deputydawg
Lieutenant Commander
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2004
- Messages
- 1,607
Re: meth
I could go on for days about this! I teach a class for EMT's, firemen, and other cops about meth. I break it down into a short history, the physical effects it has, the chemicals used, and the process of a lab. My classes are from 1 to 8 hours depending on the audiance. <br />I have been working for a little over 10 years with a federal task force, and a local task force focused on narcotics. This is about all we see now. We average 1 meth lab a month in my area. <br />Do a search on the net for the history of meth, it will shock you. It has been used in the military, the Japanese used it, Germany used it, and the allied forces used it. Then it became legal as a diet pill, a treatment for addiction to Herion, and other drugs.<br />After WWII it became popular with the biker gangs. They had the directions to make it, but not the chemical knowhow or the ability to get the chemicals. They went to the colleges, namely Berkley, and convinced some chemistry students to make it trading women for the cooking. In the recent years it has been turned over to the other drug gangs namely the Mexican Mafia. <br />In the past we found what was called P2P labs or red P, they used red phosperous and other volatile chemicals. These labs werew what you would expect to find with the glassware and hotplates. These were the labs that would blow up and destroy entire buildings. <br />Now here we are fighting what we call the bathroom cooks or nazi cooks. The cold cook method has taken over. <br />The hardest thing to get is ether. BUT they use starting fluid, they just have to boil it first. <br />Now the labs we find are pyrex dishes, plastic bottles, whatever will hold liquid. <br />The most common method is using pseudaphedarine. Ephedarine is an amphetamine. Through a chemical process they re-attach one oxygen molecule to make methamphetamine. <br />First take the pills and soak them in anhydrous amonia (fertilizer). Anhydrous is very deadly. It is like propane, comes in a gas that will freeze on contact. Many people steel anhydrous from farm yards. Many people get dead or severely burnt doing this. They store it in old propane grill bottles, but they don't know that the anhydrous eats away at the valves and eventually blows the valve. Others will carry it in a thermos, but when they fill the thermos they hold the thermos between the legs and open the valve freezing their buddy off. <br />Anyway, soak the cold pills in anhydrous and add lithuim strips pulled out of lithium batteries. Be careful here, lithuim introduced to liquid will explode. Another step in this process is to take muriatic acid and add aluminum foil. This produces hydrogen gas. They direct this gas through a tube into the mixture. This causes the meth to crystalize and settle to the bottom. This is filtered through coffee filters and soaked in Naptha (coleman camp fuel, nutane lighter fluid etc.). <br />The purity rates we find is anywhere from 3 to 8% pure. The old labs would give us 90 to 98% pure dope. The price has dropped too down to about $40 a gram. A gram is about a dime size lump of the stuff. <br />Now we are finding what they are calling Ice on the streets. It is not exactly ice, it still has a purity of around 5 to 10%. Pure ice has a purity of 99 to 100%. Ice is the equilivent to meth as crack is to coke. <br />Street names are ice, powder, speed, crank, and the list goes on.<br />During the Clinton administration we lost almost all of the funding for drug enforcement so we lost investigators and the rescources needed to go after it. For every law made to help fight this drug the supreme court makes new case law to tie our hands. I know right now exactly where 3 labs are located in my county but can't do a thing about it. No probable cause. The laws enacted to help, they made the possession of anhydrous illegal except for farm use. SO they found they can use Parsons Amonia instead. They made it illegal to buy more than 3 boxes of pseudophederine. (how many people go through 3 boxes in a month anyway). Now the dopers have to go from store to store buying 3 and stealing 4. Now they want to put it behind the counters like tobacco. They are not proposing to make it prescription like in some states. <br />The feds made a public statement last month that the efforts (advewrtisemnets and public service announcements) have caused a reduction in meth labs. idiots don't know that in reality there are more labs than ever. They are just un-touchable because of supreme courts case law, and they are now mobile and almost impossible to find. People are cooking on the county roads outside of town, throwing the waste in culverts. One man here was even cooking on his boat in the middle of the lake. If he was in danger of getting caught he dumped everything overboard. All of his waste went into the lake.