- Kenny Morrison, an average Iowan with the gut instincts
of a salesman, personifies how the United States is losing its war against
methamphetamine - a fight with vexing similarities to the nation's failed
Prohibition of alcohol.
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- As an 11-year-old in Fort Madison, Morrison made his
first $50 selling night crawlers to fishermen on the banks of the Mississippi
River. He bought an old johnboat, caught catfish before school and sold
them to help support his family.
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- By 26, Morrison had customers all over southeast Iowa.
This time, they craved his homemade methamphetamine. He cooked the drug
in a Burlington warehouse that fronted as a wood pallet business. Money
poured in. This time, his family was neglected.
-
- "A lot of people here have turned to the drug,"
said Morrison, now a 30-year-old ex-convict. "And once you get stuck
- oh, my Lord, it's hard to quit."
-
- Meth comes at Iowa from so many directions, law officers,
treatment workers and addicts disagree on its primary source. Criminal
operations run by Mexican gangs oversee massive meth laboratories in Southern
California's desert and smuggle the powerful stimulant across the country,
with Iowa as a prime market. Dealers and addicts make meth across Iowa
from readily available ingredients.
-
- As it did 80 years ago during Prohibition, the government
has spent millions and set up task forces to fight the modern-day bootleggers
and moonshiners.
-
- But a four-month examination by The Des Moines Register
found that this decadelong assault of money and manpower has affected supply
and demand of meth no more than Prohibition shut down alcohol. Methamphetamine,
in fact, has embedded itself more deeply in the hardest-hit states while
making inroads on the East Coast and in foreign countries.
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- "The meth scourge has had a tight grip on our state
for more than a decade," U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin said. "Millions
in state and federal money have been poured into the problem, yet its presence
here in Iowa and the Midwest seems as strong as ever."
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- The war must go on, though. Although most people can
safely use alcohol, the same is not true for meth. Its addictive powers
grip users with tenacity unmatched even by cocaine and heroin.
-
- Kenny Morrison also illustrates the kind of small victory
that can be won in the larger fight. He is recovering from his addiction,
working and supporting his family.
-
- Interviews with Morrison and dozens of others - meth
"cooks," users, treatment workers, lawmakers, federal agents
and local police dealing with the toxic leftovers - found several areas
ripe for better enforcement, cooperation and refinement. Among them:
-
- * Authorities believe they can cut meth supplies by cracking
down on pseudoephedrine - a component of cold medicine that is the active
ingredient in meth - but U.S. policymakers and drug companies have resisted
tightening sales of the compound.
-
- * Iowa and other states would benefit from tighter restrictions
of other legal ingredients used to make meth. Farmers and farm cooperatives,
for example, lack money and incentives to lock up tanks holding anhydrous
ammonia, a fertilizer used in making the drug.
-
- The ease in making meth is a key to understanding why
the drug has not waned in popularity, as others have.
-
- "If people in America could make cocaine as easily
as they can make meth, we'd have a much bigger cocaine problem," said
Michael Edens, a central Iowa counselor who used meth for several years.
-
- Limiting the availability of ingredients is important
because treatment workers and users say most meth in Iowa is now made locally.
While law officers believe most is imported, they say they spend inordinate
amounts of time cleaning up the environmental mess left by small-time labs.
-
- * Public investment in drug treatment has failed to keep
pace with arrests and other indicators of a deepening crisis - even though
once-dismal treatment success rates are improving.
-
- * Spending on prevention programs - $5 million a year
in Iowa - has dropped since 1995.
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- "If you can keep people away from meth, that's the
absolute best way," said Stephan Arndt, a University of Iowa professor
who serves on the Iowa Drug Policy Advisory Council. "Then you don't
have to pay for the black helicopters for DEA to swoop down, and you don't
have to pay for treatment."
-
- * Efforts to fight meth lack coordination. "It's
almost impossible to keep track of who is doing what and why," Arndt
said.
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- At first, it was just for the money
-
- Like a lot of meth dealers, Kenny Morrison made himself
a promise before entering the meth business: "I was doing it to pay
the bills."
-
- Morrison's family moved to California when he was 12.
His uncle and cousins there introduced him to drugs, but he left them behind
when he returned to Iowa as a 17-year-old.
-
- He began dating his future wife, Candace, in his 20s.
He got a job that paid well. The couple rented a house in her hometown
of Fairfield and set a wedding date.
-
- Unemployment changed Morrison's fate. After quitting
to avoid a layoff, he began spending time with cousins in Burlington. He
used meth for the first time since returning to Iowa.
-
- That fall, he and Candace were married. The couple moved
to Burlington, where Kenny started a wood pallet business. When it struggled,
he spent more time with his cousins - more time using meth.
