SCENE I: Grocery Shopping
To find out where methamphetamine comes from, begin at, oh, Walgreens. That's where Tommy (not his real name) started, casing the cold-medicine aisle for anything containing ephedrine, meth's signature chemical.
Hell, everything he needed he could get from a store.
Iodine? Anywhere livestock feed was sold. Muriatic acid? Pool-supplies section. Ether? Wherever engine-oil products were sold. Distilled water and matches (scraping the flammable ends together produces red phosphorous)? Pick a any mini-mart.
Wal-Mart was a one-stop shop for utensils—scissors, Pyrex dish, measuring cup, spoons, coffee filters, droppers.
All Tommy had to do was find a place to cook it and a way to get it out there. Pushing meth was easy. Vegas is a seller's market.
SCENE II: Back at the Lab
It's also a buyer's market.
There's no shortage of "methmaticians," as they are known, and no shortage of labs here. They've turned up everywhere, from the barrios to the 'burbs, and in every setting—trunks of cars, motel and hotel rooms, mobile homes, apartments. Several years ago, cops uncovered a lab in a $300,000 home in The Lakes. Late last month, authorities raided a lab on Unique Way in a nice neighborhood on Buffalo, between Gowan and Cheyenne. Cops stormed the home after neighbors complained of strange odors.
A meth lab isn't a lab in the Bunsen-burner sense; it's more of a mini Cherynobyl—unsteady, dangerous. People have gotten addicted to the noxious fumes the process produces. Several years ago, a man was killed when a meth lab exploded in a northwest Valley condo. Metro Narcotics Lt. Pat Neville doubts many cooks know what they're dealing with.
"The process produces phosphene gas … this gas was used to kill people during World War II," Neville says. "They are not aware of the byproducts or the fact, they're basically poisoning themselves. The house is basically a chemical factory."
And this is quickly becoming a factory town.
Users will tell you they can smell meth being cooked in certain areas of town—for example, Harmon and Jimmy Durante, near Sam's Town. So I contact the security manager at a weekly rental nearby.
Yes, the property is a meth-lab haven. He alerts Metro when labs pop up. I meet him. He's tall, brawny, manly-looking enough to handle a tweaker or a dealer. We're in his office, but before he can tell me why the area such a hot spot, his manager calls off the interview (The head guy calls back the next day—"I don't want my property associated with meth"). Security guy directs me to the east and west sides of the complex. I see crowds of young toughs—black, white and Hispanic. A girl darts in front me. I freak. Nervous, I can't muster the courage to ask where I could score some meth.
The drug has more aliases than a government informant. Crystal. Crystal meth. Crank. Speed. Ice. Glass. Go Fast. Gack. Geet. Red Rock. Tweak. Chalk. Zip. Treatment specialists prefer "poor man's cocaine." For $20, you can fly high all day long. You'll be an Energizer Bunny—going, going and going, without need for sleep or food.
Meth imitates a specific neurotransmitter, a "messager" chemical, and increases the release and blocks the uptake of dopamine, which controls feelings of pleasure.
The denoument sucks: nausea, paranoia, violence, diarrhea, muscle twitches, headaches, compulsive jaw-clenching, zits. Or worse, convulsions, heightened breathing and heart rate and body temperature. Long term, there's tooth decay, heart infections, increased risk of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B and C, kidney and liver damage, lead poisoning, birth defects.
And lastly, death.
SCENE III: The Making of an Epidemic
Much has been made of the drug's romp through rural Nevada towns, where folks are shocked to find urban woes brewing. But Vegas is the real powderkeg, experts say, well on its way to becoming the drug's next Western boomtown. (Meth has created a subculture of tweakers—as users are called—in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The federally organized "Operation Pill-Box" destroyed a large Northern Nevada meth ring in 2000).
Cops raid a meth lab nearly every day. The federal Drug Enforcement Agency takes down 100 or so each year. On average, local hazmat companies annually clean and decontaminate 300 to 600 meth labs.
