New Recipe Has Meth Labs Cooking

A DECADES-OLD recipe for methamphetamine is one of the primary reasons meth-lab busts are surging in Pierce County; law-enforcement agencies fear the formula will spread.

Ingredients for the "latest" methamphetamine recipe sit on the shelves of most local drug and hardware stores - common household stuff like cold pills and fertilizer.

Faster and purer than other methods, the decades-old recipe is fueling an outbreak of drug labs in Pierce County, and Puget Sound drug-enforcement officers are wary the problem will spread.

"It's so simple it's making (production of) methamphetamine as easy as making chocolate-chip cookies," said Deputy Tom Lind, a member of Pierce County's Certified Meth Lab Team.

The cooking time is a couple of hours. Other formulas take days.

The recipe is called the "Nazi" method because it's purportedly the same mix used by the German army in World War II for "speed" to keep its troops alert and aggressive. Local police say the formula moved to Washington from the East Coast and was handed to Pierce County detectives by an informer in March.

It's one of the main reasons Pierce County meth-lab busts are running at least double of last year's.

Through July, the county's meth-lab team had responded to 62 calls. By contrast, the team responded to 42 in all of last year.

"We're barely keeping up," said Detective Dave Dewey, head of the meth-lab team.

While no one expects the method to supplant recipes used by large methamphetamine-cooking operations, law-enforcement agencies around the state are keeping a close eye on the method's surge in Pierce County, fearing that increasing numbers of amateurs will start making their own.

So far this year, the State Patrol has responded to 52 meth-lab reports. Of those, three involved the "Nazi" method. Overall, they're running ahead of last year, when they responded to 81 lab reports all year. The State Patrol handles meth-lab calls for smaller counties and other localities that don't have a meth-lab response team or that need extra help.

"We're certainly cognizant of (the new way of making meth)," said Sgt. Tom Zweiger, a member of the State Patrol's Clandestine Laboratory Response Team. "We're looking for it now."

King County hasn't responded to any "Nazi" labs, according to Sgt. Richard Alberthal of the drug-enforcement unit. Although, he added, "We may have seen it and not recognized it." King County Police have been called out to 25 meth labs so far this year, compared with only 10 during all of 1995.

That the fast-cooking method is exploding in Pierce County can be explained, some law-enforcement officials say, by the fraternal nature of the methamphetamine-cooking community.

"In Pierce County, they've been a very close-knit circle," Zweiger said. "What's probably happening now is they're passing it around to their meth friends."

Alberthal said that after King County cracked down about five years ago, many of the players moved south.

According to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), most methamphetamine in the Northwest comes from Mexico-based operations along established "black-tar" heroin and cocaine routes. Traffickers, the DEA says, stretched the distribution lines up to Washington last year. But the home labs present their own problems.

The new recipe appeals to the small, make-your-own cooker who now can produce pharmaceutical-grade methamphetamine in hours.

The current street value for an ounce of methamphetamine runs from $800 to $1,500, depending on quality, said Thomas O'Brien, a spokesman for the DEA's Seattle office.

The big drug-trafficking operations aren't using the so-called Nazi method, largely because the recipe doesn't lend itself to large "cooks." As Dewey explains it, the combinations of chemicals don't work in large quantities.

"As you grow in this (chemical) reaction, you lose control of the reaction," Dewey said.

That gives law-enforcement plenty of cause for alarm. Quite simply, it's amateur hour out there.

What that can mean on the street was aptly illustrated in April, when alleged meth makers blew up part of an apartment complex in Sumner, trying to evaporate acetone in an oven.

More recently, on July 23, two Pierce County sheriff's deputies were taken to a hospital in Tacoma after inhaling chemicals from a suspicious car which, as it turned out, had Nazi-method chemicals inside.

"These guys (the cookers) are not certified, trained and in the best state when they're cooking meth, because they're probably using meth," said Jim Oberlander, a member of the Spill Response Team for the state Department of Ecology (DOE).

The DOE is responsible for cleaning up the chemicals when a meth lab with contamination is discovered.

One chemical can create toxic clouds of gas. "It's corrosive once it hits your eyeballs and throat," Oberlander said, and it can cause blindness.

The labs are actually less toxic than some other methods, which could leave persistent waste such as mercury or lead in homes, trailers, motels, storage lockers or wherever the meth was made. But although individual sites may be less toxic, the DOE, much like the Pierce County meth-lab team, is barely keeping up with the sheer volume.

As of June 30, the DOE had received 49 meth-lab-cleanup requests - an estimated $98,900 worth of chemical removal. Pierce County topped the list with 17, King County accounted for 13. Other counties had five or fewer.

In all of last year, lab-waste removals totaled 57.

This month, the DEA announced new controls over the sale of pseudoephedrine, a drug found in many cold and allergy remedies and in some diet pills. The chemical was a primary substance found in 38 percent of the illicit laboratories the DEA seized this year - up from 1 percent in 1993.

The regulation, which will take effect Oct. 7, targets large mail-order and wholesale-quantity sales of the drug to traffickers. But while these tablets can be used in a fast-cooking meth lab, individual retail sales below 976 tablets of a 60-mg size - a 244-day supply - will not be recorded.

Methamphetamine usage is concentrated in the West and Southwest, according to the DEA.

In the meantime, agencies around the state are monitoring what's going on with Pierce County cookers.

"Pierce County methamphetamine producers have always run in a very tight circle," said Zweiger of the State Patrol. ". . . Because it is so easy it will probably become a pretty significant problem, but it hasn't reached out to the rest of the state like it has in Pierce County."