JOHN DAVIDSON/Frontiersman reporter

MAT-SU -- It's not exposure to deadly chemicals that frightens them; nor is it the possibility of toxic vapors igniting and blowing up their house. It's that knock at the door they fear most of all.

Methamphetamine cooks are perhaps the most paranoid and unstable of all drug criminals. Most meth cooks are also meth addicts, and in heavy users the drug can cause extreme paranoia, psychotic behavior and, often, violence. "We've had quite a few cases where we've seized weapons at a lab," said Sgt. Patrick Davis of the Mat-Su Drug Team. "When these people are tweaking, they are ultra-paranoid, they don't want to go to jail and they can become violent. One aspect of their paranoia is violence."

But the five officers who make up the Mat-Su Drug Team have more than paranoid meth addicts to deal with when they seize a lab. Sometimes the greatest danger to officers is the mix of chemicals and toxic vapors in an active meth lab.

Depending on what kind of intelligence they have about a lab, members of the team go in wearing masks and full chem suits. Two members of the team have attended a tactical clan-lab school in California -- a week of scenario-based training in which officers learn how to seize active meth labs while wearing chem suits, respirators and oxygen tanks.

The extra training has been valuable, since most of the team's work now centers on clandestine meth labs.

Four years ago, when Davis was assigned to the drug team, almost all the team's work dealt with marijuana and cocaine; now Davis says 80 to 85 percent of the team's time and resources are spent chasing down meth labs and cooks.

"An overwhelming number of the tips we get now are about meth labs," Davis said. "That doesn't mean other drugs aren't out there, we just have to prioritize our time."

The public-safety aspect is critical when it comes to meth labs, Davis said. Cooks tend to dump waste chemicals in the woods or in Dumpsters of apartment complexes; they also cook meth in hotel rooms. At least two Valley hotels unwittingly have played host to meth labs this year.

The fact that in 2003, more than half of all meth labs seized statewide were operating in the Valley -- Davis predicts an even higher percentage by the end of 2004 -- means the Mat-Su has a veritable meth epidemic on its hands.

"If we were to double the size of this team and just work on meth, we'd still be working around the clock," Davis said. "My guys spend a lot of hours away from home, and even in the face of overwhelming odds and adversity, they come to work every day and go after the bad guys."

Davis describes meth as a cancer that is eating away at society. In terms of public health and safety, Davis and his team consider meth labs public enemy number one.

And there are more than ever these days. The proliferation of labs in the Valley may have something to do with Mat-Su being one of the fastest-growing communities in the state and the country; Davis says meth production and addiction are part of a larger, national problem.

"We're seeing a trend that started in the late '80s and early '90s, where meth would come into an area and explode," Davis said. "We're experiencing that now."

The proliferation of meth

Small-scale, clandestine labs are a relatively recent development in the history of methamphetamine. A Japanese pharmacologist is believed to have developed the drug in 1919, and during World War II, meth was reportedly given to both Allied and Axis troops to sustain them on long flights or marches.

In the 1950s, versions of meth called "pep pills" or "bennies" were sold in the U.S. for nonmedical purposes, and meth was marketed to treat obesity, narcolepsy and sinus inflammation.

Meth became regulated under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, but in the late 1980s new methods of cooking more potent versions of meth began to appear. These methods used ephedrine or pseudoephedrine as the precursor to meth, and made it possible for addicts to produce meth on their own -- if they didn't blow up their houses in the process.

Nowadays, there are three main methods used to produce the drug: The red phosphorus, birch and amalgam methods. The two methods used in Alaska are the red phosphorus method and the birch method.

The birch, also known as the "ammonia" or "Nazi" method, relies on a plentiful supply of anhydrous ammonia that is most commonly found in commercial freezers and agricultural applications in the Lower 48. Farmers have lost large stores of ammonia fertilizer to raids by meth cooks who use this method throughout the Midwest.

In Alaska, meth labs using the "Nazi" method would likely be found near shore-based fish-processing plants or fish-processing vessels.

In Alaska, most meth cooks use the red phosphorus method. According to the ADEC, wastes generated from the red phosphorus method include flammable extraction-process sludge, phosphine gas, iodine, hydriodic acid, hydrogen chloride gas, phosphoric acid and yellow or white phosphorus.

But none of these chemicals or gases are active ingredients in the final product.