Westcare averages about 25 youth ages 13 to 18 in its residential program; 95 percent use meth. Through the first half of last year, 36 percent of the 1,073 clients in Adult Criminal Court—run under the auspices of the Eighth Judicial District Court—listed amphetamines as their first drug of choice; 12 percent said it was their second. Of the child prostitutes Kevin Morss counsels as a street team coordinator for Westcare, many use meth. "If they weren't using meth before," he says, "they're using it now to cope."
Meth-related investigations have surged in the last five years. "It's the drug of choice in Las Vegas," Neville says. "We're seeing more crime and more violence related to this drug."
Perhaps 2003's most salacious murder was linked to meth. Beau Maestas, 19 and his 16-year-old sister Monique murdered Kristyanna Cowan and maimed her sister, Brittney Bergeron, after their parents allegedly sold fake meth to the Maestas siblings.
Nevada, like other states, has taken steps to curb the purchase of the precursors: no more buying gallons of ephedra or boxes of cold medicine, but state Supreme Court rulings have challenged the constitutionality of Nevada's "ingredients" law.
Neville and Morss offer differing opinions for meth's surge.
Morss: It's the city's 24-hour, anything-goes vibe; meth sends users on day-long highs; it's Ecstacy superpowered.
Neville: Its popularity is microcosm of the U.S. drug scene. Once the domain of biker gangs like the's Hell's Angels and confined to rural outposts, meth's migrating to the inner cities and burbs. Increasingly, Hispanic gangs are getting in on what's a lucrative game. One ounce of crank costs about $100 to make, but can fetch up to $2,500.
If Vegas' culture plays any role, it's the result of the population boom, Neville says. "There are probably people who use meth among all the people moving here."
And they want their fix.
SCENE IV: The Making of an Addict
In a brown building across the parking lot from Westcare's main compound, inside the northeast conference room, ashen dope fiends—dark mascara under the eyes, black gunk on their lips—hold up the walls. These posters were meant to convey messages about the evils of drug use, but they work better as amusement. Campy, when they should be off-putting. Toothless remnants of the failed "Just Say No" era.
It's here that I meet Jamie.
But before I meet Jamie, I see her, chatting up staff at Westcare, the state's only teen-runaway shelter/detox center, her new home. She looks like a typical teenage girl. About 5-foot-3 with ocean-blue eyes. Barbie petite. Blond-highlighted brown hair cascading onto a freckly face that's home to a dimply smile.
Next I hear her: The voice is soft, coy. She's polite, well-mannered, a daughter-next-door type. She could've been plucked from the audience of TRL. Normal. Except for the meth addiction.
Like so many youngsters, Jamie was introduced to meth by friends. Home life was fine. Her parents were supportive, brother and sister annoying, as siblings can be, but cool, tolerable. "There was always food on the table," she says.
Social life puzzled her. Trying to find her place in the high-school caste system. She was well-liked but not popular, cute but not pretty, always one bad day away from depression. The occasional drinking and marijuana use—done in private and not out of rebellion—broke down her defenses.
First time out, she smoked seven bowls; you inhale meth from a glass pipe, then wait for liftoff. She thinks she was instantly addicted.
"I just felt immaculate, like I could do anything," she recalls.
To keep her parents in the dark, Jamie developed a routine: Get dressed and head to school before parents could see her off; ditch school and get high with friends; return after dinner; go to bed. Repeat.
In weeks, she became paper thin. It hurt to shower: "It felt like the water was hitting exposed organs." Doctors later told Jamie that meth use had aged her innards 40 years.
SCENE V: Lives in Turmoil
First thing you notice about Adrianna is the smile. It's wide, bright. The 14-year-old Latina laughs easily and looks you in the eyes when she speaks.
