Horizon, Waiting for a Combine's Whirring Blades. Toilet-Paper

Access #: 517159 Headline: Meth in the Midwest: A sinister visitor has brought unwelcome changes to the small town of Newton, Iowa-BYLINE- Raymond Smith Date: 01/23/00 Day: Sunday Credit: The Press -Enterprise Section: A Section Zone: ALL ZONES Page: A09 Caption: 1. Mark Zaleski; The Press -Enterprise ; MAKESHIFT KITCHEN: John Hafferty, a sheriff's deputy in Jasper County, Iowa, examns the possible remains of a methamphetamine lab near a farming cooperative in September. 2. Mark Zaleski; The Press -Enterprise ; KEN CARTER, director of the Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement. 3. Mark Zaleski; The Press -Enterprise ; BIG PROBLEM: Eric Nation, below, a sheriff's deputy in Jasper County, Iowa, examines 1,000-gallong tanks of anhydrous ammonia at the New Century Farm Service agricultural cooperative. Thieves steal this liquid ferti.izer to make mathamphetamine using the 'Nazi' manufacturing method. Des Moines, Iowa, mayor Preston A. Daniels, left, said the number of methamphetamine labs in the region has skyrocketed since the early 1990s. Art: PHOTOS Notes: Sidebar to "Inland drug empire" Subject: CRIME; NARCOTICS Keys: SOURCE NATION; METHAMPHETAMINE ; METH LABS; MIDWEST Type: SERIES Length: 38.4

NEWTON, Iowa It is September in Newton, Iowa, and cornfields merge into the horizon, waiting for a combine's whirring blades. Toilet-paper streamers dangle like tinsel in front of high-school football players' homes during homecoming week. Times are pretty good in Newton. Crop prices could be higher, but there is work for just about anyone who wants it in the hometown of the Maytag corporation. But an intruder lurks beneath the All-American veneer. Near the end of a dead-end street sits a small white house targeted by Jasper County deputies John Halferty and Eric Nation. A whiff of chemicals in the neighborhood sent investigators hunting for a clandestine methamphetamine lab. Within two blocks, police have found at least seven homes where meth was being used, sold or manufactured. Meth has changed the town of 15,000, bruised its innocence, Halferty lamented. "I used to deliver papers on this block (but) . . . all my customers are gone," he said. "I have new ones." Nation knocks on the door. A woman answers, her thin face dotted with red blemishes. Police call them "speed bumps," because they afflict long-time users. She consents to a search, but Halferty and Nation leave after the suspected lab eludes them. Abuse of methamphetamine and other drugs tops the list of residents' concerns, Mayor David Aldridge said. Sometimes, though, the fears get blown out of proportion. "I don't think we're going to hell in a handbasket," he said. A few towns away in Altoona, customers new and old get a

