Desert Addiction : Crank Is on the Rise as the Working-Class Methamphetamine of the Antelope Valley, Authorities Say

Crank, speed, go-fast medicine--the street names of methamphetamine, the drug of choice for many in the Antelope Valley, reflect the rhythm of life in a boom town.

Methamphetamine, particularly a super-potent smokable form known as ice, has gained attention nationally as the potential problem drug of the future. In the Antelope Valley, methamphetamine is the drug of the present. And law enforcement officials expect that ice, which remains rare in the area, will arrive in quantity soon.

The use and production of methamphetamine apparently have increased with the area’s growth. Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies say they are seizing larger quantities of methamphetamine and making more arrests for the drug, about four times as many as for cocaine. They could provide no statistics.

So far this year, they have raided four clandestine labs where the drug was cooked. Administrators of drug counseling centers say the number of methamphetamine cases is rising steadily while other drug abuse appears to be dropping.

“There’s more of it around,” said Sgt. Lance Galletch of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department narcotics unit based in Lancaster. “As enforcement against cocaine gets stronger, we’ll see more meth. It’s made in the U.S.A.”

Economic, cultural and geographic factors have made crank king in the Antelope Valley.

An economy driven by the aerospace and construction industries has created a sizable and predominantly white working class, the traditional consumers of methamphetamine. Prosecutors, sheriff’s officials, treatment professionals and drug users say methamphetamine has become part of the work culture because it is affordable and gives the illusion of boundless energy. They say it offers a sense of insulation from the pressures of heavy labor, long hours, distant commutes and young families to feed.

On the supply side, the valley’s barren expanses of desert on the east and mountains on the west are ideal for methamphetamine traffickers. Heavily armed groups set up fortified laboratories in isolated farmhouses where the drug is cooked, a process that involves volatile chemicals and creates a powerful stench.

Methamphetamine can be snorted, injected, smoked or taken in pill form. About 70% of Antelope Valley users snort, a narcotics detective said, but a growing number are using hypodermic needles.

The increase in use of the drug builds on a tradition of use by truck drivers, motorcycle groups and dieting women, experts said.

“We’ve been seeing it for 15 years,” said Clancy Corbett, director of the Antelope Valley Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse.

The crank high resembles the euphoria produced by cocaine, said Dr. Rodney Stillian, who heads the chemical dependency unit at Palmdale Hospital Medical Center. The uplifting effects are less powerful than cocaine but last longer, he said.

“There is a strong sense of well-being,” Stillian said. “A strong sense of positive feeling about others. You feel good about the way others feel about you.”

“You don’t sleep,” said a former addict, who asked to be identified as Stacey. “You don’t dream even if you do sleep, so you’re never well-rested. You hallucinate . . . from lack of sleep. . . . For me to get out of bed my 7-year-old daughter used to have to make my lines for me. She’d get my purse, get out my stuff, get a straw and chop up lines for me.”

Authorities say entrepreneurial Los Angeles street gangs have recently expanded their crack cocaine operations to Lancaster and Palmdale. But the demand for methamphetamine has not declined, say narcotics detectives and prosecutors. Crank and crack rarely mix.

“In this particular town, people will tell you they prefer speed to coke,” a narcotics detective said. “They’ll tell you it makes them a little crazier.”

Law enforcement officials say the valley’s drug world appears divided along racial lines, with the use and sale of cocaine dominated by blacks and the use and sale of methamphetamine dominated by whites. Authorities said they have yet to see an attempt by either group to expand into the other’s market.

The average crank user is a salaried worker between 20 and 30 years old who likely began using the drug as an adult, Stillian said. A regular user will spend about $25 for enough drug to last one to three days, he and others said.

One-third of the Palmdale Hospital Medical Center drug treatment unit’s patients are methamphetamine cases, with cocaine users making up about one-fifth, Stillian said. Many drug abusers combine methamphetamine with alcohol, creating a cycle where they are dependent on crank to get going in the morning and on alcohol to come down at night.

Workplace pressures, especially in the fast-paced construction and aircraft industries, may explain the alarming growth of methamphetamine, Stillian said.

“There’s no glamour here. It is a worker’s drug. . . . In Los Angeles you have a lot of wealthy people using cocaine, a lot of poor folks using cocaine. Here we have a lot of people in the middle--working people trying to pay bills.”