We're inside Westcare's new girls-only compound on Rancho and Gowan. It's a transition house of sorts, a pit-stop for troubled girls, many of whom are drug addicts, before they reenter society. Program coordinator Jennifer Hilton says the 10 girls, ages 14-18, undergo drug counseling and participate in educational and vocational programs during their minimum 90-day stay.
A back room with a couch, some chairs and a television serves as the confessional. Katie, an 18-year-old addict, listens in.
Adrianna is 14. She started using meth at age 12. It was her sister's version of Jenny Craig. Sis thought it might help Adrianna stay up so she could study. Cocaine didn't work. It left her numb. From the beginning, meth invigorated her. Adrianna began snorting it, then shooting it in her veins and, eventually, eating it.
When snorting in the bathroom stalls at school got risky, she dropped out. She burgled to support her habit, bartering goods with dealers. Adrianna says she was a hardass, flaunting her drug use in front of her parents and daring them to do something. She'd long since traded allegiances—her homies over her parents.
"I had no respect for them," she says. "I was going to do what I wanted to do."
Needing more money to buy larger amounts to achieve the same effect, she became a drug courier, then a connoisseur; the source for anyone who wanted to know who had the bomb stuff, who sold the fattest 8-balls (one-eighth of an ounce) and who was a rip-off (they usually got beat down).
Adrianna's seen meth destroy lives. "Girls sell their p--sy for meth, whole families prostituting themselves for it. I've seen sons tried to f—ck their moms, prostitutes selling p--sy for dope, people stealing from their own families."
Katie laughs.
"I've seen people steal someone's stuff, forget they did it, and try to help them find it."
Like Adrianna, Katie is at Westcare at the recommendation of a probation officer. She likes it here but is worried about going back to Boulder City where, you guessed it, friends got her hooked on meth. Will she be strong enough to resist falling back in with them? Everyone she knows uses. She only got caught after her stepfather found a letter from school saying she'd missed 56 days.
Katie's hair is rolled back in a bun. Her face is pockmarked, as if she just got over the chicken pox or a hellacious bout of acne. They're scars from meth use. The ones she's picked at are red.
Something about Katie's eyes reveal her inner conflict. She seems self-assured, cocky almost, when you meet her. But you can tell she's been through a lot, seen a lot. She has: guns put to people's heads over missing pipes, a user stabbed in the neck with a butter knife, friends hauled to jail, two associates who overdosed, two friends, sky-high on meth, dying in an accident on a four-wheeler.
She wonders, will another "Uncle Tom's Cabin"—the Boulder City meth house that burned down in an explosion that sent aftershocks down her block—be pumping out meth with factory efficiency? Will she be strong enough to say no to the demons?
Living at Westcare has provided her the most stable three months she's had in a long time. At times, the demons beckon.
"I enjoyed the way it made me feel … I became outgoing, hyper, excited," she says, noting that meth sheared 30 pounds from her frame, making her a gaunt 90 pounds. Nonetheless, she says, "I felt powerful."
SCENE VI: Meth House not a Home
What was supposed to be college tuition for Judy Kruden's children turned out to be so much less.
Two years ago, Kruden bought a home off Craig Road and Decatur Boulevard several years. It was a rental property in a nice neighborhood. Kruden figured it'd have good resale value. "The night we closed on it, I took my husband and three kids to show it to them," Kruden says.
A day after they closed escrow, neighbors told painters the house used to be a meth lab and a painter told her.
Days later, she noticed a burn mark on her 18-month-old daughter. During the visit, the little girl had stumbled onto the filthy carpet. Doctors said it was a chemical burn. Her daughter was fine. Kruden wasn't. What she knew of meth labs—usually in the boonies, the desert or near automotive shops—didn't jibe. Cops told her how meth is routinely cooked in hotel rooms and homes in normal neighborhoods.
"It's happening next door to you and you don't even know it," she was told.
Bank officials refused to repurchase the house after Kruden complained that they didn't disclose the house's past. Weren't required to, they said. Now they are, thanks to state legislation Kruden pushed through in 2003. These days, she's focusing on passing a federal bill.
