Malignant meth: Despite crackdown, cooks adapt to make number of labs skyrocket

Two grams of meth, above, were part of the yield from an undercover drug buy conducted by the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office in Clinton on Aug. 17, according to Sgt. Jim Leinart. The meth goes for $100 a gram on the street, Leinart says.

Photo by Adam Brimer


The explosion of meth in East Tennessee

Common meth terms:

  • Pseudo: Short for pseudoephedrine, the primary ingredient in most methamphetamine recipes
  • Nazi dope: Meth made using anhydrous ammonia, which becomes a gas at room temperature
  • One-pot, shake-and-bake: Quicker, simpler version of the Nazi process that produces ammonia gas inside a bottle
  • Red P: Red phosphorus, an alternative method to break down pseudoephedrine
  • Smurfs: Shoppers who buy ingredients for meth cooks, mainly in small amounts to avoid police attention
  • Tweaking: Coming down from a meth high
  • Meth mice: Sensation of bugs or mice crawling across the skin, a common symptom of tweaking
See a large version of these maps that shows meth seizures by county and locations of East Tennessee meth labs by going to:


WHAT IT IS: A synthetic form of adrenaline used since the 1920s. Nicknames include crank, speed, dope, ice, crystal, hillbilly crack and poor man's cocaine.

HOW IT WORKS: Users smoke, snort, inject, eat or rub meth on their skin. The drug activates the brain's pleasure centers for a high that lasts hours, sometimes days. Street prices in East Tennessee average about $100 per gram.

WHERE IT COMES FROM: Meth cooks use household chemicals to break down pseudoephedrine, an ingredient in cold and sinus pills. The process releases poisonous gases and can cause fires and explosions.

WHO'S ON IT: All ages and all corners of society. The drug's appeal includes weight loss, increased energy and a heightened sex drive. Children living in the same home as a lab sometimes test positive for meth because of exposure.

WHY IT'S DANGEROUS: Meth users sometimes stay awake for days or weeks, leading to hallucinations, paranoia and violent behavior. Long-term use can cause addiction, brain damage, heart disease, dehydration, tooth loss and death.

Change the law, and the addicts change right along with it.

Officers around Tennessee have seized 1,149 suspected methamphetamine labs so far this year at an average of more than 150 labs per month. That's already almost twice the state total from just four years ago - and all with the main ingredient for most meth recipes locked behind pharmacy counters.

"I've made it every way there is, and I've never bought a thing," said Jason Thomas, a convicted meth cook from Lake City. "I can make it anytime I want."

Some counties haven't seen a boom yet. Others can't get out from under the labs.

"In 2006, we had 24 labs here," said Conway Mason, drug investigator for the Monroe County Sheriff's Department. "We had 70 last year. We'll have more than that this year, and we're not unique. Most counties around us are seeing the same thing."

Some counties serve as the kitchen, others as the clearinghouse.

Authorities in Knox County said they deal more with addicts on shopping expeditions than with active labs.

"Our biggest problem right now is people from other counties beating down the pharmacy doors," Knox County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Chris Bryant said. "We have a pharmacy on every block in Knoxville, and they'll go to each one. They use homeless people a lot. They'll pull up outside a rescue mission and say, 'Who wants to make some money?' "

Police keep getting better at finding and busting labs. Investigators track sales of pseudoephedrine, the common element in meth-making, and can make arrests simply for possession of enough material to start a lab.

The cooks get better, too. They tweak recipes, keep moving and muster small armies of shoppers to stay supplied.

"It's a cat-and-mouse game," said Tommy Farmer, director of the Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force. "They know we're on them, so what they did is find other ways to circumvent the law. These are the results."

The newest recipe - nicknamed "one-pot" or "shake-and-bake" - travels anywhere and fits in a 20-ounce bottle. A one-pot lab and a handful of pseudoephedrine can make enough meth for the next high in less than an hour.

"The shake-and-bake method has caught on across the whole state," Anderson County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Jim Leinart said. "We find them in cars or hidden in the woods. Most of them cook for themselves rather than to sell. That's about all we're seeing now, and if it's here, it's going to be everywhere."

