Drugs, Inc. (2010) s01e02 Episode Script
Meth
Narrator: America and Asia are in the grip of an epidemic.
Cop: Coming in! Narrator: Methamphetamine, one of the world's most powerful stimulants, can be made at home like modern day Moonshine from chemicals found in any pharmacy or hardware store.
Mike Hall: The way the meth is right now, it's like nothing I've ever seen in my career.
Narrator: It's toxic and it destroys lives.
Mark Buckner: Burnt everything I had everything I own.
Narrator: Addiction quickly takes hold.
Organized crime steps in.
And law enforcement is left to face the rising crime wave.
Cop: Now would be a good time to identify yourself Narrator: Producers, traffickers, dealers, users, doctors, police, they're all part of the $300 billion a year global industry that is, Drugs Incorporated.
Drugs.
Inc 1x02 Meth Methamphetamine addiction plagues America and much of the world.
It can be injected, smoked or snorted, and one hit gets a user high for as long as eight hours.
More addictive than cocaine or alcohol, meth traps users into a devastating cycle.
All over the U.
S.
, thousands of petty dealers sell methamphetamine under the street names 'crank', 'crystal', 'glass', or 'ice'.
A man going by the alias Juan Lopez began his drug career selling crack cocaine for a Hispanic street gang known as the Mexican Mafia.
Lopez: The drugs have changed a lot you know in the last, ten years.
Meth has taken over.
Narrator: LA.
The mid '90s.
A new product appears on the streets: Crystalline methamphetamine.
It's cheaper than crack cocaine and more potent.
It becomes an instant hit with drug users.
Lopez: All the crack users went to smoke meth.
All the people that were snorting coke went to snort Meth.
Narrator: While serving time in jail, a fellow inmate offers Lopez the chance to move up from street dealer to trafficker.
Lopez: I met a guy who was from Mexico.
And we got to talking about dope and he told me he would be able to hook me up once we were both out.
Narrator: Lopez now has a solid connection.
Once free, he waits to hear from his contact.
Lopez: He got out And through him we were able to go into different places in Mexico and find dope.
Find all the deals.
Narrator: Large Mexican drug trafficking organizations produce methamphetamine on an industrial scale.
Lopez starts to deal with representatives from a cartel in Sinaloa, in northwest Mexico.
Lopez: We would place an order and send the money to Mexico and then they would cook it for us there.
We paid about $45,000 for 13 pounds.
Narrator: Lopez's contact produces methamphetamine by the ton, in a 'super-lab' hidden in the Mexican countryside.
In the lab, cartel drug workers convert methamphetamine's chemical ingredients, ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine, into their own brand of the drug.
It's marketed to the masses as 'Mexican Ice' or 'Crystal'.
Lopez's 13 pound order has a street value of over half a million dollars.
Lopez: Then they would work it from deep into Mexico to the California-Mexico border, and then we would cross it ourselves.
Narrator: San Ysidro is Lopez's crossing of choice.
This point of entry between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, California is the busiest land border crossing in the world, and America's front line in the war on drug s.
Lopez: We had a car rigged with a hidden compartment, put the dope in the hidden compartment and drive across the border.
Narrator: After waiting in traffic for nearly five nerve-wracking hours, Lopez finally crosses the border and makes his way to a stash house in California.
Here, Lopez cuts the drug with empty fillers in order to stretch his product further.
Lopez: Once we got home we'd cut it with, Er, MSM, like a horse feed.
If we did 8 ounces, it would be a 50% cut.
As fast as it came in, is as fast as it went out.
I wouldn't sit on dope for more than a day.
Your dope is going faster.
Your dope starts to sell quick, So you got to pick up, enough to last you a week.
So you're up to 5-10 pounds, and it just slowly works up from there.
We got to a point to where we were selling about 50-75 pounds a month.
Narrator: At the height of his operation, this former lowly street dealer owns nine properties and clears over $50,000 a week.
Lopez takes great pains to avoid law enforcement, but then, in 2005, a police surveillance operation catches him in the act.
To avoid life in prison, he turns informant for the US government.
Now, he lives in grave danger.
The cartels are known to kill those who betray them.
Lopez: Out here in the streets if you have a green light, you're pretty much dead.
And anybody that knows that you have green light has the go-ahead to go ahead and to kill you.
If that's what they need to do.
Narrator: The Mexican meth trade relies on hundreds of traffickers and dealers like Lopez.
Every year the cartels produce approximately 220 tons of meth for the US market alone, with an estimated revenue of 8 billion dollars.
Meeting this demand requires industrial quantities of the chemical ingredients.
To obtain these so-called 'precursor' chemicals, the Mexican cartels turn to the world's main source of ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine: Asia.
In China and India, a small number of pharmaceutical factories produce thousands of tons of pseudo-ephedrine for legitimate use.
Criminal middlemen legally purchase vast quantities of these chemicals, and then sell them to illegal meth producers.
In Asia, a kilo, or about 2.
2 pounds, of pseudo-ephedrine costs $68.
But international criminal organizations, like the Mexican cartels, pay up to $10,000 for the same kilo.
The chemicals are sent to super-labs all over the world, where they're cooked into methamphetamine and distributed regionally.
The trade supplies up to 51 million users worldwide.
In the U.
S.
, imported Mexican methamphetamine is rapidly spreading eastward.
With increased Mexican immigration, traffickers and dealers now hide within law-abiding Hispanic communities across America.
Many roads from the Mexican border lead to 70% of the 250 tons of meth coming into the U.
S.
originates from Mexican sources, like the one used by Juan Lopez.
But Mexican Ice isn't the only kind of methamphetamine available.
Unlike heroin or cocaine, methamphetamine can also be made at home, using a concoction of readily available household chemicals.
Barry County, Missouri: a sparsely populated area of fields and farmsteads that stretch for almost 800 miles.
Narcotics Agent Larry Keen is from the South West Missouri Drug Taskforce.
Larry: Hey Adam, how many times have we arrested this guy? Adam: I've arrested him 3 times, over.
Narrator: He's on his way to his 40th methamphetamine bust of the year.
Adam: I guess we're gonna go to the door with you and I'll go to the garage with the other two agents Larry: I guess i go to the door with you guys then Narrator: The target is a local man, suspected of manufacturing the drug and dealing it to others.
Unlike other drugs, methamphetamine can be cooked in home labs like these.
Larry: Maybe you ought to go the other way.
Adam: On this road too.
Narrator: Larry supervises a team of six officers who surround the house.
They waste no time busting in.
Larry: Coming in! Cop: I've got you covered.
Larry: On the ground, face down! On the ground, face down! Cop: Get down! Larry: Face down.
