peaks in crime and health problems in the American west. By 2004, when the
Oregonian
published its report, the problem was raging again. ‘Authorities in Portland, Spokane, San Diego and Phoenix report that 25 percent to 38 percent of men arrested for any crime have methamphetamine in their bloodstream,' the newspaper reported.

Given the waxing and waning availability of the precursor chemicals, the knowledge of how to cook methamphetamine had to remain alive and responsive to changes. Since the 1960s, knowledge about cooking speed was commonly learnt and passed around in jail, or as a kind of ‘samizdat' among bikie gangs. Indeed, the first common moniker for meth, ‘crank', derived from bikies carrying around the lab equipment and the product in their crankcases.

Until the 1990s, the spread of knowledge was limited by the physical delivery method—word of mouth and recipes scrawled on the backs of coasters—and by the networks in which manufacturers moved. But with the advent of the internet in the mid-1990s, the genie escaped from the bottle and the recipes became available to anyone, from teenage chemistry students to middle-aged farmers. And they were just as keen to spread it onwards: one American expert estimated that each year, the average meth maker would teach another ten people to make the drug.

Today, it takes seconds to find a recipe for crystal methamphetamine on the internet. The following one, by an author known as ‘MethodMan', is arguably the most widely propagated. It appears on hundreds, if not thousands, of websites and chat rooms. On its original site it carries a preamble that reads:
No lies
here, folks, this recipe will manufacture methamphetamine this will
get you into trouble if you do this BE CAREFUL!

As with any recipe, it begins with a list of ingredients. The brand names are American, but Australian equivalents are all available. In the recipe reproduced here, however, I have omitted several key ingredients and steps in the process so as
not
‘to get you into trouble'. In Australia, possession of a recipe for the manufacture of a drug is a criminal offence so I have edited the recipe to ensure that it will not work to manufacture methamphetamine, but will still demonstrate the approximate level of skill required.

• Mason Jars (Used for canning)

• Contact 12 hour time released tablets

• Heet

• Surgical tubing

• Rubbing Alchohol

• Muriatic Acid (Used for cleaning concrete)

• Coleman's Fuel

• Aceton

• Coffee Filters

• Electric Skillet

• Iodine Tincture 2%

• Hydrogen peroxide

• Coke Bottles (Plastic type)(with Lids/caps)

• Red Devils Lye

• Sharp scissors

• Book Matches

• Baking dish

• Execto razor blades single sided

• Digital scale that reads grams

• Distilled water

• Aluminum foil tape

Then comes the method:

First things first—the Iodine Crystals. Take a Coke Bottle and pour tincture into it.

Add Hydrogen Peroxide to this . . . After this you know, the jug that the Muriatic acid comes in take the cap off and fill this cap level with the acid. Add the acid to the coke bottle . . .

While the Iodine crystals are being made we are going to extract the Pseudo from the Contacts. You are going to need a towel for this so go get one. Take the pills out of one box, add it to one of the mason jars fill with rubbing alchohol just enough to cover the pills let set . . . Remove pills and take the towel and wipe the top coating off the pills this will remove the wax. Do the same with the other box of Contacts as well, after this add those wiped off pills only 10 to a clean mason jar. On top of this add Heat do the same for the other box of Contact. Let theese two mason jars with pills, heat stand . . . Then shake the jars till pills are completly broke down then let the jars sit again . . . Once clear syphon the heat off (Not the powder stuff at the Bottom you don't want this it will fuck your dope up).

Well anyway syphon the heat off with a piece of the sergical tubing syphon this into a pyrodex baking dish place in microwave . . . Take out of microwave. Now plug up your electric plate set the pyrodex dish on this . . . continue evaporating till you get a white powder on the pyrodex . . . after you get it dried take a razor blade and scrape this powder up (put this aside for later use).

Now we are going to get the red phosphorus from the book matches take a pair of scissors and cut along the edge of the phosphorus . . . then take a coffee cup will work to this coffee cup add Acetone dip the match book strike pads into the acetone . . . this will loosen the phosphorus so it will be easier to scrape with the razor blades. (put the phosphorus in an empty match book box to let dry. Now it's time to get the iodine crystals get a clean mason jar on top of this place coffee filter and pour the contents of the iodine +muriatic+Hydrogen Peroxide into the filter (do it slowly don't over pour) well once you get though with the filtering on top of the coffee filter will be a black substance (This is iodine crystals) dry them by wraping in more coffee filters till you get a pretty good thick pile around the original filter place on ground and step on it to get the rest of the liquids off save this for the cook.