Old-time meth cooks look down on shake-and-bake as a nickel-and-dime shortcut to a low-grade product. Others call it the only way to cook.

"I couldn't believe when I first seen the new way how easy and fast it was," said another cook, who has worked as a police informant. "You can take maybe five minutes in one store and get everything you need. I would say a 3-year-old could do it. It's that simple. A blind man could do it."

New recipes, old dangers

Ten seconds and an Internet connection can pull up enough meth recipes to fill a cookbook. They're almost all built around one primary ingredient - pseudoephedrine, the active element in cold and sinus medicines such as Sudafed.

Meth and pseudoephedrine - "pseudo" to cooks - share an almost identical molecular structure except for an extra oxygen molecule in pseudoephedrine. Remove that one molecule and a simple decongestant becomes a powerhouse stimulant that rips apart families, ruins lives and chokes courthouse dockets.

The old-fashioned labs used two recipes to break down pseudo: "Nazi" or "red P."

Nazi labs use anhydrous ammonia, found in some refrigerants and fertilizers.

Cooks steal anhydrous ammonia, which becomes a gas at room temperature, from commercial farms in the Midwest. They smuggle it home in propane or oxygen tanks. Some boast a 99 percent conversion rate from pseudo to meth.

Red P labs use red phosphorus from matchbox strike plates for a cheaper process that requires a heat source such as a hot plate, stove or microwave oven.

Each method produces toxic gases and a risk of fiery explosions.

One-pot cooking eliminates the need for heat and boils down the Nazi process to bottle-size. Ammonium nitrate from lawn fertilizer or from an instant cold pack, mixed with lithium strips from batteries, takes the place of anhydrous ammonia for a smaller but no more stable reaction inside the container of choice.

"I've seen 2-gallon bottles, I've seen 2-liter bottles, I've even seen clear plastic bags," Athens police Detective Scott Webb said. "The most common is a 20-ounce Mountain Dew bottle. They love that sweet taste."

No need to steal poison gas. Just make it yourself at home. Mix, shake and bake.

The leftovers look more like litter than toxic waste.

"They get done and throw it out in ditches, on the side of the road, in lakes," Monroe County Sheriff Bill Bivens said. "It's gone from a whole room to a backpack."

The new labs are smaller, easier to hide - and no less treacherous.

"They think this method is a safer method of production because there's no heat source," said Farmer, the state meth task force director. "That couldn't be further from the truth. They're blowing themselves up left and right."

Bomb in a bottle

Cooks have died, lost hands or suffered third-degree burns when shake-and-bake labs exploded in mid-bake.

A West Tennessee man died July 18 after authorities said a one-pot lab exploded in a Madison County motel room outside Jackson. A shake-and-bake lab that caught fire in Northeast Tennessee two days later gutted a trailer outside Bristol, melted the siding on the trailer next door and nearly killed a man, said Hank McQueen, director of the Sullivan County Drug Task Force.

"The neighbors reported hearing a series of explosions," McQueen said.

Lithium strips can catch fire on contact with water. Sometimes the sweat on a cook's fingers or moisture in the air sends a room up in flames.

Pour water on the fire, and it just burns hotter.

"It will blow you to pieces," the informant said. "I've seen a couple of friends get blown up by it, just by one drop of sweat."

Exploding one-pots have created a new crop of patients for doctors at the Vanderbilt Regional Burn Center in Nashville. Some never fully recover.

"It's like holding a fireball," said Dr. Jeffrey Guy, the center's director. "If it explodes, it's all over the center of your body. Even though they may survive the burns, they'll usually end up being debilitated for life. These patients need intensive rehab before they can use their arms and legs again, but they don't get the rehab they need because they don't have insurance."

Sharing the dangers

The labs erupt indoors, outdoors and on the roads. Some cooks head down the highway with one hand on the wheel and the other on the bottle.

"We've had two or three car fires where people were doing shake-and-bake and it went off," Campbell County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Jason Henegar said. "It's as dangerous as the big labs."