Narrator: Inside, the officers find the suspect and another man cooking a fresh batch of methamphetamine.
Larry: So in order to keep them from destroying any evidence, we've made entry and secured him, and there is a lab here, so.
Narrator: Methamphetamine can be produced using rudimentary equipment and household chemicals.
Larry: Phew, still stinks in here.
Narrator: "Cooks" follow a number of different recipes.
But the officers have never seen this kind of home lab before.
Larry: First one.
It's our first one.
Narrator: They're using the new 'one pot' method.
A method so simple that anyone can now make meth.
Larry: Interesting.
Very interesting.
Narrator: A few essential ingredients, including ammonium fertilizer and lithium from household batteries, are placed in a simple soda bottle.
The chemicals react and produce methamphetamine, along with poisonous and explosive fumes.
Larry: This'll be his gas generator with his muriatic, muriatic acid and, Er, salt.
Oh, phew, it stinks in there too.
Narrator: In the trash, Larry discovers the core active ingredient: a cold and flu medication containing pseudo-ephedrine that can be bought over the counter at any local pharmacy.
Larry: He just bought these, he bought these pills today at 12:45, so, and it's what, 2.
45 now, so you know if you're getting, if you're getting two and a half grams every hour and a half and you're doing it for five to six hours a day, you can end up with a pretty good chunk of dope.
This is probably about a gram worth right here.
Give or take.
Narrator: Like many "home producers" this cook is an addict who makes meth for extra money to fuel his own drug habit.
Nearly 1500 meth labs were discovered in Missouri in 2009, making it one of the worst-hit states in the epidemic of home meth cooking.
Larry: I don't know where this 'one pot' method started but it's here now.
So if he's doing it, he said he wasn't even cooking before this, he started cooking when he learned how to do the 'one pot' method and so if he's doing it, there's more people doing it.
Narrator: For Larry Keen and his taskforce, busting home meth cooks and breaking the supply chain of traffickers like Juan Lopez is all part of fighting the larger war on drugs.
Narrator: Methamphetamine addiction is a global epidemic, and nowhere more than America.
The largest methamphetamine market in the western hemisphere.
Dealers sell meth on the streets, and a new wave of self-manufacturing means it's even easier to produce at home.
In the state of Missouri, an estimated 53,000 people use methamphetamine.
Steve Box was an addict for ten years.
He first tried meth at the age of 25 while experimenting with cocaine.
Steve: The very first time was when you would be using cocaine, and somebody would have some meth and it would look similar to cocaine, and, and you would like snort some and you'd know immediately it wasn't cocaine that it was crank.
'cause it would it burns like somebody sticking a hot poker up your nose.
Narrator: Steve is one of the only 6% of addicts who manage to kick the habit.
Now he's dedicated to helping others fight meth addiction.
He's written two books about his struggle and runs a Christian campaign called Meth=Sorcery.
Steve: When I got off the meth, I wrote the book Meth=Sorcery, and we send the book to prisoners that are locked up in prisons and we've probably been close to 100,000 books put into the American county jail prison system.
Narrator: He receives hundreds of letters from meth addicts seeking his support t .
Steve: Just a few today from Texas, Texas and Oklahoma.
I've got letters from, believe it or not, serial killers in New York to doctors, lawyers, preachers.
Just about every walk of life.
It's not always the guy that's over in the trailer park, you know, it's, Er, just, you name it.
I think I've received a letter from about every profession there is.
Narrator: Steve once owned a successful business manufacturing gym equipment.
Snorting meth, or 'crank' as he calls it, helped him keep up with the flow of orders.
Steve: I noticed with the crank that I could stay up you know, 24 hours a day and I could work for you know, a week or 2 straight without stopping.
Narrator: Methamphetamine makes the user feel euphoric, alert and powerful.
Steve soon begins smoking his meth in a pipe to get a stronger, faster high.
Eventually he starts dealing the drug, and his business begins to suffer.
Steve: You know, I got to where I was just, I was selling meth and I was no longer building my weight equipment.
And you know, the shop was still kind of like open, but we were, we were just doing something different.
Narrator: Meth's extraordinary rush leads to horrific after-effects, including severe depression and an inability to eat or sleep.
Steve: You feel like you want, you wanna just rip your face off.
And when you do finally get some real sleep you twitch, and you jerk.
Narrator: To avoid the withdrawal symptoms, Steve smokes even more of the drug.
Weeks without sleep eventually leave him with severe paranoid psychosis.
Steve: And so I might've spent my day, one day, would and I did this tapping my own phone.
Numbers would appear to me like a phone number, And I would cross-reference it in the names and numbers phone book and you would, might end up at a stranger's house just over a set of numbers that appeared out of thin air and you got their address out of a phone book and you're sitting outside their house with a shotgun.
Narrator: After years of abuse, Steve hits rock bottom.
Steve: Everybody lost their trust in me.
My wife hated me.
Went from having a lot to having nothing.
And just wanted out.
Wanted out of that world, wanted out of the meth world.
And, Er, you know, and found a way out.
Man 1: It's a good day to be in the house of the Lord, is it not? Narrator or: Steve finds salvation in his local church community, where incredibly, almost half the congregation has had problems with methamphetamine.
Preacher: How many are here in this room who were at one time in bondage to methamphetamines? Narrator: Denise Ledbetter had a long history of drug abuse before she discovered meth.
Denise: How I first encountered methamphetamine was.
I fell in love with the wrong guy and he cooked meth, so I didn't have to even go looking for it, it was just right there.
Narrator: Methamphetamine gives a sense of overwhelming pleasure.
Denise: You know It's such a euphoric high, you know, that you just want more and more and more and you'd do anything for it.
Narrator: But Denise soon finds herself living a bizarre existence.
Denise: Typical day would start at midnight, you just want another line, you want another pipe, you want another shot in your arm.
And then you can, you know, go and do something crazy, like mow the yard again for the third time this week, or clean the house again for the third time this day.
You know, I used to clean the bathroom with a toothbrush, you know, I'd stay in the bathroom and clean.
Narrator: Large doses of methamphetamine can also cause hallucinations.
Like LSD, meth-induced delusions seem entirely real.
Denise: I'm gonna do a big blast and go outside to the woods.
You know, and I saw owls in the tree with baseball shoes on and baseball caps on.
And I was like: oh that's cute, that's funny! Preacher: Evil men will burn in the, pits of hell.
Narrator: In deeply religious areas, many believers see meth as the work of the devil because of the demonic visions so many users experience.
Preacher: Methamphetamines, simply put, is sorcery and witchcraft in its highest degree.