"I was lucky. Other people have had to spend $20,000 to decontaminate a place before they could move in or rent it out," she says. "People are moving their families in these houses. The health hazards can be deadly."
SCENE VII: Not So Final Act
After the cops bust up meth labs, in comes Kelly Bryant. He's a meth clean-up man. Bryant works for Nevada Crime Cleaners, one of several companies that tidy up defunct meth labs; it's a subcontractor for the Los Angeles office of the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Last year was a busy one for the company, as it handled hundreds of clean-ups, from motor homes to the trunks of vehicles to mobile labs set up in the desert. Most of their calls deal with labs in transport—drug chefs trying to move their illicit kitchens to the next spot to avoid cops.
Cleanup is done in two phases. First, removing the chemicals and readying them for disposal, then decontaminating the area and removing structural items that may be infected. His company does three or four clean-ups a month. More and more, motels are being turned into labs. Downtown is a hot spot.
Steve Strawn, a consultant for H20 Environmental, which specializes in disposal of hazardous waste, says today's lab are smaller and more mobile. The labs of old used to be equipment-heavy and, from a technological standpoint, impressive. With added pressure from cops and laws preventing mass purchases of cold medicine, meth cooks have improvised by extracting chemicals out of everyday items and using everyday appliances to prepare their product.
"Nowadays, you can make meth in coffee pots."
SCENE VIII: The Cycle Continues
"Meth users can become psychotic," treatment specialist Bob Paisano says.
When cops raided a meth lab at the Rio, Tommy remembers one addict tried to jump out of the first-floor window. He ran into it instead. He remembers another guy running out of his house screaming, "The Indians are coming, the Indians are coming."
Neville has seen his share of meth folly: families that use together, a 5-year-old junkie, a dope-dealing grandpa; a 60-something lady selling meth to supplement her income.
"She smoked weed. Her son, who's in his forties, is in the [meth dealing] business," Neville says. "For them, it was a great way to make some money. It was easy. The clientele comes to you.
"Lots of people have stereotypical view of what meth usage looks like … they think it's recreational," Neville says. "I've seen people lose jobs, lose houses, sell themselves. People become meth whores."
Users also develop a sixth sense. Adrianna says she can walk in a crowded area and easily find a junkie. But it's not the rotting teeth and scabby skin that give them away. It's a feeling, "like how you can tell what kids at school use drugs."
Jamie didn't sleep for three days after smoking a bowl. She holed up at a friend's house, doing anything to kill time: sharpening pencils, coloring the same picture for hours, washing walls, ironing the wrinkles in the curtains, hiding from villains.
"I would see people hiding in the bushes, people with knives who wanted to hurt me, but they weren't really there."
For 22 years, Paisano treated the demons meth conjures in users. Paisano served as program administrator for the Las Vegas Indian Center Outpatient Clinic (he's since left), a small, blink-and-you'll-miss-it Bonanza Road building located just north of U.S. Highway 95. Eighteen to 30-year-olds comprise the biggest user demographic. Junkies keep getting younger; most youth addicts are referred from the county's Child Protective Services Department.
It baffles Paisano that meth hasn't engendered the same hatred as cocaine and weed, though it's now into its second generation of destruction.
"You now have addicts coming out of the womb."
Neville says it's nearing epidemic status. His solution seems all too simplistic, sticking to the D.A.R.E., Reagan-era approach: Don't use. It's a message easily lost on teens who have the limited vision of the future common to kids, and who have come of age in a speeded-up, maximum-distraction culture. To many, meth is simply no big deal.
Adrianna and Katie are fatalists. They're not sure if they've used meth for the last time. Recidivism rates are sky-high. Adrianna says meth is becoming a scourge.
"There's no way it's going to be stopped. It's in and popular and is going to stay in for a long time."
"Unless," Katie adds, "someone comes up with a better drug."