SAN GABRIEL VALLEY / COVER STORY : A Volatile Situation : Proliferation of crude methamphetamine labs in the San Gabriel Valley is straining local police agencies and drug enforcement investigators--and placing citizens at risk.

In the neat tract homes and aging motel rooms of the San Gabriel Valley, scores of amateur chemists are whipping up batches of methamphet amine at a rate that has drug investi gators overwhelmed and puzzled.

This year in the valley, anti-narcotics forces are seizing methamphetamine labs at nearly triple the rate of last year. Nearly three-fourths of the labs seized in four counties covered by a regional anti-drug task force have been in the valley, which accounts for less than 10% of the region’s total population.

“There are more labs seized in the East San Gabriel Valley than any other region of the United States right now,” said Walter Allen, a special agent supervisor with the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.

The drug of biker gangs in the 1960s and ‘70s, methamphetamine has become the most popular high in the San Gabriel Valley. Law enforcement officials say the majority of arrests made for possession or for being under the influence of a controlled substance are for methamphetamine, which has surpassed cocaine in popularity.

Authorities say the reasons for this surge are clear: meth, a central nervous system stimulant, is similar in price and effect to cocaine but the high can last 10 to 12 times longer--for 24 hours or more.

Perhaps more important, meth can be “cooked” with chemicals largely found at the corner drugstore.

“Criminals learn how to make meth in jail, they pass the recipes on,” said Covina police Det. Vic Lupu. “They don’t have to rely on Colombians to get drugs.”

In these clandestine laboratories, or “clan labs” as authorities call them, manufacturers mix the same volatile chemicals found in car batteries, insecticides and paint, until they produce the white crystalline powder that sells for $80 to $100 a gram.

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“Virtually every city in the valley has a lot of problems with clan labs,” Baldwin Park Police Chief Carmine Lanza said.

Narcotics investigators can only theorize why the home of the Rose Bowl and Raging Waters is also the national hot spot for meth.

Perhaps it’s the number of cheap motels that line the valley’s freeways that give cookers easy ins and quick outs, since many of the arrests are in those motels. Perhaps it’s because the valley is the geographic link between Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, which already has a flourishing meth trade. Perhaps someone got started here who helped other people get started and the trade grew exponentially.

Methamphetamine--also called speed, crank, tweak, ice, lightning, even “the devil’s drug”--is most often snorted like cocaine, although it also can be smoked, injected or taken in tablet form.

Injection produces the fastest high; as quick as 14 seconds, said UCLA School of Medicine psychopharmacologist Ronald K. Siegel. Tablets, the slowest method, take several minutes to take effect.

Methamphetamine raises blood pressure and heart rate, and increases electrical activity in the brain, producing feelings of euphoria, arousal, stimulation and energy. Users can go without sleep and remain active for days with a minimum of food because the drug suppresses appetite.

With continued use, however, the feelings of euphoria can turn into nervousness, agitation, anxiety and paranoia. Prolonged use can lead to psychosis, accompanied by hallucinations and delusions--and violence.

In his book, “Whispers: The Voices of Paranoia,” Siegel tells the story of a young housecleaner who was using small amounts of methamphetamine to get her through her workday. One night, as she was watching “The Ten Commandments” with her boyfriend and 7-year-old daughter, she became agitated, upset and paranoid. Believing evil was near, she killed her daughter, stabbing her six times with a serrated knife.

“Of all the drugs I’ve researched over the past 25 years,” Siegel said, “meth is the one that really is the scariest.”

Meth stimulates the limbic system, a part of the brain that controls the human impulses for fear, violence and sex, Siegel said.

“People become animals acting with just the limbic system,” Siegel said. “They become survival-oriented. It’s the rage that can drive a Hitler, drive a killer.”

Ed Ward, admissions director for Impact Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center in Pasadena, said the number of methamphetamine admissions has doubled in the past six months. Most of the meth users who come to Impact are white males between 18 and 25, Ward said, and most are making the drug as well as using it.

“Meth is the drug of choice in the teen-age (and) young adult population,” said Dr. Drew Pinsky, medical director for the chemical dependency program at Los Encinas Hospital in Pasadena. “Speed hit here in a huge, phenomenal way, mostly due to price and distribution.”

In the first six months of this year, anti-narcotics forces seized 98 methamphetamine labs in the San Gabriel Valley--a rate nearly triple the seizures in the valley during all of 1993. These 98 labs represented 72% of all the seizures made in the first half of 1994 by the six-member meth-lab task force working out of the Los Angeles office of the state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, which takes in all of Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Five more investigators joined the task force last week.

The number of small labs found in the San Gabriel Valley puts a strain on the state task force, which focuses on the major traffickers. Most of the cookers in the valley are small-time, making up less than a pound at a time, said Gregg McClung, supervisor for the Los Angeles-based task force.