Everybody has the same set of symptoms.
They see devils and demons.
Denise: You know, when you first see 'em it's like, ha-ha, you know, what was that, you know.
What was that? And you're out in the woods and you hear things, and you think, oh, you know, so it's kind of fun, you kind of play around with the devil.
You know, and then it gets serious, you know, and then it gets, you don't want 'em in your life.
Narrator: As the mind deteriorates, so does the body.
The most dramatic physical symptom of meth abuse is known as 'meth mouth'.
As users grind their teeth, the chemicals wear away the enamel, and the gums and salivary glands dry out, causing the teeth to rot and decay.
Long-term users become fearful and violent.
Over 80% of female users report domestic violence, including physical and sexual abuse.
Denise: I was gutter trash, he told me, and he would hit me and push me down and throw cigarettes on me, and pick up a can of green beans, can of whatever he could find and throw at me.
Throw lighter fluid on me, and throw a match to me.
And I mean, all those things sound horrible and you look, and you look at me and you think, why would you put up with that? But I did put up with it because of the drugs.
Preacher: Everybody that I've ever talked to has been on meth.
Narrator: Every year, over 125,000 Americans like Steve and Denise seek treatment for meth addiction.
For many, belief in a higher power is the only way out.
Dangerous to make and dangerous to take Methamphetamine is the most abused hard drug on the planet Almost one million grams of meth are snorted, smoked, or injected every day.
And it's spreading like wildfire Today, many law enforcement agencies say it's the number one drug threat in America.
Hall: It's gonna be busy.
Ex-basketball player Mike Hall is director of the 10th Judicial District Drug Task Force in Athens, Tennessee.
Hall: We need to utilize a couple of intelligence groups.
Narrator: Standing 6'9" tall, Hall is a towering figure in the local fight against meth.
Mike Hall: The problem is when they used to make methamphetamine they had to have a structure.
They would have a house or, a trailer or a hotel room.
Now they can be sitting in a car just like we're doing, drive down the road and make methamphetamine.
Everything is in this one pot, and it's just the size of a two liter bottle.
Narrator: Athens is in an area of and farmland and lush forest that causes hay fever and other allergies.
Mike Hall: We have one of the highest allergy counts in the South East.
Pollen.
And so we have a lot of legitimate people who need cold medicines, pseudo pills, and all that stuff can also be used to make methamphetamine.
Narrator: Across town, the drug taskforce pulls over a vehicle.
In 2006, Federal anti-meth laws cracked down on methamphetamine production.
Sales of pseudo-ephedrine are now strictly limited to 9 grams a month per person.
Mike Hall: He's already started breaking packages down.
Narrator: They suspect the driver is one of a new breed of criminal: "smurfers" a name given to them by law enforcement.
Mike Hall: I believe it came from the famous cartoon in the States, was The Smurfs and when people go to Smurf it's all these little Smurfs, all these people bringing back pseudo, pseudo ephedrine and they bring it back to Papa Smurf, the main cook.
Narrator: Smurfers are usually addicts who visit numerous pharmacies buying their quota of pseudo-ephedrine.
Then they hand them over to methamphetamine cooks in exchange for dope or cash.
Mike Hall: This one pharmacy we're looking to today is in the top five percent in the nation for pseudo sales which is amazing because we're not New York City, we're not Los Angeles, California.
We're in Athens, Tennessee.
Er, and they roughly have about 600 pseudo sales a week.
Narrator: Hall's taskforce surrounds a local pharmacy waiting for smurfers.
The pharmacy estimates that 80% of all its pseudo-ephedrine sales go towards meth production.
Angie: And the cars normally will park along that concrete wall because they think I guess the video cameras can't see their vehicle.
And they'll take turns going inside buying their pseudo.
Narrator: Inside the pharmacy, a packet of pseudo-ephedrine pills costs $5, but outside it changes hands illegally for up to $50.
The taskforce doesn't wait long before smurfing activity begins.
Radio Voice: A girl opened the door, put her hand in another guy's hand.
And now they're leaving.
Narrator: In the pharmacy parking lot, a girl is seen receiving pills from a smurfer.
Narrator: As she exits the pharmacy, Mike's team swoops in.
Carrie Beth: I'm sorry.
Narrator: She's the girlfriend of a suspected meth cook.
Hall orders the car and its occupant to be thoroughly searched.
Mike Hall: Well they probably, they probably need to go to rehab.
Okay.
The only way we might be able to.
Narrator: The suspect denies possessing any drugs, but the police soon find what they're looking for.
Hidden in pill bottles is Methamphetamine, packaged for re-sale.
Mike Hall: Is it meth? Narrator: The suspect is just 18 years old.
As a father himself, the girls age makes Mike Hall even more determined to stamp out meth.
Mike Hall: I'm a dad.
It's depressing.
I mean you get 18, 19 year olds out here making methamphetamine, it's terrible, it's terrible.
Carrie Beth: It's my boyfriend's that's what it is.
Narrator: Each gram of meth is worth at least $100, making it more expensive than heroin or cocaine.
Mike Hall: Er, somebody asked me if we would win the war on methamphetamine, the war on drugs, I says: "I might not win it, but I'm not gonna lose it on my back.
" So here we go.
Cop: Come on, girl, get in the back seat.
Narrator: The girl is arrested.
She'll soon enter a treatment program.
As night falls, the smurfing activity escalates.
While patrolling the road outside the pharmacy, taskforce agents stop 20 smurfers in just one hour.
Inside the store, an Undercover officer watches the activity.
Undercover Cop: Yeah, yeah, he, he wants to buy several boxes.
He said he bought last night.
Narrator: This man is part of a gang of smurfers waiting outside in a vehicle.
He buys the pills.
But before the smurfers can make their getaway, the taskforce springs into action.
Cop: Put your hands up.
Put your hands on top of the car.
Narrator: Smurfers are the taskforce's best lead to the meth cooks.
The threat of jail is enough for these men to reveal the address of their drug source.
Mike Hall goes across town to investigate.
Cop: Police Department.
State Police.
Narrator: On any drug bust, Mike's main concern is gunfire.
Mike Hall: If you're ready it would be a good time for you to identify yourself.
I'd hate for you to get shot Narrator: But on a meth lab bust, he must also contend with the risk of chemical hazards.
Mike Hall: spoons with residue on.
Narrator: Fumes produced by manufacturing meth are extremely toxic and volatile.
Here, they discover only a meth pipe and some drug paraphernalia.
The taskforce examines the premises, but they're too late.
The cook has apparently fled into the night.
Cop: I mean he's pretty much broke through that field right there, round the yard, hit the road and then cut up this driveway right here.