-
- When he started cooking batches of meth, it was just
enough for himself and a friend. Two weeks later, they were selling enough
to cover their expenses. Another few weeks passed, and Morrison was making
as much as he could sell.
-
- Many nights, Morrison sold from inside an Illinois strip
club. The owner, also a user, knew.
-
- "I basically had free run of his bar, and his strippers
were selling it for me," Morrison said. "I'd just put it right
on the bar with the scales and weigh the dope."
-
- Through it all, he hid his drug use from his wife.
-
- "He'd leave for nine days at a time and not call
me, not show up," Candace Morrison said. "My first impression
was I married somebody I didn't know."
-
- Kenny Morrison forgot Candace, who waited at home, pregnant
with their first child. He missed the prenatal appointments. He forgot
about paying bills and finding a job.
-
- He could think only about meth.
-
- Less attention, but more trouble
-
- Unlike other drugs, such as cocaine, whose use has waned,
meth is claiming steadily more victims.
-
- Last year, it sent 800 Iowans to prison, eight times
more than in 1995. It drove about 5,300 into treatment, up 43 percent from
five years earlier.
-
- Iowa police and sheriff's departments found amphetamines
- almost always meth - on someone 1,729 times last year, an increase of
60 percent from seven years earlier.
-
- Federal drug experts have identified Iowa - with Missouri
and Arkansas - as one of the nation's five primary markets for meth. The
others are metropolitan areas in the West.
-
- Nearly two in 10 Iowa adults said in a Des Moines Register
Iowa Poll last summer that they were directly affected by meth use or knew
someone who was. Meth plagues those who have never touched the stuff, including
the estimated 500 children exposed to it last year and thousands of people
robbed by addicts searching for a way to pay for the drug.
-
- "It's sort of alarming because it means that whatever
we are doing for interdiction and prevention needs to get better or we
need to redirect our efforts," said Arndt, the U of I professor on
the Drug Policy Advisory Council.
-
- Even with evidence of an increasing problem, the epidemic
has had a low profile in recent years. Politicians are focused on other
things. Police, in reporting crimes from murder to burglary, are less likely
than a decade ago to mention the role of meth. Media coverage is less prominent.
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- "I actually run into people who say, "Oh, it
looks like we've got the meth problem under control," " said
Dale Woolery, associate director of the Governor's Office of Drug Control
Policy. "It's out of sight, out of mind."
-
- Now, labs are all over the map
-
- The number of Iowans smoking, snorting, ingesting or
injecting meth began to climb in the early 1990s, partly because cocaine
addicts found a cheaper substance with a better high, said Rick LaMere,
a federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent in Cedar Rapids. Cocaine
only 50 percent pure was selling for about $1,200 an ounce vs. $800 for
pure meth.
-
- Drug organizations from Mexico and the southwestern United
States were largely responsible for the drug's initial influx, drug agents
say. By the mid- to late 1990s, a growing number of addicts were looking
for a cheaper way to get meth and began setting up labs.
-
- Iowa proved an ideal setting.
-
- In empty farmhouses or remote pastures, users could make
the drug without worrying that the distinctive odor might be detected.
Anhydrous ammonia was easily stolen from tanks sitting outside farm businesses
or in fields. Pseudoephedrine, another key ingredient, was extracted from
the cold and allergy medicine sold in any drug or convenience store.
-
- In 2002, authorities seized or cleaned up 1,009 meth
labs, a 52 percent increase from two years earlier.
-
- "It's just everywhere now," said Jim Hoeft,
a substance-abuse counselor at Horizons Family Centered Recovery Program
in Waterloo. "You could almost take your finger, put it on a map and
drive there, and it would be there."
-
- Users 'don't think like the rest of us'
-
- Who is using meth?
-
- An increasing number of women, mostly white people and
those between 30 and 50. A few kids, too.
-
- "Initially, it was trending upward in age, but then
we were having a discussion about it looking like it's moving back down
to adolescents," said Arthur Schut, president of the Mid-Eastern Council
on Chemical Abuse in Iowa City.
-
- According to the 2002 Iowa Youth Survey, 95 percent of
11th-graders had never tried meth. Two percent said they had used the drug
in the month prior to the survey.
-
- One hallmark of regular meth users - or "tweakers"
- is their extreme paranoia. The drug also leaves them with all kinds of
nervous energy. It's not unusual for a user to go days without sleeping
or eating. That, plus the drug's effect on the brain, makes a regular user
difficult to reason with.
-
- "You can deal with a cocaine person, but it's very
difficult to deal with a meth person," said LaMere, the DEA agent.
"They don't think like the rest of us."
-
- A self-described tweaker, Tim Benson, 21, of Waverly,
constantly thought people were spying on him.
-
- "I'd stay up for eight or nine days at a time. You
just kind of get lost after that, kind of lose your mind," Benson
said from the Grundy County Jail, where he was being held on drug charges.