Eric Vilchis 4/25/2018 friendly, "Hi, dear," from Maggie Edwards, a part-time barmaid at Anthony's. A sign warns "You fight, you're barred." Walls are heavy with stock-car posters and racing schedules. Times have indeed changed, Edwards agrees. Meth has seeped into the town, but other problems have surfaced as well. There have been drive-by shootings and a bomb threat at a local high school. The invasion of small meth labs is one of the most difficult changes for some to accept. A few months back, police found a lab in an abandoned grain silo nearby, Edwards said. "Middle of the day in the summer," she said, popping another beer for a customer. Like most Midwest states with meth problems, Iowa's troubles involve users and small-time manufacturers. Police say 85 percent of the methamphetamine in the area comes from California. In the Midwest, most meth makers favor a process dubbed the "Nazi" method, a name that some say harkens to Germany's use of amphetamine-based stimulants to keep soldiers alert during World War II. A key ingredient is anhydrous ammonia, a subzero liquid fertilizer. Pressurized ammonia tanks holding 1,000 gallons or more are targets for thieves, who slip into fields and farm co-ops to siphon off enough caustic liquid to make their meth. In nearby Mingo, a man yanked a hose from a tank and spilled ammonia over his arms, chest and groin. Police found him lying in bushes 50 feet from the tank. Ammonia peeled skin from his arms, chest and penis and caused nerve damage, Halferty said. Three months later, police caught the same man stealing ammonia again. "They just won't stop cooking," said Jim Wingo, a narcotics officer with the Missouri State Highway Patrol. "They're like Robocooks." People who make meth are called cooks, even though the most common production method in the Midwest does not require a heat source. The Nazi method takes an hour or two compared with the "red-P method," which requires red phosphorous and dominates production in California. The "red-P" recipe calls for a few different key ingredients and can take a day or two to make, agents say. Both methods usually convert a decongestant called pseudoephedrine into its close chemical cousin, methamphetamine . Midwest cooks use the Nazi method because it is simple and fast, said Jerry Nelson, an Iowa state narcotics agent. Anhydrous ammonia is readily available on farms, and the reaction activates when ingredients are simply dumped into a container. Hours of heating the mixture isn't required. Some Nazi cooks make methamphetamine in ice chests. Others have been known to drive down the street, hanging an arm out the window, cooking meth in a plastic cup. Though the mixture is caustic, it does not eat through plastic. The Nazi method's major drawback is that the chemical conversion yields less methamphetamine from each gram of pseudoephedrine, Nelson said. As meth spread from California in the early 1990s, it arrived in Des Moines as a working-man's drug, Mayor Preston A. Daniels said. Methamphetamine use crosses age, gender and racial boundaries. But the typical Iowa user is working-class, white and has a

Eric Vilchis 4/25/2018 high-school education, Daniels said. "You have the average good old boy who works hard and parties all weekend," he said. "Here comes the perfect drug. I can two-step my ass off and I can drink a half-case of beer and I'm good to go." Users turn up everywhere, said Chuck Stocking, chief deputy in the Cass County, Iowa, sheriff's department. Stocking said he gave his brother-in-law a warning after hearing rumors he was cooking meth. Later, he found his brother-in-law was still in business . "I sent my brother-in-law to prison for cooking dope," he said. The lure grips some at startlingly young ages. Shane Stewart, 28, started using meth with his brothers and friends in Des Moines when he was 13. Already drinking alcohol and smoking pot, the jump to meth was almost inevitable, Stewart said. "I enjoyed the paranoia. I enjoyed the delusions and illusions that came from it, to a point," he said, adding that he cannot fully explain that statement. At times, when no one was speaking, Stewart heard imaginary conversations about people stealing his drugs. "It's like your deepest fear is coming out," he said. School ended for Stewart when he started meth. He moved out of his mother's home and started injecting the drug at 14. A year later, he moved in with a 30-year-old woman. Why was a 30-year-old woman interested in a 15-year-old boy? "Because I sold dope," he said. Physical and verbal abuse dominated the relationship. "I know it wasn't normal, but that was the only life I experienced," he said. On a drive to California one time, a friend smashed Stewart in the face with a beer bottle. Stewart doesn't know what sparked the argument. Stewart grabbed a pistol, aimed the barrel at his friend's head and pulled the trigger. He didn't know that a hitchhiker the friends had picked up had unloaded the gun. "If there would have been bullets in it, he'd be dead," Stewart said of his friend. After 12 years of drug abuse, Stewart entered a treatment program at the Powell Chemical Dependency Center in Des Moines three years ago. He says he's living clean now, but methamphetamine still has its claws in him. During an interview with a reporter, as he started talking about needles and injecting methamphetamine , "I could feel the sweats coming on," he said, nervously rubbing his palms together. Today, Stewart is married and has two stepchildren. He worked at the Powell center as an aide until recently and plans to seek a college degree and a career counseling people who still fight drugs' demons. "Where else can I put ... years of using dope on a resume?" he asked.

Eric Vilchis 4/25/2018