Narrator: But evidence of drug activity remains.
A horse-trailer outside contains numerous bloody syringes.
Cop: Oh, it's full of blood! Oh my God! Narrator: Like most meth cooks, this person is obviously addicted to the drug.
Cop: Both needles full of blood! Narrator: Any meth-cooking materials in the trailer may be heavily contaminated with waste chemicals produced during the cooking process.
These chemicals are dangerous to humans as well as the surrounding environment.
Chemical residues can poison wild animals or even pollute the water table.
The agents suit up in biohazard gear to protect them from chemical burns or infection.
Mike Hall's worst fears are confirmed: the horse-trailer is filled with contaminated meth trash.
Mike Hall: They're so paranoid, they're afraid to throw anything out, they're afraid to throw anything to where they feel like law enforcement or somebody could find it and catch them.
You see a lot of staph infection, MRSA, different types of diseases you know that you get when you're just dirty.
Every one of these plastic bottles and glass jars represents a cook.
Every time you see one of those plastic bottles laying there that means they cooked.
Evidently they like to use needles here which is a tremendous hazard for us especially if they carry AIDS/HIV, tuberculosis, you know whatever.
Narrator: From the pharmacy, through manufacture, to injection, the meth drug supply chain is ravaging once peaceful rural communities across America.
And narcotics officers are left literally picking up the pieces.
Narrator: The volatile substances used to manufacture meth can cause an explosion powerful enough to kill.
The Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville has one of the nation's premiere burns units.
Patients are flown here from all over the southeastern U.
S.
At any time, victims of exploding methamphetamine labs make up about a quarter of the unit's patients.
Mark Buckner has been in intensive care for 53 days.
He suffered burns on over 60% of his body when his meth lab exploded.
Buckner: All it took was one drop of sweat.
That sweat hit the, hit the bottle and it blowed up in my hands.
I was in my RV.
I've never seen nothing burn that quick.
It blowed me out of the door.
It burned everything I had, everything I owned.
Narrator: Mark's mother holds down his tracheotomy tube, a surgically inserted airway in his throat, to help him speak.
Buckner's mother: I come every day, don't I? Narrator: Mark was once under constant pressure to supply other addicts with meth.
Buckner: I don't know, 50-75 people over here.
Car loads all day long,in and out in and out.
I'd go 2 or 3 weeks without sleeping.
Narrator: When he was flown in by heliCopter, Mark was near death.
His injuries caused renal and respiratory failure.
Dr.
Jeffrey Guy is Mark's surgeon and the Burns Unit Director.
Doctor Guy: When a flash burns comes you know, it's thousands of degrees.
And he's burned on roughly 60% of his body.
This is absolutely a life threatening injury.
And as you can see in his case, there's certainly a life changing injury.
We literally have to kind of shave this burnt skin off, this is dead skin, and then we do a series of skin graphs where we literally shave the healthy skin from his lower legs and we basically transplant to the burns.
Narrator: But Mark's case is just one of many.
Doctor Guy: We typically have about 20 patients on the service that have some sort of meth related event, where they're using meth, or cooking meth.
We get about one, you know, true meth lab explosion about once every couple of weeks, you know, maybe every three or four weeks, that ends somebody in the intensive care unit or on life support.
Narrator: Mark survived the tragedy, but his life is forever changed.
Buckner: I'll never be able to go out in the sun like I used to or nothing.
It's changed everything that's true.
Narrator: Methamphetamine cooks are often unwilling to admit the cause of their injuries.
Dr.
Guy looks for the telltale signs of meth use.
Doctor Guy: Meth mouth is certainly the most obvious.
Er, meth mouth is rotting of the teeth and it's pretty dramatic.
Er, you'll see people who are just Er, just totally emaciated.
The other thing is that their bodies are just so revved up, particularly if they're still coming off the meth and since their body has seen so many drugs that our medications won't touch them.
Narrator: Mark Buckner is one of the 48% of meth users who have no health insurance and place a great strain on the hospital resources.
Doctor Guy: You know, when all is said and done, this will probably cost a million dollars.
Um, and it's the right thing to do to take care of somebody like that.
But that's a million dollars of uncompensated care.
This one hospital last year did approximately 300 million dollars in charity care.
This one hospital in Central Tennessee.
Um, and so you have to question how long can one hospital provide 300 million dollars of uncompensated care.
There has to be an end to that.
Narrator: Overall healthcare costs for Methamphetamine users in the U.
S.
alone are estimated at almost $864 million dollars per year.
Buckner:Hell, it's not worth it.
I've done it, not because I wanted to get high, I done it for the money, that's it.
And no amount of money is worth this much pain.
Narrator: Mark will need more skin grafts and it's unlikely he'll ever regain full use of his hands.
Serious meth burn victims need ongoing care for years.
Sometimes decades.
Narrator: Methamphetamine is among the most addictive substances in the world.
Despite the horrors of exploding meth labs, many burn patients still return to meth abuse.
Leading Neuro-pharmacologist, Dr.
Edythe London, has spent her entire career trying to figure out why users are so addicted to this drug.
Doctor London: Neuro-pharmacologists are interested in understanding how drugs work, and particularly how medications might work and interact with brain function.
Narrator: Maggie Lavalle is a member of Dr.
London's meth study.
Maggie: Well a typical week if I'm a full and flourished meth addict, I can go anywhere from, I can smoke anywhere from $200 worth of meth to $400 worth of meth.
Out of my mind.
Doctor London: Go and close your eyes for me for a second.
Narrator: The volunteers undergo a series of PE scans that produce images that allow Dr London to look inside the brain and analyse the drug's effects.
Methamphetamine causes the brain to release chemical messengers called 'neurotransmitters' that make us think, feel and behave in a particular way.
Dr London: One of the neurotransmitters that's primarily affected by methamphetamine is dopamine.
Now we think of dopamine as the pleasure transmitter.
Narrator: Many narcotics stimulate a flow of dopamine to the brain.
But methamphetamine floods the brain up to 1200% more than normal.
Dr.
London: There is a huge release of dopamine and that produces a feeling of intense euphoria.
It also produces feelings of competence.
Narrator: But the areas receiving these chemical messages, the dopamine receptors, are damaged by toxins in the methamphetamine.
Over long term use, the receptors begin to fail.
Meth addicts may have up to 16% fewer dopamine receptors than a normal brain.
Doctor London: We've recently shown that the level of dopamine activity in the brain is highly correlated with impulsivity.
The fewer dopamine receptors the more impulsive a person is.
So dopamine in the methamphetamine abuser is very much linked to self-control.