-
- Benson tried meth at age 15, thinking it would be just
another drug. "But it was different. You wanted more right away,"
he said. "This has far more control over you."
-
- Treatment programs have typically had poor results, with
many users returning to the drug. While success rates have begun to improve,
government spending on treatment has grown slightly in Iowa, from an estimated
$19.1 million in 2000 to $23.8 million last year.
-
- It's not enough to meet the demand of addicts who don't
have money to pay for treatment after neglecting jobs and going broke.
-
- "The thing lacking right now is adequate resources
for treatment, because drug treatment is really an important way to prevent
related crimes," said Doug Marek, a deputy Iowa attorney general.
-
- Benson believes he and most other meth users need treatment
more than prison, where many spend their time sharing tips for making better
meth or suggestions on where to buy.
-
- Once free, they return to the drug.
-
- "If I could get hit in the head hard enough to have
amnesia, I would so that I wouldn't know about the drug," said Benson,
who - after being interviewed - ended up in prison in Fort Dodge for violating
his probation. "I really want to be clean."
-
- While spending on treatment has grown modestly, spending
on prevention has been stagnant. Federal and state governments dedicated
an estimated $5.1 million to prevention last year in Iowa, slightly more
than the $5 million spent two years earlier and down from 1995.
-
- Supporters of directing more taxpayer money toward prevention
argue that such a step could save money in the end. The trick is finding
programs that work.
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- Cooking, using, hallucinating, begging
-
- By fall 1999, Kenny Morrison had lost the warehouse.
He and his partners began traveling through the countryside, looking for
any pasture, barn or abandoned house where they could cook for six to eight
hours. They cooked alongside the Mississippi at times"so if anyone
showed up we could throw everything in the river."
-
- As Morrison's reputation for quality meth grew, so did
his income. But he spent the money without giving any to his pregnant wife.
-
- "In October of 1999 alone, I spent over $25,000
on the riverboat in Burlington," Morrison said. "And my wife
and Clay - who was just about to be born - I didn't give them a damn thing.
I think one time I gave her $19 to buy diapers."
-
- Clay was 8 days old that November when the meth dealer
issued his wife an ultimatum. By this time, she knew he was using but thought
it was only occasional.
-
- "He said, "The only way you'll convince me
to stay and that you won't narc is if you try it," " Candace
remembered. "I said, "No." The next day, he left."
-
- On a winter night early in 2000, Morrison was at his
uncle's Burlington house, sitting at the kitchen table making glass pipes
for smoking meth, when the drug task force pounded on the door.
-
- He spent three days in jail in Fairfield, charged with
delivering meth, before being bailed out by his parents and Candace. As
soon as Morrison was out, he returned to Burlington and the meth.
-
- Morrison was arrested in Lee County on drug charges within
two months. This time, Morrison's stay was longer - "46 days. I counted."
The long stay turned out to be a blessing. As the drug released its grip
on his brain, Morrison saw what had happened to his life. Candace finally
understood what had happened to her husband.
-
- He had reached the point where he was using $500 worth
of meth a day. Fifty dollars' worth of meth might last others a week.
-
- "It's awful when your husband calls you and says
he's seeing dead people and they're telling him to kill himself,"
Candace said. "He was begging me for help."
-
- Morrison knew he might lose his family.
-
- He had the four months before he would report to prison
to persuade his wife to stick by him. He had to stay away from meth.
-
- "You have to change your whole circle of friends.
You change everything," Morrison said. He checked into rehab, got
a job and began paying the bills. He stocked up on diapers for Clay.
-
- Two weeks after Morrison went to prison, Candace found
out she was pregnant again. He vowed he would stay on track once he was
out again. He told her, "All I ask is that you give me the opportunity
to show you."
-
- "A lot of things go through your mind," Candace
said. "Is he going to change or is it just talk?"
-
- What to look for, how to respond
-
- Buchanan County Sheriff's Deputy Jeff Coleman used to
peer inside cars for beer cans. Now he also checks for empty cold medicine
packages or coolers for anhydrous ammonia.
-
- He and others in law enforcement must be familiar with
the hazards of meth labs, if not trained to dismantle them. They must be
prepared for the unreasonable paranoia or violence of users.
-
- "It seems like on a daily basis . . . you deal with
something related to meth," Coleman said. "It's sad because it's
just become the norm."
-
- As the problem grows, the search for an answer continues.
-
- "We've tried over the years to have a multifaceted
approach using prevention, education, changing chemical-control law, and
law enforcement efforts," U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley said. "They
are working, but there's still an explosion of the problem."
-
- Arndt, the U of I professor who directs the Iowa Consortium
for Substance Abuse, believes the many programs around the state should
be evaluated more systematically. Otherwise, it's difficult to tell what
works and what doesn't.