Officers have raided homes and reported finding as many as 80 shake-and-bake bottles inside. Addicts often get together to cook, one bottle for each hand. They store bottles in closets, in cabinets, in potato bins - sometimes in the baby's bedroom.

"We went in one trailer where they had about 10 of those bottles," said Bivens, the Monroe County sheriff. "One guy had a bright idea that he'd pour his down the sink. He almost blew us all up and nearly burned the trailer down."

Some users like to cook in the dark and watch the fire flash inside the bottle.

"They say the dark makes the dope better," Campbell County Sheriff's Office Lt. Brandon Elkins said. "We had a house fire a few months ago where two people were cooking meth by candlelight and got greedy."

Fire and emergency crews arrive not always knowing what's waiting for them.

Cooks typically store their chemicals in the same places they make meth. Those ingredients include lantern fuel, drain cleaner and muriatic acid, along with ammonium nitrate - the same material used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Do everything right, and the lab can still go off. Plastic bottles aren't designed to hold the kind of pressure the reaction generates. Cooks uncap the bottles every few minutes to "burp" the gas, but that's not always enough.

"Our tests indicate a failure rate of about 60 percent," Farmer said. "So it's not a matter of will it blow up, but when."

"I couldn’t believe when I first seen the new way how easy and fast it was. You can take maybe five minutes in one store and get everything you need. I would say a 3-year-old could do it. It’s that simple. A blind man could do it."

A methamphetamine cook who has worked as a police informant

Bang for the bake

The best meth recipe, explosive or not, won't work without a precursor like pseudoephedrine. That's the target lawmakers aimed for when they passed the Meth-Free Tennessee Act of 2005.

The law limits pseudoephedrine buyers to 9 grams - about three boxes - in a 30-day period. More than 9 grams draws police suspicion, and mere possession of 20 grams or more serves as grounds for arrest.

"We've made some cases based solely on purchases, and I think we've got a 100 percent conviction rate so far," said Henegar.

Still want the pseudo? Be ready to show identification and sign for it every time.

Pharmacists turn over the information to the state meth task force, which maintains an electronic database of all purchases. The Tennessee Methamphetamine Intelligence System can flag excessive buys in minutes.

"Based on our statistics, we estimate at least 30 percent of all pseudoephedrine purchases are suspect," Farmer said.

Authorities say the 9-gram limit worked initially at slowing down the old ways of cooking. Then shake-and-bake changed the rules.

"It doesn't take 100 or 200 pills anymore," said Mike Hall, outgoing director of the 10th Judicial District Drug Task Force in Southeast Tennessee. "You can make about 2 grams of meth from a box of 24 pills. The cooks tell us they can get almost gram for gram."

A good one-pot cook can buy a single box of pills, make enough meth for the weekend and have enough raw material left over to trade, sell or cook again.

"You can buy two boxes of pseudoephedrine for about $12, sell one box for $50 and still have enough to cook," Hall said. "So you can get your dope and still make money. We can't hardly buy meth on the street anymore. The cooks don't want money. They want the pills."

The Meth-Free Act's restrictions created a black market for pseudoephedrine and an underground industry of buyers who shop to the limit - some of them addicts, some just greedy. Memphis police arrested a woman in July on charges of buying pseudoephedrine 57 times in less than a year.

"One lady I interviewed was making $1,200 per day," said Bryant, the KCSO sergeant. "They had an interstate business going."

Shopping with smurfs

The best cooks never buy a single ingredient. That's a job for the smurfs.

The little blue men in the 1980s cartoon series sang their way through the forest as they gathered berries for Papa Smurf. Today's smurfs fan out from store to store to gather pills, batteries, acid and lye for Papa Smurfs who pay in meth.

"That's where the law has actually created more of a problem," said Mason, the Monroe County investigator. "The cooks have to get more people hooked to recruit them."

The meth task force sends out smurf alerts to local law enforcement, often within 15 minutes of the buy. Two or more bulk buys back-to-back, even by different customers in the same store, draw increased attention.