Narrator: This lack of self-control not only adds to the severity of the addiction, but also leads to other violent or compulsive behavior.
Maggie Lavalle found herself unable to control an impulse to steal.
Maggie Lavalle: I embezzled $32,000.
I closed down a gas station that I worked at.
Whatever I needed I had it 'cause I took the money.
Narrator: Dr.
London has discovered that the brain damage can often, but not always, repair itself.
While the search for a medical cure continues, the only real option available to addicts is behavioral therapy, like drug counseling.
Maggie Lavalle's story isn't unusual.
In some Californian cities, nearly a third of all persons arrested test positive for methamphetamine.
At the Santa Barbara County Jail, Chuck McClain is determined to combat the problem.
Chuck: We started 12 years ago.
The chief of the jail at that time decided that, you know, we need to get something going here because, you know, they run a 75% recidivism rate.
Narrator: McClain has 150 inmates in behavioural therapy for drug abuse.
65% of them are meth users.
They receive a combination of reading materials, group therapy sessions and one-on-one counselling.
Like many inmates at Santa Barbara, Dave Wagman is a repeat offender.
Dave: The way I use is, they're called runs or binges I would inject myself up to 5 or 6 times a day if the stuff was reasonably good.
Probably the last five years I cannot stop doing it until I get arrested.
Narrator: For many, Chuck's program works.
34% of the inmates are caught re-offending far lower than the jail's 75% average.
Still it means over a third of his participants will return to jail.
Chuck will see some of these faces again and again.
Chuck: You have children? Olga: Seven.
Chuck: You have seven kids? Olga: Yes.
Chuck: How old are you? Olga: I'm 34.
Chuck: 34.
Narrator: Keeping a prisoner in Santa Barbara Jail costs $26,000 a year.
It's a heavy burden for the taxpayers.
Nationally, the cost of methamphetamine-related crime is estimated at around $4 billion.
Chuck: When they're out there using, they're not working, they're not contributing to society.
They're taking away from society.
It takes a lot of money to house 'em, it takes a lot of money for the police force to arrest them and so on and so forth.
And that's a huge cost.
And that's what this is all about, is reducing the cost to the community at large of addiction.
Narrator: Santa Barbara is the only county facility in California to offer a full-fledged treatment program.
Until scientists like Edythe London find a cure for methamphetamine addiction, America's jails and treatment programs will continue to house the drug's victims.
Narrator: Methamphetamine directly impacts the brain's pleasure center, and there's one pleasure that's heightened more intensely than any other: sex.
The health impact on some communities is extreme.
San Francisco is a mecca for gay, lesbian and bisexual people from around the world.
In a community that has suffered the terrible effects of HIV and AIDS, methamphetamine has taken a strong hold, with dire consequences for those fighting the HIV virus.
Since the mid '90s, 'Crystal' meth has become the drug of choice in the gay club scene.
Aaron Schirmer took many drugs, including heroin, before he discovered meth.
He was part of San Francisco's gay crystal meth scene for 8 years.
Schirmer: Crystal Meth is very accessible.
You can walk down the street and find crystal meth, you know, in most of the gay communities.
On the weekends it's really easy to find in clubs.
You know, I used to go into bars and stand in the rest room and be offered a line.
Narrator: Crystal meth gives users a rush of energy.
The cascade of dopamine entering the brain and central nervous system also intensifies feelings of sexual arousal.
Schirmer: Like an amazing euphoric rush.
Like you know, like I'm experiencing primal life, you know, urges that I've always wanted to feel.
Narrator: Aaron, a photographer and club DJ, has been HIV positive since he was 15.
For him, unsafe sex is usually fraught with the danger of infecting someone.
But when he's injecting, or "slamming" methamphetamine, sex suddenly becomes uninhibited and guilt-free.
Schirmer: It's like this kind of sex that you would have pre HIV you know, it's like where you could just take all of your clothes off, be totally naked and be raw with someone.
Losing all of your inhibitions like that feels really amazing, Narrator: Many HIV positive men in the city end up having unprotected sex with one other.
Schirmer: You know, there's a population of people who shoot crystal meth, or who use crystal meth who are all HIV.
And so that sex pool, that pool of people you know, can all have sex with each other and not worry about transmission to one another, which is in some ways has been like kind of a beautiful part of it, of, of the crystal meth scene.
Narrator: Crystal Meth soon becomes more than just a club drug.
Homosexual Meth users turn to Internet dating sites to hook up, and the search term 'Party and Play' or 'PnP' becomes code for drug-fuelled sex.
Seiver: If you put PnP people, instantly know that you're interested in doing crystal meth and having sex.
You know, it's kind of like the fast food version of, of sex and drugs is, you know, and you get online and you can have someone, at your door within minutes with drugs and ready to have sex with you.
Narrator: For those high on drugs, practicing safe sex is often forgotten in the haze.
Seiver: You can get high on crystal meth and party all night long.
And Partying all night long can mean having sex with lots of guys all night long, even days on end, because the drug keeps you high for that long, and unfortunately what often happens is that using any kind of protection goes out the window.
Narrator: When HIV negative men join in, the crystal meth craze becomes even more deadly.
Schirmer: You have the people who are newly coming into the crystal meth scene who lose all their inhibitions and are HIV negative who are really vulnerable, and especially when you have like, you know, HIV areas and non HIV areas all shooting up and all losing their inhibitions at once.
Narrator: Of the 28,000 cases of AIDS diagnosed in San Francisco through 2008, three quarters were among men who have sex with other men.
Within this community, crystal meth is now a major driver for new HIV infection.
Seiver: Gay men who use methamphetamine are three to four times more likely to have HIV than the gay men who don't.
It's really a significant part of why HIV infections continue to occur.
Narrator: Despite the risk, the pleasures that come with crystal make it extremely hard to give up.
Schirmer: It was the most psychologically addictive drug I've ever taken in my life, and to this day getting off crystal meth, I think is a lot harder than getting off heroin.
Narrator: The overall cost of methamphetamine to the United States is estimated at $23 billion a year, but the human cost of the ruined relationships, careers, and health of addicts, is impossible to quantify.
Even so, $35 billion worth of profits from producing and distributing meth continue to pour into Drugs, Inc.
Cop: Coming in! Narrator: Methamphetamine, one of the world's most powerful stimulants, can be made at home like modern day Moonshine from chemicals found in any pharmacy or hardware store.
Mike Hall: The way the meth is right now, it's like nothing I've ever seen in my career.
Narrator: It's toxic and it destroys lives.
Mark Buckner: Burnt everything I had everything I own.
Narrator: Addiction quickly takes hold.
Organized crime steps in.
And law enforcement is left to face the rising crime wave.