The labs are cheap to set up, easy to operate, and take just a few laboratory beakers, a Bunsen burner and some chemicals that are often easy to obtain. The entire “lab” can be packed into a medium-size suitcase.

Drug investigators say one of the biggest problems associated with busting meth labs are the cleanups, which are time-consuming, dangerous and costly. A small lab, like those typically found in the San Gabriel Valley, costs from $2,000 to $5,000 to clean up because of the toxic chemicals involved.

Last year, the California Department of Justice spent $1.3 million on lab cleanups, McClung said. Police departments in whose jurisdiction a lab is found pay for the cleanups from their own budget, and are later reimbursed from the Department of Justice, if there is money left in the department’s budget; sometimes the funds for cleanup run out six months into the year, leaving police departments to fend for themselves. The funds this year ran out in April.

Some cities, such as West Covina and Covina, have taken to billing motel owners where labs are seized for the cleanups, which can take two special agents and a chemist eight to 10 hours.

Labs are fire hazards for neighbors and motel customers. In 1993, three illegal methamphetamine labs were discovered after explosions; two of those injured the alleged drug makers, but no neighbors were hurt. Figures for 1994 are not available.

“What is really cause for concern with meth labs is they are often set up in motel and hotel rooms and the probability for explosion or fire is very high. They could endanger a lot of people,” Baldwin Park Police Chief Lanza said.

And often, the users themselves are dangerous. They haven’t slept in days. They are paranoid and they are armed. Inevitably, law enforcement officials say, where they find meth, they also find heavy ammunition and pornography. “Meth users almost always have guns and almost always have pornographic material,” McClung said.

The sentence for manufacture of methamphetamine is three, five or seven years in state prison, depending on the cooker’s criminal history and the amount of the drug involved, and a fine of up to $50,000. “An average sentence for meth cookers is three years in state prison, which means they will serve 18 months (before qualifying for probation),” West Covina Police Detective Neil Hopkins said.

McClung, Allen and others at the Department of Justice advocate forming a San Gabriel Valley task force, comprised of officers from local police agencies. The task force would concentrate on stopping the small-time cookers in the valley. The formation of the task force will ultimately depend on whether local police departments, already strapped for funds, will be able to devote officers to the cause.

“It’s going to have to be a concerted effort by all,” McClung said. “It’s just a matter of time before we have a tragedy out in a motel.” Developed by Japanese chemists in the early 1900s, methamphetamine was first used as a medication in Germany in the late 1930s.

Often used to treat narcolepsy, psychiatric disorders and as a weight-loss aid, methamphetamine is sold under the trade names Desoxyn, Methedrine and Methampex. It can also be found in small doses in over-the-counter cold medications, including Vicks Inhalers.

The typical meth user is a white male in his 20s and 30s, although some law enforcement officials say they have seen users as young as 14 and as old as 50. Meth, unlike cocaine, is a blue-collar drug, traditionally used by truck drivers, military officers and bikers.

West Covina Police Sgt. Mark Tedesco said most of the meth users he has encountered have low self-esteem, come from broken homes and are lower middle-class.

Take the 27-year-old ex-skinhead from West Covina who injects $150 worth of speed into his veins every day. His body shows it; at 6 foot 2, he weighs only 155 pounds.

“The high makes my toenails boil,” he said.

The meth addict, who asked that his name not be published, said his father, a trucker who spent much of his time on the road, used to beat him when he returned home.

A high school dropout at age 17, the youth began using speed when he started working construction jobs. The other guys used it to get them through 10-to-16 hour days, he said.

“I don’t like being sober,” he said, fidgeting with his lighter. “Then I feel all the pains I got.”

Drug Lab Seizures

During the first six months of this year, law-enforcement officers seized 98 laboratories in the San Gabriel Valley used to produce methamphetamine. Here is the number of seizures in each city:

Alhambra: 1

Arcadia: 8

Azusa: 5

Baldwin Park: 14

Claremont: 3

Covina: 8

Duarte: 3

El Monte: 6

Glendora: 7

Industry: 5

La Puente: 3

La Verne: 1

Monrovia: 1

Pasadena: 1

Pomona: 3

San Dimas: 2

San Gabriel: 2

Sierra Madre: 1

Temple City: 2

Walnut: 2 West Covina: 15

Source: California Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement

Warning Signs

Narcotics investigators say methamphetamine laboratories are becoming commonplace in nice neighborhoods as well as old motel areas in the valley. They say residents should be aware of the following signs of a clandestine laboratory:

* Strong or unusual chemical odors.

* Laboratory equipment (glass tubes, beakers, Bunsen burners, funnels).

* Fortifications on houses or outbuildings, such as heavily barred windows or doors.

* Chemical cans or drums in the front or back yard (these containers often have the labels marked or painted over).

* Automobile or foot traffic at all hours of the day or night.

* People going outside the building only long enough to smoke, especially at motels or during bad weather.

* New high fences with no visible livestock or animals.

Source: California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.