That's why good smurfs carry pockets or purses full of photo IDs, keep markers or tape handy to alter driver's license numbers and never hit the same store twice.

"We caught one girl who had 17 IDs on her," said Leinart, the Anderson County sergeant. "You'd have to look real close at each one to tell it wasn't her."

Addicts in jail tell of loading up vans at homeless shelters or driving through housing projects trading crack for trips to the drugstore.

"I could go to the projects in Knoxville and get a thousand pills in two hours," said Wendy Guardino, a longtime cook from Anderson County about to enter treatment. "Crackheads will sell you their ID for a bag of dope. People will pay for their pain pills with Sudafed. I've never had a promotion (of meth-making) charge on my own ID, because I always used clean ones."

Businesses have horned in on the action.

Joseph Swafford, owner of the Broadway Feed & Seed store in Chattanooga, went to federal prison two years ago for selling 750 pounds of iodine, a key ingredient in red phosphorus recipes - enough to make about a half-ton of meth - to buyers in three states.

A federal grand jury this spring indicted Eugene Allan Trent, owner of the Carriage Hill Feed Store in Lenoir City, on charges of selling iodine by the 5-gallon bucket.

"He sold enough to doctor every cow in Texas," Loudon County Sheriff Tim Guider said.

Officers raiding labs or stumbling across dump sites barely blink when they find shopping bags stuffed with empty pill boxes and popped blister packs.

"We see some people selling pseudoephedrine under the counter or over the Internet," said Gregg Sullivan, acting U.S. attorney for Tennessee's Eastern District. "The cooks are very inventive and creative in how they try to get this. It's their life's work."

Corking the bottle

The meth renaissance leaves lawmakers and law enforcement pondering what to do next.

Some want to move pseudoephedrine from behind the counter to the prescription vault.

Two states so far have classified the drug prescription-only - Oregon in 2004 and Mississippi this year. Oregon reported 10 meth labs statewide last year.

"I really think that's what it's going to take," said Bivens, the Monroe County sheriff. "You've got to get rid of the ingredient. I wish they didn't make the stuff at all. It's such a cost to society - the addiction, the crime, the kids in state custody. It filters all the way down."

Critics say consumers have given up enough already for a failed war. Prescription drug laws haven't stopped illegal dealing of painkillers like oxycodone, for example.

Whatever solution's proposed and whatever comes to pass, users won't rest until they find another way around it.

"We can't take a pill and fix it," said Farmer, the meth task force director. "We didn't get here overnight, and we're not going to solve the problem overnight. This is the future. Whether it's meth or the next thing to come along, we are forevermore going to be dealing with some type of synthetically produced clandestine drug."

Matt Lakin may be reached at 865-342-6306.

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Comments » 20

bornin47 writes:

As an old hippie who has indulged in illegal substances, this one amazes me. I can't understand how a drug that makes you a maniacal a-hole, and can kill or cause major injury during production, gains such popularity.

trollhair writes:

We have slumlord apartments. When we first got them we had no idea what meth was. Now we are experts. I can't tell you how many 'labs' the police have gotten out of our apartments. Labs in the dumpster, basements, some brought used nonworking washing machines and had their clients urinate in it so they could make a new batch.....said that the meth induced urine was stronger......omg.

We now have a working relationship with the court and police station. We call before we rent. We find out their history. I guess we are profiling our tenants. We don't take drug dealers, addicts, prostitutes,thieves, illegals, child molesters or wife beaters. (one person who we rejected, stripped a house clean....took the sheetrock off the walls and took all the electrical and plumbing, appliances, fixtures, wood flooring etc ---it was a shell of a house by the time they were through)

Our apartments are a nice place to live now that we have the meth heads out. They were animals. Give me a pothead any day. At least they are too stoned to do damage to the buildings!

trollhair writes:

in response to mgbmdmph:

(This comment was removed by the site staff.)

YOU should have written the article. Good points!