Cop: Now would be a good time to identify yourself Narrator: Producers, traffickers, dealers, users, doctors, police, they're all part of the $300 billion a year global industry that is, Drugs Incorporated.
Drugs.
Inc 1x02 Meth Methamphetamine addiction plagues America and much of the world.
It can be injected, smoked or snorted, and one hit gets a user high for as long as eight hours.
More addictive than cocaine or alcohol, meth traps users into a devastating cycle.
All over the U.
S.
, thousands of petty dealers sell methamphetamine under the street names 'crank', 'crystal', 'glass', or 'ice'.
A man going by the alias Juan Lopez began his drug career selling crack cocaine for a Hispanic street gang known as the Mexican Mafia.
Lopez: The drugs have changed a lot you know in the last, ten years.
Meth has taken over.
Narrator: LA.
The mid '90s.
A new product appears on the streets: Crystalline methamphetamine.
It's cheaper than crack cocaine and more potent.
It becomes an instant hit with drug users.
Lopez: All the crack users went to smoke meth.
All the people that were snorting coke went to snort Meth.
Narrator: While serving time in jail, a fellow inmate offers Lopez the chance to move up from street dealer to trafficker.
Lopez: I met a guy who was from Mexico.
And we got to talking about dope and he told me he would be able to hook me up once we were both out.
Narrator: Lopez now has a solid connection.
Once free, he waits to hear from his contact.
Lopez: He got out And through him we were able to go into different places in Mexico and find dope.
Find all the deals.
Narrator: Large Mexican drug trafficking organizations produce methamphetamine on an industrial scale.
Lopez starts to deal with representatives from a cartel in Sinaloa, in northwest Mexico.
Lopez: We would place an order and send the money to Mexico and then they would cook it for us there.
We paid about $45,000 for 13 pounds.
Narrator: Lopez's contact produces methamphetamine by the ton, in a 'super-lab' hidden in the Mexican countryside.
In the lab, cartel drug workers convert methamphetamine's chemical ingredients, ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine, into their own brand of the drug.
It's marketed to the masses as 'Mexican Ice' or 'Crystal'.
Lopez's 13 pound order has a street value of over half a million dollars.
Lopez: Then they would work it from deep into Mexico to the California-Mexico border, and then we would cross it ourselves.
Narrator: San Ysidro is Lopez's crossing of choice.
This point of entry between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, California is the busiest land border crossing in the world, and America's front line in the war on drug s.
Lopez: We had a car rigged with a hidden compartment, put the dope in the hidden compartment and drive across the border.
Narrator: After waiting in traffic for nearly five nerve-wracking hours, Lopez finally crosses the border and makes his way to a stash house in California.
Here, Lopez cuts the drug with empty fillers in order to stretch his product further.
Lopez: Once we got home we'd cut it with, Er, MSM, like a horse feed.
If we did 8 ounces, it would be a 50% cut.
As fast as it came in, is as fast as it went out.
I wouldn't sit on dope for more than a day.
Your dope is going faster.
Your dope starts to sell quick, So you got to pick up, enough to last you a week.
So you're up to 5-10 pounds, and it just slowly works up from there.
We got to a point to where we were selling about 50-75 pounds a month.
Narrator: At the height of his operation, this former lowly street dealer owns nine properties and clears over $50,000 a week.
Lopez takes great pains to avoid law enforcement, but then, in 2005, a police surveillance operation catches him in the act.
To avoid life in prison, he turns informant for the US government.
Now, he lives in grave danger.
The cartels are known to kill those who betray them.
Lopez: Out here in the streets if you have a green light, you're pretty much dead.
And anybody that knows that you have green light has the go-ahead to go ahead and to kill you.
If that's what they need to do.
Narrator: The Mexican meth trade relies on hundreds of traffickers and dealers like Lopez.
Every year the cartels produce approximately 220 tons of meth for the US market alone, with an estimated revenue of 8 billion dollars.
Meeting this demand requires industrial quantities of the chemical ingredients.
To obtain these so-called 'precursor' chemicals, the Mexican cartels turn to the world's main source of ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine: Asia.
In China and India, a small number of pharmaceutical factories produce thousands of tons of pseudo-ephedrine for legitimate use.
Criminal middlemen legally purchase vast quantities of these chemicals, and then sell them to illegal meth producers.
In Asia, a kilo, or about 2.
2 pounds, of pseudo-ephedrine costs $68.
But international criminal organizations, like the Mexican cartels, pay up to $10,000 for the same kilo.
The chemicals are sent to super-labs all over the world, where they're cooked into methamphetamine and distributed regionally.
The trade supplies up to 51 million users worldwide.
In the U.
S.
, imported Mexican methamphetamine is rapidly spreading eastward.
With increased Mexican immigration, traffickers and dealers now hide within law-abiding Hispanic communities across America.
Many roads from the Mexican border lead to 70% of the 250 tons of meth coming into the U.
S.
originates from Mexican sources, like the one used by Juan Lopez.
But Mexican Ice isn't the only kind of methamphetamine available.
Unlike heroin or cocaine, methamphetamine can also be made at home, using a concoction of readily available household chemicals.
Barry County, Missouri: a sparsely populated area of fields and farmsteads that stretch for almost 800 miles.
Narcotics Agent Larry Keen is from the South West Missouri Drug Taskforce.
Larry: Hey Adam, how many times have we arrested this guy? Adam: I've arrested him 3 times, over.
Narrator: He's on his way to his 40th methamphetamine bust of the year.
Adam: I guess we're gonna go to the door with you and I'll go to the garage with the other two agents Larry: I guess i go to the door with you guys then Narrator: The target is a local man, suspected of manufacturing the drug and dealing it to others.
Unlike other drugs, methamphetamine can be cooked in home labs like these.
Larry: Maybe you ought to go the other way.
Adam: On this road too.
Narrator: Larry supervises a team of six officers who surround the house.
They waste no time busting in.
Larry: Coming in! Cop: I've got you covered.
Larry: On the ground, face down! On the ground, face down! Cop: Get down! Larry: Face down.
Narrator: Inside, the officers find the suspect and another man cooking a fresh batch of methamphetamine.
Larry: So in order to keep them from destroying any evidence, we've made entry and secured him, and there is a lab here, so.
Narrator: Methamphetamine can be produced using rudimentary equipment and household chemicals.
Larry: Phew, still stinks in here.
Narrator: "Cooks" follow a number of different recipes.
But the officers have never seen this kind of home lab before.
Larry: First one.
It's our first one.
Narrator: They're using the new 'one pot' method.
A method so simple that anyone can now make meth.
Larry: Interesting.