A counselor who deals with drug use in the Antelope Valley’s aerospace industry reported seeing more abuse of methamphetamine than any other drug except alcohol. The counselor, who asked not to be named, cited round-the-clock shifts, mandatory overtime and the pressures of government contracts as causes.

Methamphetamine use “can run from hourly workers all the way up to management,” the counselor said. The counselor said the 12-hour workdays and six- or seven-day workweeks common in the industry contribute to the demand for the drug.

He said the long shifts “are crazy in a lot of ways. . . . Efficiency goes down the tube and only the body is there.”

Methamphetamine may be a drug of the times because users believe that rather than providing an escape from pressures, it makes them more productive.

“The repetitive boredom of what they are doing is often a factor,” Stillian said. “The more boring the job . . . the more likely for the worker to be using. It gives a strong sense that they are doing the job better.”

Stacey, the former user, said: “I would stay up all night doing the things I hadn’t had time to do in the day because of the kids, PTA, work, whatever. I felt like I was getting a lot done.”

It takes up to a year for a methamphetamine addiction to take hold, as opposed to only 30 days for crack cocaine, Stillian said. But crank’s potential for causing brain damage is greater than with cocaine, he said. Like cocaine, crank assaults the heart and other organs. Extreme addicts tend to be gaunt, pale, irritable and paranoid, with rotting teeth and sores.

The paranoia can be dramatic. A former user described a friend in the advanced stages of addiction who has taken refuge in a trailer in the Antelope Valley and will not come out, convinced that “men in black hats are coming to get her.”

The drug is produced by outlaw amateur chemists who are often members or affiliates of motorcycle gangs that get a piece of the action, authorities said. A biker gang called the Hessians has been active in the Antelope Valley trade, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel N. Damon, the Lancaster specialist in drug lab cases.

Some cooks are local, but others travel a circuit of labs in the Inland Empire or north San Diego County, which law enforcement officials consider the methamphetamine production capitals of the nation. Like those areas, the Antelope Valley’s geography provides an abundance of potential lab sites.

The manufacturing process requires about $3,000 worth of glassware and chemicals including three basic ingredients: red phosphorus, hydriodic acid and phedrine, which is illegal in California and must be brought in from other states. The chemicals are mixed and heated for eight to 11 hours in a large flask, then filtered for impurities and cooled. Exposure to Freon gas converts the product, meth oil, into powder form.

A pound of pure methamphetamine costs about $10,000, detectives said, but it can sell for much more if cut with other substances. Increased filtering of impurities yields a better grade: crystal meth and ice, for example, are highly purified forms.

Cooking is dangerous because the toxic chemicals are explosive and some cooks are users who stay wired through the two- or three-day process. Others stay straight while cooking in labs that could pass for the workplaces of professional chemists. Cooks are often paid with a percentage of their product.

The Sheriff’s Department’s anti-meth efforts generally focus on labs, with the narcotics unit making an average of three to five raids per year. One of the biggest lab busts in Los Angeles County history took place two years ago in a farmhouse in the west Antelope Valley community of Fairmont. In that raid, deputies confiscated an arsenal of weapons and 55 gallons of methamphetamine oil worth millions of dollars on the street.

This year, 13 gallons were seized in a raid on a trailer in the Leona Valley area after authorities received a tip from a resident who noticed a strange odor while horseback riding.

Detectives are cautious when making raids because of the hazardous materials used in the process and also because some labs are booby-trapped, Galletch said. Hazardous materials units dismantle the labs once any threat from the manufacturers has been handled.

“There’s always weapons,” he said. “At one lab we seized dynamite and a full auto M-16 rifle. One place had C-4 plastique explosive rigged under the driveway.”

Authorities said lab raids often depend on tips or chance discoveries. Unlike the urban street trade of crack cocaine, methamphetamine dealing is more dispersed so the secretive criminal networks that control the trade do not engage in the high-profile turf combat common among urban drug gangs.

Still, said prosecutor Damon, the traffickers can be “vicious and brutal” if their trade is threatened or if someone is cooking in their territory without their permission.

Authorities said the next stage in the rise of methamphetamine in the valley will likely be the appearance of smokable ice, which has gained headlines in Hawaii and in San Bernardino and San Diego counties.

Users and authorities say ice has yet to arrive in significant quantity. But prosecutor Damon said: “Every drug will make its way through here. I hate to sound pessimistic, but we will probably see more.”