No Changes in College’s Lab After Arrest

Officials at Cal State Fullerton said Tuesday they do not expect to change any procedures after a technician was accused of making the drug Ecstasy in a campus lab.

“The university’s been here 30-some years, and this is the first time this has happened,” said Gene Hiegel, vice chairman of the university’s chemistry department. “Considering all the people that go through here and have access to labs, there’s not really a problem.”

James Edward Lightner, 42, had worked nearly seven years supervising the stockroom at the department, dispensing all chemicals needed by classes and individual researchers, university officials said. State narcotics agents raided his office Monday morning and arrested him on suspicion of making Ecstasy in the stockroom.

Even though, as Hiegel said, nearly every student and faculty member in the department has the know-how to cook up narcotics, they do not do so because of the consequences to their careers and freedom if they were discovered.

“The chemistry isn’t very hard to do,” he said. “They just know better. There’s always the chance of getting caught. And when you’re caught, what do you have?”

Agents said they found half a gallon of the hallucinogen in the small lab--about 3,000 doses worth $30 each on the street. Lightner had the run of the stockroom, with students occasionally helping him, officials said.

The counter where agents say he was synthesizing the drug is hidden from public view, on the second floor of the university’s Science Laboratory Center. But Hiegel, a chemistry professor since 1966, said the glassware and chemicals involved would have looked like any other experiment.

The student lab technician filling in for Lightner on Tuesday in the cramped, cluttered stockroom said he was told to not discuss the situation.

Other students said Lightner was meticulous about details, such as making them wear their protective glasses when they picked up their chemicals.

“I feel sorry the guy’s in jail, but I talked to a lot of people who think it’s funny,” said one 31-year-old chemistry major from Orange, who asked to not be identified. “No one’s too broken up over it.”

Lightner’s arrest became the subject of jokes among student at the rival physics department, said Michael Dubuque, 29, a physics major from Fullerton.

“Everybody in the physics department was pretty much talking about it,” he said. “Physics and chemistry don’t mix too well.”