Meth's only active ingredient is ephedrine, which is also the only active ingredient in many over-the-counter cold remedies; it's the caffeine in the tea bag. All the other chemicals used are there to bind up the ephedrine, convert and crystallize it into a usable product. Pure ephedrine is actually extremely dangerous; in its pure form, it is a controlled substance.

But converting ephedrine to meth produces volatile and toxic chemical waste. A 2003 University of Washington study of chemical exposures at meth labs found the chemical exposures of greatest concern were those produced using the red phosphorus method -- specifically those consisting of phosphine, iodine and hydrogen chloride.

The study highlighted iodine as a likely cause of mucus membrane and eye irritation reported at many lab seizures, and stated that the persistence of iodine in the environment of the cook, "is very important to the children that are present in clandestine laboratories as well as children who inadvertently become residents in a building previously used as a meth lab. Children crawling on contaminated carpet may pick up high levels of iodine."

Aside from waste chemicals produced from cooking, meth contamination was found in every one of the 16 buildings tested in the study, all of which housed meth labs at some point.

"Even labs that had been busted several months prior to testing still had contamination levels of methamphetamine present on many surfaces within the building," the report stated.

In one controlled meth cook, researchers placed a teddy bear 12 inches from the cook area and afterward checked the bear's pH level and tested the bear's "fur" for meth contamination. The teddy bear had an extremely acidic pH of 1, and was highly contaminated with meth.

According to the study, "Children playing with such toys may be exposed to strong acids contained within the toy, causing severe burns to the skin and mucus membranes, and also be exposed to significant concentrations of methamphetamine -- particularly if the toy is placed in the mouth."

Fit for use?

In July 2003, House Bill 59 was signed into law. The bill directed the ADEC to adopt regulations "for the evaluation and cleanup of sites where methamphetamine was manufactured or stored."

The bill was meant to address a relatively new problem: As the number of clandestine labs seized in Alaska continues to skyrocket, more landlords are faced with contaminated houses and apartments. Often the costs associated with properly testing and cleaning a former meth lab exceed the value of the property itself.

Although HB 59 requires property owners to clean up hazardous materials and provide test results that show contamination levels below ADEC limits before the property can be used again, it does not require third-party verification that a former lab is "fit for use."

While the ADEC recommends landlords hire a professional contractor to clean and test contaminated homes, the proposed regulations do not mandate it.

Some experts think this is a problem.

Mike Anderson, a toxicologist with Environmental Compliance Consultants, the company contracted to clean up meth labs statewide, thinks HB 59 is a good idea, but without requiring expert testing and cleaning of a lab site, it leaves the door open for landlords to cheat -- and save thousands on cleanup costs.

"It's woefully inadequate to have people test their own homes," Anderson said. "It's inadequate to have them clean their own homes, and especially to have them test their own homes."

The ADEC regulations do require samples of former labs to be tested by professionals before the property can be certified "fit for use," but Anderson says it would be easy for a homeowner to cheat. By sending in a sample from a different home, or sending a clean piece of drywall in for lab analysis, a landlord could have a property certified "fit for use" without ever cleaning or testing it.

Although the ADEC has offered to provide property owners with the guidelines for cleaning a site and a list of laboratories that can test the site, there is no requirement for them to verify their work through a third party.

State Rep. Jim Holm, R-Fairbanks, and state Sen. Gretchen Guess, D-Anchorage, sponsored the bill and worked together to ensure passage of the new regulations.

Neither Holm nor Guess returned phone calls for this article, but minutes of a 2003 House Judiciary Committee discussion of the bill shed some light on why DEC officials and legislators made key changes to the bill that shifted responsibility for verification of lab cleanup from the state to the property owner.

The minutes state that Larry Dietrick, acting director of the Division of Spill Prevention and Response for the DEC, said the intent was to make the bill "self-implementing" in order to protect public health without developing a new government service. The minutes state, "The department won't review the work and the cleanup, but rather the owner will do so."

The minutes also state Dietrick said laboratory certification is quite costly.

The proposed ADEC regulations outline 29 substances that are potentially harmful wastes associated with meth labs, but advises against "unwarranted sampling," which may "place an excessive and pointless financial burden upon home owners to demonstrate 'fit for use' compliance."

Because homemade meth labs are such a recent phenomena, no one really knows the long-term effects of meth contamination.