Next take your digital scales weigh your pills . . . then weigh out an equal amount of iodine crystals then for the phosphorus devide the total weight of pills . . . Now its time to make the cook jars you will need 2 clean mason jars with lids . . . surgical tubing poke a hole in both jar lids place one end of the tubing into each jar lid and seal with foil tape (buy this at walmart for about $ 1.60 well anyway seal off the tubes as well as you can so you should have 2 mason jars with lids that have surgical tubing foiled taped and sealed . . . add distilled water . . . now get you hotplate hot first . . . when the plate get hot then its time to add the Iodine+pill powder to the other mason jar not the one with water in it once you get both Iodine and pill powder to the jar add . . . water to this place it on the hotplate now add the phosphorus once you put this in the jar there is going to be a imediatereaction place the other lid with hose onto the jar screw on tightly then turn your hotplate up . . . the best way to tell when it is done is when the contents of the cook jar doesn't boil anymore once this has happened turn the hotplate off and let the jar cool so you can touch it now its time to see if we have dope once it has cooled open the lid and you should smell rotten egg like smell if it has this smell congrads you have dope now we have to remove the dope from the black goey substance . . .

Next take another clean mason jar and place a coffee filter and filter the cook jars contents . . . place lid on the jar and shake the hell out of it then sit the jar somewhere . . . Now we are going to pull the dope out of the coleman fuel . . . fallow what i say exactly . . .

It's not quite boiling an egg, but anyone who can follow a Neil Perry recipe can probably do it. And this is how it played out across America through the 1990s. Mobile methamphetamine labs mushroomed in homes, garages, motels, storage units and even in cars. Police busts of clandestine meth kitchens rose into the thousands.

As the home-cooking craze spread, so did the number of incidents showing what a dangerous practice it was. Internet sites spreading the recipe were not especially responsible on warning of the hazards in dealing with chemicals that are toxic, corrosive and flammable, and which could be absorbed by inhalation and via the skin. Once the manufacture of meth democratised, away from the experienced bikie gang specialists and into the home hobbyist cohort, accidents became commonplace. According to one study, 30 per cent of the drug laboratories found by police in the state of Oregon attracted attention because there had been a mysterious explosion or fire.

The more cooks there were, the more amateurs were having a go. Fewer and fewer meth cooks knew the correct proportions of ingredients or had the skill to synthesise them properly. They produced methamphetamine of variable quality, both in terms of its potency and its purity. Where lead acetate was used in production via the P2P method, users suffered lead poisoning when they smoked or injected the product. In the late 1980s a cluster of injecting meth users presented at Oregon hospitals with acute lead poisoning. One Oregon test of a seized meth sample found that it was 60 per cent lead.

Chemical spills released solvents and cyanide into the air. Many cooks lacked adequate knowledge of how to ventilate their labs and control the temperature. On the contrary, meth cooks were typically so paranoid about being detected, they would double-seal all windows and doors so that no smells would get out—thus elevating the risk of poisoning to those inside. Meth cooks in Oregon were reported to experience skin, eye, nose, throat and lung irritations, coughing and chest pain, nausea, headache and lethargy. Extreme effects included kidney and liver damage, and fainting.

Hazardous waste was poured into sewers and septic systems and contaminated ground water and run-off into lakes and oceans. Where motel rooms were used, a toxic and flammable mess was often left behind, or at the very least traces of chemicals were left permeating carpets, furniture and curtains. Phenylacetic acid, leaving a ‘cat's piss' smell, would be a telltale after-odour once a meth lab had been dismantled and moved away. Decontamination of premises was in some cases too costly to carry out; American police allocated funds seized during busts to covering the cost of making spaces habitable again.

But if the cooking of methamphetamine was that hard, and that dangerous, and that poisonous, and that unreliable in its production of a reasonably pure and effective drug, then nobody would have been doing it. While explosions, injuries and busts were well publicised by American law enforcement officials, meth cooks were responding by developing less combustible, odour-free, more mobile labs. Nobody knows how many labs are busted each year as a proportion of those that exist. Nobody can even estimate it. (Incidentally, the US DEA has estimated that of all labs busted, 80 per cent produced crystal methamphetamine.) One thing is sure, however, which is that for all the dangers the process posed, it didn't stop millions of grams of crystal meth being produced and sold across America each year. Seizures of amphetamine-type stimulants by US Customs went from 750 000 doses in 1998 to 3 million in 1999 and 6 million by the turn of the century. Much of the Pacific coast and some of the rural western states were, by 2000, in the grip of a true crystal meth epidemic. Within four years, 12.4
million
Americans said they had used methamphetamine at least once in their lives.