GrandGayle writes:

Wow... Meth is definitely not a victimless crime. As a teen in the 60's, I knew druggies. We all did. No harm, no foul. Stoners were too mellow to cause much damage ... lack of ambition. The stuff society is dealing with now is not "cool man, pass me the potato chips". Maybe if the meth cooks passed a joint around, they'd be less entrepreneurial.
This board needs a spell-check. I almost misspelled "potato". Dang, then I would have to change my user name to Dan Quayle.

trollhair writes:

in response to mtnsvol44:

(This comment was removed by the site staff.)

I have to agree to that.

GrandGayle writes:

That E. TN is a meth cooking mecca makes sense to me. The main ingredient, pseudoephedrine, is in everyone's medicine cabinet. With all the sinus problems we have here, I am not sure we could survive a fall pollen and leaf burning season without it. It is not even cool weather,yet, and I am ready for winter. Plea to drug dealers: don't waste good sinus meds on meth.

SevierResident writes:

The penalties for cooking meth need to be severe. Catch them cooking meth, burn down their house. Send them to prison for a minimum 10 years with a second offense send them in for life. For those of you self described "hippies", you are the one's that started this trend. Your continued glorification of the 60's generation led many of the current generation to think it is cool to experiment. Before "hippies", there was respect for authority, respect for the law and respect for the almighty. Your generation thumbed its nose at everything. You taught your kids to challenge authority and allowed them to raise themselves with little or no repercussions for their actions. Now your child's children are out of control and you are asking why? No drug is acceptable.

thedude writes:

in response to GrandGayle:


No joke. One dose of the pseudophedrine will last me 3 to 4 times longer than one of the other kinds of cold medicine. And it's far more effective.

Been_there writes:

Thank you, Matt Lakin, Adam Brimer and the rest of the KNS staff that contributed to this series. This is the type of original work that will keep us readers interested in print media. I'm looking forward to learning more as the series continues.

Whiskeybates writes:

Hey how about a story about the meth boom and the rise of meth use since the massive increase on giving kids amphetamines for ADHD. If pseudophedrine is the problem, how come it was on the market over the counter for decades without this huge boom, but then it took off in the post ritalin years? What is adderall? Just a mixture of three different amphetamines. Yet no one looks at the link of loading kids up with these things at a young age and then wondering about the long term consequences. This approach to classroom management has created a generation of addicts.

fratricide08 writes:

I'll say it outright: meth scares me to death. There's not another drug out there that actually lives up to the hype that the drug warriors have wasted on every other drug that's come along. I wish we (as a nation) hadn't wasted so much credibility lying about other drugs because it feels like the drug warriors cried wolf for 50 years and now no less than a freakin Dire Wolf has shown up at our door to let us know not only is it not extinct but we summoned it! And yet, because we cried out too many times there's little credibility left for us to warn folks of how unimaginably nasty this monster is.

I don't know what the solution is but banning sudafed isn't doing anything other than stopping those of us with sinus problems from getting relief. A lot of meth is now coming from Mexico and a full ban will only worsen that problem and bring more organized criminals into the business. The home cookers will turn to serious smuggling (which many already are) to keep the supply flowing. And I don't even want to think about serious turf wars happening over this drug. This drug used to be nothing but 'speed' but we've truly created a monster in the decades that have followed.

We all know the drug war has been a failure so how on Earth do we stop this one without making things worse? Meth's new potency is itself a product of that war (1970's speed/crank is 'low potency' meth changed by the same ingredient restrictions/bans on making speed we're using against the new version [today's meth] that came about from those restrictions).

What do we do about this one?

oldoldtimer writes:

Since we know what it takes to make it why does the FDA not make it perscription? This would solve 90% of the making. Then the base ingredients would have to come from Mexico. Thier economy needs the business.
I could never understand why people would even try drugs. I had hard enough time quiting smoking. Cold turkey is the only way. I have drunk some but never had the desire to get drunk. I guess havin an alcoholic grandfather is the reason. I have never been willing to give yup control of my body to a drugs influence. When I was a kid copping a beer was a great big deal. Now kids think they have to try every drug available just to fit in. I still believe it is from a lack of parenting. Kids can not raise themselves they need full time parents more than all those possessions two working parents bring in. Far too many children are being raise in a single parent family.

hystericalsociety writes:

in response to MerlOT_GoVols:

(This comment was removed by the site staff.)