Very interesting.
Narrator: A few essential ingredients, including ammonium fertilizer and lithium from household batteries, are placed in a simple soda bottle.
The chemicals react and produce methamphetamine, along with poisonous and explosive fumes.
Larry: This'll be his gas generator with his muriatic, muriatic acid and, Er, salt.
Oh, phew, it stinks in there too.
Narrator: In the trash, Larry discovers the core active ingredient: a cold and flu medication containing pseudo-ephedrine that can be bought over the counter at any local pharmacy.
Larry: He just bought these, he bought these pills today at 12:45, so, and it's what, 2.
45 now, so you know if you're getting, if you're getting two and a half grams every hour and a half and you're doing it for five to six hours a day, you can end up with a pretty good chunk of dope.
This is probably about a gram worth right here.
Give or take.
Narrator: Like many "home producers" this cook is an addict who makes meth for extra money to fuel his own drug habit.
Nearly 1500 meth labs were discovered in Missouri in 2009, making it one of the worst-hit states in the epidemic of home meth cooking.
Larry: I don't know where this 'one pot' method started but it's here now.
So if he's doing it, he said he wasn't even cooking before this, he started cooking when he learned how to do the 'one pot' method and so if he's doing it, there's more people doing it.
Narrator: For Larry Keen and his taskforce, busting home meth cooks and breaking the supply chain of traffickers like Juan Lopez is all part of fighting the larger war on drugs.
Narrator: Methamphetamine addiction is a global epidemic, and nowhere more than America.
The largest methamphetamine market in the western hemisphere.
Dealers sell meth on the streets, and a new wave of self-manufacturing means it's even easier to produce at home.
In the state of Missouri, an estimated 53,000 people use methamphetamine.
Steve Box was an addict for ten years.
He first tried meth at the age of 25 while experimenting with cocaine.
Steve: The very first time was when you would be using cocaine, and somebody would have some meth and it would look similar to cocaine, and, and you would like snort some and you'd know immediately it wasn't cocaine that it was crank.
'cause it would it burns like somebody sticking a hot poker up your nose.
Narrator: Steve is one of the only 6% of addicts who manage to kick the habit.
Now he's dedicated to helping others fight meth addiction.
He's written two books about his struggle and runs a Christian campaign called Meth=Sorcery.
Steve: When I got off the meth, I wrote the book Meth=Sorcery, and we send the book to prisoners that are locked up in prisons and we've probably been close to 100,000 books put into the American county jail prison system.
Narrator: He receives hundreds of letters from meth addicts seeking his support t .
Steve: Just a few today from Texas, Texas and Oklahoma.
I've got letters from, believe it or not, serial killers in New York to doctors, lawyers, preachers.
Just about every walk of life.
It's not always the guy that's over in the trailer park, you know, it's, Er, just, you name it.
I think I've received a letter from about every profession there is.
Narrator: Steve once owned a successful business manufacturing gym equipment.
Snorting meth, or 'crank' as he calls it, helped him keep up with the flow of orders.
Steve: I noticed with the crank that I could stay up you know, 24 hours a day and I could work for you know, a week or 2 straight without stopping.
Narrator: Methamphetamine makes the user feel euphoric, alert and powerful.
Steve soon begins smoking his meth in a pipe to get a stronger, faster high.
Eventually he starts dealing the drug, and his business begins to suffer.
Steve: You know, I got to where I was just, I was selling meth and I was no longer building my weight equipment.
And you know, the shop was still kind of like open, but we were, we were just doing something different.
Narrator: Meth's extraordinary rush leads to horrific after-effects, including severe depression and an inability to eat or sleep.
Steve: You feel like you want, you wanna just rip your face off.
And when you do finally get some real sleep you twitch, and you jerk.
Narrator: To avoid the withdrawal symptoms, Steve smokes even more of the drug.
Weeks without sleep eventually leave him with severe paranoid psychosis.
Steve: And so I might've spent my day, one day, would and I did this tapping my own phone.
Numbers would appear to me like a phone number, And I would cross-reference it in the names and numbers phone book and you would, might end up at a stranger's house just over a set of numbers that appeared out of thin air and you got their address out of a phone book and you're sitting outside their house with a shotgun.
Narrator: After years of abuse, Steve hits rock bottom.
Steve: Everybody lost their trust in me.
My wife hated me.
Went from having a lot to having nothing.
And just wanted out.
Wanted out of that world, wanted out of the meth world.
And, Er, you know, and found a way out.
Man 1: It's a good day to be in the house of the Lord, is it not? Narrator or: Steve finds salvation in his local church community, where incredibly, almost half the congregation has had problems with methamphetamine.
Preacher: How many are here in this room who were at one time in bondage to methamphetamines? Narrator: Denise Ledbetter had a long history of drug abuse before she discovered meth.
Denise: How I first encountered methamphetamine was.
I fell in love with the wrong guy and he cooked meth, so I didn't have to even go looking for it, it was just right there.
Narrator: Methamphetamine gives a sense of overwhelming pleasure.
Denise: You know It's such a euphoric high, you know, that you just want more and more and more and you'd do anything for it.
Narrator: But Denise soon finds herself living a bizarre existence.
Denise: Typical day would start at midnight, you just want another line, you want another pipe, you want another shot in your arm.
And then you can, you know, go and do something crazy, like mow the yard again for the third time this week, or clean the house again for the third time this day.
You know, I used to clean the bathroom with a toothbrush, you know, I'd stay in the bathroom and clean.
Narrator: Large doses of methamphetamine can also cause hallucinations.
Like LSD, meth-induced delusions seem entirely real.
Denise: I'm gonna do a big blast and go outside to the woods.
You know, and I saw owls in the tree with baseball shoes on and baseball caps on.
And I was like: oh that's cute, that's funny! Preacher: Evil men will burn in the, pits of hell.
Narrator: In deeply religious areas, many believers see meth as the work of the devil because of the demonic visions so many users experience.
Preacher: Methamphetamines, simply put, is sorcery and witchcraft in its highest degree.
Everybody has the same set of symptoms.
They see devils and demons.
Denise: You know, when you first see 'em it's like, ha-ha, you know, what was that, you know.
What was that? And you're out in the woods and you hear things, and you think, oh, you know, so it's kind of fun, you kind of play around with the devil.
You know, and then it gets serious, you know, and then it gets, you don't want 'em in your life.
Narrator: As the mind deteriorates, so does the body.
The most dramatic physical symptom of meth abuse is known as 'meth mouth'.
As users grind their teeth, the chemicals wear away the enamel, and the gums and salivary glands dry out, causing the teeth to rot and decay.
