Rural Idaho Panhandle Yielding Bumper Crop of Methamphetamine

Northern Idaho’s growing methamphetamine problem came out of hiding in Hilda Howard’s quiet downtown neighborhood on a chilly December morning.

Idaho State Police detectives on a stakeout spotted someone dumping liquid out the window of a suspected meth dealer’s home, producing a cloud of fumes as children walked to a nearby school.

Officers returned with a warrant and arrested three people inside as smoke billowed from a fire apparently set to destroy evidence.

Because of the volatile chemicals--including the hydrochloric acid dumped out the window--streets were sealed off and buildings evacuated. Firefighters hosed themselves off after putting out the blaze.

The ruckus was the first time Howard noticed anything unusual at the gabled two-story rental across the street.

“It was a real shock,” the elderly 50-year resident of this lakeside resort town said recently. “At first, I thought it was just a fire. But before I knew it, we must have had all the police cars in Coeur d’Alene here.”

The case was just one recent bust in northern Idaho, a region struggling to overcome a surge in methamphetamine use that swept across much of the nation in the 1990s and hit the West particularly hard as the cocaine trade declined.

The impact has been especially pernicious in rural areas such as Idaho’s Panhandle, a scenic area of deep lakes and forested mountains where clandestine meth labs can easily go undetected.

Idaho’s five northern counties have 15% of the state’s population of 1.2 million. But they recorded 94 of the state’s 173 meth lab seizures last year, or 54%, Idaho Department of Law Enforcement figures show.

The number of seizures statewide has multiplied several times since 1994, when three were recorded. In 1998 there were 98.

In the Panhandle, police, courts, jails and even waste-management officials are becoming overburdened because of meth, also known as crank or ice.

“Methamphetamine is the greatest seed of destruction faced by our community,” said Bill Douglas, prosecutor in Kootenai County, the region’s most populous. “It exacts a tragic human toll that cannot be measured in numbers.”

The drug can produce a days-long high and is easily made using readily available ingredients such as pseudoephedrine (found in cold medicines), hydrochloric acid, iodine, rock salt, Drano and lighter fluid.

Misusing the chemicals can release hazardous vapors and cause explosions.

Those dangers, combined with the paranoia and psychosis that can result from meth use, make the drug “a public safety nightmare,” said Capt. Wayne M. Longo of the Idaho State Police’s Coeur d’Alene detachment. “These guys are a time bomb.”

One example is Scott Yager, a 36-year-old Rathdrum man investigators say was high on meth on June 17, 1998, when he gunned down Idaho State Trooper Linda Huff as she left the agency’s Coeur d’Alene headquarters. Yager was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Panhandle meth labs are most frequently uncovered in populated areas, Longo said. But meth-makers often discard equipment and chemicals in rural Dumpsters to hide evidence, he said.

That’s become an unsettling fact of life at the Kootenai County Solid Waste Department. Seventeen fires ignited by meth-making chemicals dumped in trash broke out last year at a transfer station, agency director Steve Wulf said.

The fires were started by matches that ignited while being compacted with other trash, sometimes while inside a truck on the road. Meth-makers discard matches and use red phosphorus on matchbook striking pads to produce the drug.

Most of the blazes were put out by staff, but firefighters were called twice.

“Once it starts, it’s like a bomb going off,” Wulf said. “It keeps burning more intensely.”

The meth boom has also created a burden for small-town police.

“It’s very time consuming to put these things together and get enough evidence for a search warrant,” said Douglas Camster, police chief in Spirit Lake, a Kootenai County town of 1,100 where a truckload of meth-making material was hauled from a mobile home in August.

Still, plenty of cases get to court. In Kootenai County, one-third of last year’s 1,100 felony cases were meth-related, Douglas said. Drug cases overall have increased tenfold over the last decade.

In October, Kootenai County became the second in the state (after Ada County) to create a drug court through a federal grant. Defendants who plead guilty to drug possession can avoid jail by completing counseling and undergoing drug testing.

“We’re being very successful with shutting down these labs and arresting and prosecuting and filling up our prisons,” he said. “We’re not doing such a good job at drug education and rehabilitation.”

Police, meanwhile, are educating citizens about detecting possible meth-making operations in their neighborhoods and discouraging retailers from selling individuals large quantities of items that can be used to produce meth.

On the state level, Republican Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and the Legislature appropriated $697,000 to add five staff members at the Idaho State Police’s Coeur d’Alene detachment and one in the southern Idaho city of Meridian.

At the governor’s urging, lawmakers also adopted mandatory minimum sentences for meth production and distribution.

Kempthorne declared in his Jan. 17 State of the State Address that Idaho is “making substantial progress in our war against this powerful and poisonous drug.”

A training program last year instructed 350 police officers statewide on meth-fighting, and five meetings held across the state brought together state and local authorities to discuss meth-fighting strategy.

The governor is awaiting recommendations expected to come out of those meetings, spokesman Mark Snider said.