Man! You're a hard-a&&! But, I have to admit that you have a valid point, and you make sense. It is hard enough to survive in the "real world" without wondering if the next person you meet is "hopped-up" on meth, and ready to do anything it takes to get your money, car, identity, or even you life- for their next meth high.

They are pitiful, yes. I have seen it first-hand. But they are Oh! So dangerous! We, as a struggling society, do NOT need this extra burden.

Give me a good old hippie pot-head any day- at least then, all you have to worry about is the contents of your refrigerator!

hystericalsociety writes:

in response to Nivram:

(This comment was removed by the site staff.)

Agree wholeheartedly. And we confined it to Friday and Saturday nights, because we were busy M-F going to school and making good grades, or our parents would have stripped the hide off of us, and we knew it! By the way, most of us had after-school jobs, because we knew better than to ask our parents for money to "go out" on Friday night. I know for certain that a request for "party money" would have flown like a lead balloon at my house. Also, we kept it down to a "dull roar" on Saturday nights, because we had to be up and looking halfway decent for church on Sunday AM! Hypocritical? Probably.

And what happened to most of us? Well, a few of our peers did "go over the edge", but they'd have done that with alcohol, or chloroform, or Laudanum, or whatever was available, anyway. Some persons seem genetically pre-disposed to become addicts on something- anything. I believe that history bears this out, with facts and dates and statistics.

Most of us grew up, got bored with "the scene", went to college, got jobs, bought houses (and paid for them!) and some of us went overboard in the other direction, and sent our kids to private schools because we feared the growing and changing "drug culture" our kids might be exposed to in public schools.

Our idea of a "good time" now is a bottle of fine wine, maybe a little "schmoozing" with our significant others, and a good, long nap! Aren't WE the party animals!

AirYaGoGitErDun writes:

How's that Bayer AM work for you?

Yep they advertise it for "morning pain," whatever that is....and we wonder why the addicition in this country?

You gotta get at why so many people have no life and resort to such stuff - it was all sports, cheerleading and band in public school, and now they have no hobbies, interests, or motivation to just enjoy nature. So, boredom sets in and then it becomes internet porn and dope.

Then, YOUR government tries to "law enforcement-it," and we are where we are now...Change the culture.

kayr writes:

Why is society so reactive to drug use? Fines and jail time are not deterents. If so, there wouldn't be repeat offenders. People who do this kind of thing don't care about what the law will do to them. So find out what they do care about, what motivates them to do this and work from there.

hystericalsociety writes:

in response to kayr:


Good idea. What DO they care about? Needlework? Football? Good grades? Financial independence? Give us something to work with, here.

Maybe they care that there weren't two parents in the home while they were growing up. Maybe they care that they used to have an interest in art, music, literature, diesel mechanics, dental hygiene, etc., and there was no adult to encourage them when they got home from school in the afternoon. Maybe they care because they were turned over to an "Uncle Ernie", who abused them while their single mother was slinging burgers for minimum wage? Who knows what they care about? If you find out, let us know.

hystericalsociety writes:

in response to moonpied:

(This comment was removed by the site staff.)

Thanks a bunch! I've seen this before, and tried to forget it- but here it is again!

So very sad- and even more frightening. We are losing an entire generation. If they "deserved it", that would be one thing- but NOBODY deserves this!

I'm not fanatically "religious", but I'd call this the work of Satan...

oneandonehalf#1388557 (Inactive) writes:

About the only thing I agree with Islam on. First time, right hand; second time, left hand. Third time, head. When you get a Visa from Saudi Arabia now days, there is a warning about drugs and the death penalty.

m34tba11 writes:

in response to MerlOT_GoVols:

(This comment was removed by the site staff.)

smartest thing anyone has said yet. Stiff penalty == the answer, it also helps cull the ever growing population :D.