-
- "You might have somebody at a school in Centerville,
say, who attends a conference and is really energized and offers to do
that program. So that becomes the program for Centerville," said Arndt,
but others in the state don't know what's working.
-
- Turning away is not the answer
-
- Last fall, Morrison was released from prison after more
than two years.
-
- He had missed a year and a half of his younger son's
life.
-
- But his two boys are getting to know their dad again,
he's gaining his wife's confidence and he's been clean for 31/2 years.
-
- Morrison spoke softly, outside his family's new home
in eastern Iowa, describing what he lost with his boys and his wife. Regret
softened his voice - not an attempt to keep his sons, playing nearby, from
hearing.
-
- He wants them - and others - to know.
-
- "I cannot imagine how devastating it would be if
one of my boys went through it," Morrison said, watching 3-year-old
Clay practice casting with a toy fishing pole and 2-year-old Clint trying
to ride his older brother's bicycle.
-
- He avoids any setting that might tempt him to return
to the drug. At one construction job, Morrison told a supervisor that he
had done time on meth charges. "He asked if I was going to get back
into it because we could do a lot of business there," Morrison said.
-
- Instead of grabbing a beer with the guys after work,
he goes fishing with his boys or his father-in-law. Or he goes home to
Candace.
-
- He worries that too many Iowans are reluctant to talk
about the problem.
-
- "Iowa portrays itself as this homegrown atmosphere,
with small-town farmers helping in the community and slow-paced living.
And they don't want their image marred by this meth epidemic," Morrison
said. "They say to me, "Oh, it's good you got off it. We're glad
you got your life straightened out." Then it's never mentioned again.
-
- "The more people who are willing to talk about it,
the more people you have to help fight the problem."
-
- Making ingredients harder to get
-
- Pressure is building in Iowa for greater regulation of
the sale of items containing pseudoephedrine, a legal component of cold
and allergy medicines used in meth manufacturing. Ephedrine, from which
pseudoephedrine is derived, was widely used until tighter regulations were
imposed.
-
- "We'd like to do the same with pseudoephedrine,
but we're running into roadblocks with retailers," said Jerry Nelson
of the state's Division of Narcotics Enforcement. "If we could do
that, it might cut our number of meth labs in half."
-
- Meth makers buy a few packets of medicine containing
pseudoephedrine at one store, then move on to another. Some stores have
their own policies to deter the use of their products in making meth.
-
- State Rep. Clel Baudler, a Greenfield Republican, wants
to require shoppers to show identification for pseudoephedrine purchases
and limit them, as Missouri now does, to a maximum of two packages at a
time, or 6 grams. Large purchases are tracked now but still are permitted.
-
- The Iowa Pharmacy Association favors removing products
containing pseudoephedrine from public access, said Jerry Karbeling, senior
vice president of the association. Like cigarettes, the medicine would
typically be set behind counters. The association also supports limiting
the sale of pseudoephedrine products to stores with a pharmacist on staff.
That would prevent most convenience stores from selling everything from
Tylenol Cold to Sudafed to Robitussin.
-
- "Some middle ground needs to be achieved because,
in a town of 1,000, we want to make sure there's access to the medication"
for use as a decongestant, Karbeling said. "But we don't want people
going in and buying 10 boxes either."
-
- The state has tossed around the idea of paying stores
that report unusually large purchases of pseudoephedrine products.
-
- "For profit motive, there may be some who don't
care if someone comes in and buys 100 boxes of pseudoephedrine," said
Marvin Van Haaften, the state's Office of Drug Control Policy director.
-
- Fear, resentment in drug's wake
-
- There are plenty of reminders of Morrison's meth use.
-
- The 30-year-old's face is prematurely haggard. The short
hair beneath his baseball cap is still brown, but his joints ache. His
teeth are a mess because of the corrosive nature of the drug. This spring
he had 10 teeth rebuilt, and another six need work.
-
- His memory isn't what it used to be. A few years ago,
he could glance at his tape measure during carpentry work and instantly
read it down to 1/16th of an inch. "Now, I have to stop and physically
count the lines," he said. "I can't get my brain to do it."
-
- Candace still carries some resentment about the years
she was left alone to raise their children and pay their bills.
-
- "It's sometimes hard to let go of the past and of
what he's done, because he didn't just do it to me. It was the kids, too,"
she said. "But at least they are still young, and we can make up for
it. The fears, though, are going to be there for quite some time."
-
- Kenny Morrison has fears, too.
-
- There are times - after more than three years - when
he can taste the drug. It's suddenly in his mouth, the memory of it.
-
- He fights the small part of him that pushes: Just one
more time?
-
- - Register staff writer Tony Leys contributed to this
article
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- Copyright © 2003, The Des Moines Register.
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