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One meth problem replaces another

BACK STORY: State labs disappear; Mexican cartels step in

By Nick Budnick

The Portland Tribune, Nov 20, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (79 Reader comments)

JIM CLARK / TRIBUNE PHOTO

Sgt. Pat Walsh of the police bureau’s Drugs and Vice Division displays 2.5 pounds of seized Mexican meth. Where cops used to find small amounts, now they’re seeing much more, reflective of new, more sophisticated trafficking operations.

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It somehow seems wrong to hear police officers say these things.

“There’s a lot more meth than there ever was before,” said sheriff’s deputy Tim Wonacott of Multnomah County’s Special Investigations Unit.

“In the last year and a half we’ve seized more meth than we ever have,” said Sgt. Ned Walls, who works with Wonacott on the county drug team. “The quantity of (meth) has gone up significantly.”

“There’s so much, it’s ridiculous,” agreed Mark DeLong, a 23-year Portland Police Bureau cop who focuses on meth-related crime. “In my first 20 years as an officer the most I ever saw was 2 ounces; now it’s common to pull over a car with 9 ounces or a pound and a half.”

What seems wrong about hearing these observations is that two years ago, amid much self-congratulatory hoopla, Oregon adopted the most stringent anti-meth laws in the nation — eliminating key ingredients for local meth cooks and kick-starting a national, even global war on what many consider the most addictive and disturbing illegal narcotic.

Today, it’s undeniable that Oregon’s laws were hugely successful in one area: The meth labs that endangered children and created hidden toxic waste dumps in basements and backyards across the state have been all but eliminated.

As the officers indicate, however, that success has borne unintended consequences — thanks to a massive influx of meth supplied by Mexican drug cartels.

Interviews with numerous local law enforcement officials and several meth addiction counselors — as well as a pending federal meth case investigated by the Portland Tribune’s news partner, Fox News 12 — suggest that Oregon’s legislative changes contributed to a radical transformation in the underground meth economy, one that in some ways is making the problem even more difficult to fight.

“The labs are gone, but there’s more meth,” said a longtime Portland Police Bureau drug cop, Sgt. Brian Schmautz, who stressed that he was only speaking for himself, not the agency.

“I’m not saying (Oregon’s meth laws are) not a good thing,” he said. “But we shouldn’t be fooled and say we have less meth, or less meth-related crime.”

Drug definitely had impact

It wasn’t so long ago that methamphetamine was less prominent in the public’s awareness.

Made from common ingredients, and bearing street names such as crank, speed, ice and crystal, it rose in popularity even as the stories began spreading of a drug that rots teeth, causes unsightly sores, and alters the functioning of one’s brain dramatically for the worse.

Parents of addicts found themselves putting locks on every door in the house to keep family possessions from being hocked for drugs.

Low-income advocates observed Portland’s streets becoming more violent as meth replaced heroin as the drug of choice for homeless drug users.

Cops started seeing meth-related crimes of violence that occurred with shocking savagery. And meth brought with it a wave of identity theft, against which old forms of personal security were no protection.

More disturbing than anything, cops say, was the seemingly symbiotic relationship between meth and crimes against children, including sex abuse and neglect.

“We were taking kids left and right,” said Wonacott, who is grateful Oregon’s meth labs now are all but extinct. “It was just heartbreaking, because we (officers) all have kids. And once (meth cooks) have a lab, their kids become secondary.”

Controls put damper on labs

In 2005, Oregon lawmakers approved a law regulating cold medicine that contained the main ingredient used to cook meth, pseudoephedrine, propelled largely by a series of articles in The Oregonian.

Reporter Steve Suo’s investigation, which found a correlation between pseudoephedrine supply and meth usage nationwide, fueled not only a change in Oregon, but in Congress as well — which in turn led to increased international controls and pressure on the world supply of pseudoephedrine.

The anti-meth push has transformed the underground economy of the drug in Oregon. On the plus side, the number of Oregon meth labs or dumpsites of meth-related chemicals discovered by law enforcement has plummeted from a high of 584 in 2001 to 14 so far this year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

In neighboring Washington state, the equivalent number this year already is 199. In that state, “they don’t have the pseudoephedrine controls we do,” said John Diets, Oregon’s top federal drug prosecutor.

No definitive numbers exist to verify cops’ claims that meth’s availability today is, if anything, greater than it was two years ago. Some national statistics suggest the number of meth users is down, though few observers are ready to proclaim the apparent gains are necessarily real or permanent.

What’s clear, however, is that the transformation of the meth economy, shifting the source of supply to superlabs in Southern California and Mexico, has made cops’ jobs harder.

Previously, police say, meth was a “white boy” drug, and the bulk of the supply was generated by local “mom and pop” meth cooks, most of whom also were users, or “tweakers.”

Due to the mind-altering effects of the drug, local cops were more than a match for the tweaker-dealers who dominated the landscape of meth in Oregon. They were “the easiest people in the world to bust,” Walls said.

“They are just total morons,” Wonacott said. “They’ll do stupid stuff, and they’ll do it all day long.”