<br />Labs are also extremely dangerous because of the chemicals in the air. It is an acid atmosphere. If you think a lab may be in the house look at the metal fixtures. Vents, curtain rods, etc. They will be rusted. The last lab we took down, the lab was in the basement and was vented up through the roof. The gas line and all water lines, the brand new water heater and the furnace was covered in rust. <br />Another problem, this acid is heavier than air so it settles. Children in the house then crawl through this acid cloud. I have seen paramedics and other poeple exit a lab and find a rash on their lower legs from the fumes. <br />Every lab I have been to, I have been physically ill for weeks after. All my guys are ill for at least a week after. It just feels like an irritation or a minor cold, and we all feel week and drained. <br />The lab team has chemical suites and the entire haz mat gear, but I am on the entry team (similar to SWAT but different name). We go in first to asses the scene and determine if the lab guys are needed. <br />The last one we took down, one of my partners looked through an open window by putting his face and hands on the window. He broke out in a painful rash wherever he touched the screen.<br />Meth causes extreme paranoia. It is similar to PCP in it's effects. I have seen people standing in their yard watching a tree for hours and hours because they think cops are in the tree. There are also those we call drape apes. They spend days running from window to window peaking out through the drapes thinking they are being watched. I love messing with these people. I park in front of their house and do my paperwork. It is good fun for at least an hour watching them watching me from window to window.<br />Then we have the carpet farmers. I have seen people when they run out of the stuff pick through the carpet thinking they lost some. I have seen people when I was undercover search an entire room fibre by fibre. <br />Human urine is a high dollar commodity here too. If a person has a drug test for parole, probation, employement etc, they buy clean urine. They sell special under pants with bladders sewn in to hide the urine in. <br />Like I said I could go on for days about this.
I could go on for days about this! I teach a class for EMT's, firemen, and other cops about meth. I break it down into a short history, the physical effects it has, the chemicals used, and the process of a lab. My classes are from 1 to 8 hours depending on the audiance. <br />I have been working for a little over 10 years with a federal task force, and a local task force focused on narcotics. This is about all we see now. We average 1 meth lab a month in my area. <br />Do a search on the net for the history of meth, it will shock you. It has been used in the military, the Japanese used it, Germany used it, and the allied forces used it. Then it became legal as a diet pill, a treatment for addiction to Herion, and other drugs.<br />After WWII it became popular with the biker gangs. They had the directions to make it, but not the chemical knowhow or the ability to get the chemicals. They went to the colleges, namely Berkley, and convinced some chemistry students to make it trading women for the cooking. In the recent years it has been turned over to the other drug gangs namely the Mexican Mafia. <br />In the past we found what was called P2P labs or red P, they used red phosperous and other volatile chemicals. These labs werew what you would expect to find with the glassware and hotplates. These were the labs that would blow up and destroy entire buildings. <br />Now here we are fighting what we call the bathroom cooks or nazi cooks. The cold cook method has taken over. <br />The hardest thing to get is ether. BUT they use starting fluid, they just have to boil it first. <br />Now the labs we find are pyrex dishes, plastic bottles, whatever will hold liquid. <br />The most common method is using pseudaphedarine. Ephedarine is an amphetamine. Through a chemical process they re-attach one oxygen molecule to make methamphetamine. <br />First take the pills and soak them in anhydrous amonia (fertilizer). Anhydrous is very deadly. It is like propane, comes in a gas that will freeze on contact. Many people steel anhydrous from farm yards. Many people get dead or severely burnt doing this. They store it in old propane grill bottles, but they don't know that the anhydrous eats away at the valves and eventually blows the valve. Others will carry it in a thermos, but when they fill the thermos they hold the thermos between the legs and open the valve freezing their buddy off. <br />Anyway, soak the cold pills in anhydrous and add lithuim strips pulled out of lithium batteries. Be careful here, lithuim introduced to liquid will explode. Another step in this process is to take muriatic acid and add aluminum foil. This produces hydrogen gas. They direct this gas through a tube into the mixture. This causes the meth to crystalize and settle to the bottom. This is filtered through coffee filters and soaked in Naptha (coleman camp fuel, nutane lighter fluid etc.). <br />The purity rates we find is anywhere from 3 to 8% pure. The old labs would give us 90 to 98% pure dope. The price has dropped too down to about $40 a gram. A gram is about a dime size lump of the stuff. <br />Now we are finding what they are calling Ice on the streets. It is not exactly ice, it still has a purity of around 5 to 10%. Pure ice has a purity of 99 to 100%. Ice is the equilivent to meth as crack is to coke. <br />Street names are ice, powder, speed, crank, and the list goes on.<br />During the Clinton administration we lost almost all of the funding for drug enforcement so we lost investigators and the rescources needed to go after it. For every law made to help fight this drug the supreme court makes new case law to tie our hands. I know right now exactly where 3 labs are located in my county but can't do a thing about it. No probable cause. The laws enacted to help, they made the possession of anhydrous illegal except for farm use. SO they found they can use Parsons Amonia instead. They made it illegal to buy more than 3 boxes of pseudophederine. (how many people go through 3 boxes in a month anyway). Now the dopers have to go from store to store buying 3 and stealing 4. Now they want to put it behind the counters like tobacco. They are not proposing to make it prescription like in some states. <br />The feds made a public statement last month that the efforts (advewrtisemnets and public service announcements) have caused a reduction in meth labs. idiots don't know that in reality there are more labs than ever. They are just un-touchable because of supreme courts case law, and they are now mobile and almost impossible to find. People are cooking on the county roads outside of town, throwing the waste in culverts. One man here was even cooking on his boat in the middle of the lake. If he was in danger of getting caught he dumped everything overboard. All of his waste went into the lake.<br />Labs are also extremely dangerous because of the chemicals in the air. It is an acid atmosphere. If you think a lab may be in the house look at the metal fixtures. Vents, curtain rods, etc. They will be rusted. The last lab we took down, the lab was in the basement and was vented up through the roof. The gas line and all water lines, the brand new water heater and the furnace was covered in rust. <br />Another problem, this acid is heavier than air so it settles. Children in the house then crawl through this acid cloud. I have seen paramedics and other poeple exit a lab and find a rash on their lower legs from the fumes. <br />Every lab I have been to, I have been physically ill for weeks after. All my guys are ill for at least a week after. It just feels like an irritation or a minor cold, and we all feel week and drained. <br />The lab team has chemical suites and the entire haz mat gear, but I am on the entry team (similar to SWAT but different name). We go in first to asses the scene and determine if the lab guys are needed. <br />The last one we took down, one of my partners looked through an open window by putting his face and hands on the window. He broke out in a painful rash wherever he touched the screen.<br />Meth causes extreme paranoia. It is similar to PCP in it's effects. I have seen people standing in their yard watching a tree for hours and hours because they think cops are in the tree. There are also those we call drape apes. They spend days running from window to window peaking out through the drapes thinking they are being watched. I love messing with these people. I park in front of their house and do my paperwork. It is good fun for at least an hour watching them watching me from window to window.<br />Then we have the carpet farmers. I have seen people when they run out of the stuff pick through the carpet thinking they lost some. I have seen people when I was undercover search an entire room fibre by fibre. <br />Human urine is a high dollar commodity here too. If a person has a drug test for parole, probation, employement etc, they buy clean urine. They sell special under pants with bladders sewn in to hide the urine in. <br />Like I said I could go on for days about this.
How can it not?<br />It's the only thing that they must have to make the stuff.The only other option I see is making it all in liquid form.