Anderson thinks meth residue, which gets in and on the walls of a lab site, can affect people who inhabit a house or apartment even after the lab itself has been removed. Because of the molecular structure of methamphetamine, it can be extremely difficult to get it off walls and out of carpet.

"This is a great problem," Anderson said. "People don't have the means to test for fumes, which adhere to drywall and paint. Meth comes out in a gas form, and it's so persistent and soluble, a wet rag just smears it across the wall. If you keep using the same rag, you're not cleaning it, you're just smearing it around."

Cutting off supply

For every meth lab law-enforcement officials seize, more crop up. This is because meth cooks teach as many as a dozen other tweakers how to make it.

Assistant District Attorney Paul Roetman, who handles narcotics cases for the Palmer DA's office, says he has three to four times as many meth cases this year as his predecessor had in 2003.

The Palmer DA's office handled only 10 meth-related cases last year; this year Roetman has 40 meth cases, to date, out of a total caseload of 200.

Almost all of those meth cases involved two to four co-defendants.

"People can't do it alone," Roetman said. "But we're taking a hard line on meth, it's a huge problem."

The charge for manufacturing meth is second-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance -- a class-A felony. Five years is the presumptive term for class-A felonies, but a judge can reduce that to two and a half years.

Even though the normal term of sentence is five years, Sgt. Davis says he and his team often arrest the same people more than once.

"I'm starting to see guys we arrested in 2000," Davis said. "They get out and hit the street again and their names are popping up. They're at it again."

Davis thinks the key to keeping meth addicts off the streets is to impose stiffer penalties. Sentencing guidelines often don't allow a judge to hand down more than a five-year sentence, and after two years they're out on the street again.

Investigator Mike Ingram, another Mat-Su Drug Team member, agrees. The only treatment for meth addicts is to get away from the scene completely.

"They need isolation, by which I mean they need to be incarcerated," Ingram said. "They need to get out of the cooking scene and get away from the people who cook it and get a rush off it."

But some say the costs associated with longer prison terms and heavier prosecution do little to curb the number of labs being set up.

One strategy used in Oklahoma was to cut off the supply of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine by allowing only licensed pharmacists to sell it. Although customers don't need a prescription, they do have to show photo identification and sign a registry when they purchase ephedrine or pseudoephedrine products.

Ephedrine, after all, is the key ingredient needed to make meth. By restricting the free flow of ephedrine over countertops at supermarkets and convenience stores, the ability to make meth would be greatly reduced. After Oklahoma's law had been in effect for just one month, the state was claiming a 25-percent decrease in lab busts for the year to date.

And there seems to be a correlation between meth production and ephedrine consumption. According to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, consumption of raw pseudoephedrine by U.S. drug firms climbed 178 percent between 1990 and 2003, the very years that saw meth rise from obscurity to epidemic proportions.

In 1998, a year before meth use really exploded in the U.S., the amount of raw ephedrine sold nationwide was nine tons; the next year it rose to 14 tons.

State Rep. Carl Gatto, R-Palmer, says there hasn't been any discussion in the state Legislature about reclassifying ephedrine-based products as controlled substances, but he admits the meth problem is getting out of control and such restrictions might help.

"It's fairly inexpensive to restrict products, much more so than adding units and personnel to law enforcement," Gatto said. "All you have to do is interfere with one major ingredient and you can disrupt production."

ECC toxicologist Mike Anderson thinks the effect would be profound.

"It's a great idea to make cold tablets a schedule-five drug," Anderson said. "For the types of labs we have in Alaska, I think it would have a substantial effect. It would make [ephedrine] more difficult to get and easier to track."

For Gatto, much of the issue is a question of ever-increasing costs associated with the rising meth epidemic in Alaska.

"How much are the savings from overcrowded prisons and court fees and law enforcement compared to the costs of running a program that will reduce the need for these things?" Gatto said. "These are the types of things we have to look at in greater detail."

But for Anderson, something as simple as making a controlled substance controlled should be a first step in fighting meth production in Alaska.

"Getting meth out of ephedrine would be like extracting crack cocaine from old-fashioned Coca-Cola," Anderson said. "I guess no one ever thought people would be able to extract ephedrine from cold tablets and make methamphetamine."

Contact John Davidson at john.davidson@frontiersman.com.