Methamphetamine leaving permanent mark on California's Central Valley

FRESNO, Calif. - The Central Valley, famous for its fertile farmland and rich produce, is becoming infamous for a crop of another sort: methamphetamine.

The Central Valley and Southern California dominate the nation's meth trade and the drug's toll will be felt by everyone in the region from Redding to Bakersfield, one way or another, according to a special report by The Fresno Bee, The Modesto Bee and The Sacramento Bee that tallies the costs and profiles lives shattered by the drug.

Last year, authorities in the state discovered 2,000 meth or meth-related labs, an average of five each day and an almost fourfold increase over the 559 found five years ago.

State taxpayers spend $10 million a year trying to clean up meth labs in warehouses, hotel rooms and suburban neighborhoods. Of the 20,000 Central Valley children living in foster care, social workers estimate the majority come from drug homes.

Children are the smallest victims of the scourge. They live among the toxic chemicals used to cook meth and they may end up being raised by strangers if taken from meth-abusing parents.

''They just tear at my heart when I see how cute they are,'' said Sue Webber-Brown, an investigator for the Butte County District Attorney's office.

Webber-Brown collects photographs from raids. There's one from Yuba City where a pot of meth dripped onto a child's nightstand, onto a carpet next to bunk beds near where an infant is sleeping.

Children in homes like this suffer from neglect, malnutrition, lack of health care. Some are abused, raped and even killed.

''If you have a child death case and there's a drug involved, it's more likely to be meth than any other drug,'' said Sacramento County prosecutor Marv Stern. ''I don't know why, but I can tell you there is a clear link between parents who abuse meth and physical abuse.''

If the highly addictive drug doesn't warp behavior, it might bring another kind of metamorphosis.

The drug, which is snorted, injected, smoked or ingested, rots teeth, and speeds the aging process. When authorities go after suspects they know the person they're seeking will not look like they did when they got their driver's license photo.

''I used to be a pretty gal,'' says meth user Jessica Lee Hughes of Modesto. ''Now I'm a dog.''

Teeth are missing. Patches of her hair are gone. Blood is still fresh from sores on the former model's face. She holds up a picture of herself taken five years ago. It looks nothing like her.

The lives lost to meth are countless. They include everyone from users to dealers to manufacturers spending time behind bars.

Meth manufacturers range from superlab drug lords to ''Beavis and Butthead'' home brewers. They get recipes from the World Wide Web, or a 183-page textbook by a Wisconsin amateur chemist that sells for $30 and details how to make ''that food of the gods, meth.''

It can be made almost anywhere by almost anyone. Most of the meth in the Central Valley, however, isn't made by amateurs. It's made by ''families'' with roots in Mexican organized crime.

''It's our belief, based on our experience in the field and talking to other states, that 90 percent of the meth manufactured in this country is manufactured by Mexican national drug organizations,'' said Ron Gravitt, chief of the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement's clandestine lab unit. ''The majority of that is being manufactured in California, and some is being manufactured in Mexico and smuggled into California and then shipped throughout the U.S.''

A pound of meth can be cooked for about $2,600 with a mix of legal and illegal ingredients. The street value is about twice that amount. If diluted, it could easily sell for about $20,000.

Federal and state agents are focusing on those supplying the illegal chemicals needed to produce meth. One of those is pseudoephedrine, common in over-the-counter decongestants but illegal when sold in large quantities.

The costs of cracking down on the meth trade are enormous. A case that led to 10 arrests and six convictions will cost more than $2 million for the investigation, prosecution and incarceration.

For veteran law enforcement officers such as Stanislaus County Sheriff Les Weidman, the cost is worth it.

''If you add up the number of years they are going to spend in prison and then you add up the number and kinds of things they would be doing on the street during that time, their drug trafficking and the poisoning of our children and our waterways and our health system and all the things that go along with methamphetamine's impact,'' Weidman says, ''$2 million to put meth people away for a long period of time? Absolutely.''