Long-term users become fearful and violent.
Over 80% of female users report domestic violence, including physical and sexual abuse.
Denise: I was gutter trash, he told me, and he would hit me and push me down and throw cigarettes on me, and pick up a can of green beans, can of whatever he could find and throw at me.
Throw lighter fluid on me, and throw a match to me.
And I mean, all those things sound horrible and you look, and you look at me and you think, why would you put up with that? But I did put up with it because of the drugs.
Preacher: Everybody that I've ever talked to has been on meth.
Narrator: Every year, over 125,000 Americans like Steve and Denise seek treatment for meth addiction.
For many, belief in a higher power is the only way out.
Dangerous to make and dangerous to take Methamphetamine is the most abused hard drug on the planet Almost one million grams of meth are snorted, smoked, or injected every day.
And it's spreading like wildfire Today, many law enforcement agencies say it's the number one drug threat in America.
Hall: It's gonna be busy.
Ex-basketball player Mike Hall is director of the 10th Judicial District Drug Task Force in Athens, Tennessee.
Hall: We need to utilize a couple of intelligence groups.
Narrator: Standing 6'9" tall, Hall is a towering figure in the local fight against meth.
Mike Hall: The problem is when they used to make methamphetamine they had to have a structure.
They would have a house or, a trailer or a hotel room.
Now they can be sitting in a car just like we're doing, drive down the road and make methamphetamine.
Everything is in this one pot, and it's just the size of a two liter bottle.
Narrator: Athens is in an area of and farmland and lush forest that causes hay fever and other allergies.
Mike Hall: We have one of the highest allergy counts in the South East.
Pollen.
And so we have a lot of legitimate people who need cold medicines, pseudo pills, and all that stuff can also be used to make methamphetamine.
Narrator: Across town, the drug taskforce pulls over a vehicle.
In 2006, Federal anti-meth laws cracked down on methamphetamine production.
Sales of pseudo-ephedrine are now strictly limited to 9 grams a month per person.
Mike Hall: He's already started breaking packages down.
Narrator: They suspect the driver is one of a new breed of criminal: "smurfers" a name given to them by law enforcement.
Mike Hall: I believe it came from the famous cartoon in the States, was The Smurfs and when people go to Smurf it's all these little Smurfs, all these people bringing back pseudo, pseudo ephedrine and they bring it back to Papa Smurf, the main cook.
Narrator: Smurfers are usually addicts who visit numerous pharmacies buying their quota of pseudo-ephedrine.
Then they hand them over to methamphetamine cooks in exchange for dope or cash.
Mike Hall: This one pharmacy we're looking to today is in the top five percent in the nation for pseudo sales which is amazing because we're not New York City, we're not Los Angeles, California.
We're in Athens, Tennessee.
Er, and they roughly have about 600 pseudo sales a week.
Narrator: Hall's taskforce surrounds a local pharmacy waiting for smurfers.
The pharmacy estimates that 80% of all its pseudo-ephedrine sales go towards meth production.
Angie: And the cars normally will park along that concrete wall because they think I guess the video cameras can't see their vehicle.
And they'll take turns going inside buying their pseudo.
Narrator: Inside the pharmacy, a packet of pseudo-ephedrine pills costs $5, but outside it changes hands illegally for up to $50.
The taskforce doesn't wait long before smurfing activity begins.
Radio Voice: A girl opened the door, put her hand in another guy's hand.
And now they're leaving.
Narrator: In the pharmacy parking lot, a girl is seen receiving pills from a smurfer.
Narrator: As she exits the pharmacy, Mike's team swoops in.
Carrie Beth: I'm sorry.
Narrator: She's the girlfriend of a suspected meth cook.
Hall orders the car and its occupant to be thoroughly searched.
Mike Hall: Well they probably, they probably need to go to rehab.
Okay.
The only way we might be able to.
Narrator: The suspect denies possessing any drugs, but the police soon find what they're looking for.
Hidden in pill bottles is Methamphetamine, packaged for re-sale.
Mike Hall: Is it meth? Narrator: The suspect is just 18 years old.
As a father himself, the girls age makes Mike Hall even more determined to stamp out meth.
Mike Hall: I'm a dad.
It's depressing.
I mean you get 18, 19 year olds out here making methamphetamine, it's terrible, it's terrible.
Carrie Beth: It's my boyfriend's that's what it is.
Narrator: Each gram of meth is worth at least $100, making it more expensive than heroin or cocaine.
Mike Hall: Er, somebody asked me if we would win the war on methamphetamine, the war on drugs, I says: "I might not win it, but I'm not gonna lose it on my back.
" So here we go.
Cop: Come on, girl, get in the back seat.
Narrator: The girl is arrested.
She'll soon enter a treatment program.
As night falls, the smurfing activity escalates.
While patrolling the road outside the pharmacy, taskforce agents stop 20 smurfers in just one hour.
Inside the store, an Undercover officer watches the activity.
Undercover Cop: Yeah, yeah, he, he wants to buy several boxes.
He said he bought last night.
Narrator: This man is part of a gang of smurfers waiting outside in a vehicle.
He buys the pills.
But before the smurfers can make their getaway, the taskforce springs into action.
Cop: Put your hands up.
Put your hands on top of the car.
Narrator: Smurfers are the taskforce's best lead to the meth cooks.
The threat of jail is enough for these men to reveal the address of their drug source.
Mike Hall goes across town to investigate.
Cop: Police Department.
State Police.
Narrator: On any drug bust, Mike's main concern is gunfire.
Mike Hall: If you're ready it would be a good time for you to identify yourself.
I'd hate for you to get shot Narrator: But on a meth lab bust, he must also contend with the risk of chemical hazards.
Mike Hall: spoons with residue on.
Narrator: Fumes produced by manufacturing meth are extremely toxic and volatile.
Here, they discover only a meth pipe and some drug paraphernalia.
The taskforce examines the premises, but they're too late.
The cook has apparently fled into the night.
Cop: I mean he's pretty much broke through that field right there, round the yard, hit the road and then cut up this driveway right here.
Narrator: But evidence of drug activity remains.
A horse-trailer outside contains numerous bloody syringes.
Cop: Oh, it's full of blood! Oh my God! Narrator: Like most meth cooks, this person is obviously addicted to the drug.
Cop: Both needles full of blood! Narrator: Any meth-cooking materials in the trailer may be heavily contaminated with waste chemicals produced during the cooking process.
These chemicals are dangerous to humans as well as the surrounding environment.
Chemical residues can poison wild animals or even pollute the water table.
The agents suit up in biohazard gear to protect them from chemical burns or infection.
Mike Hall's worst fears are confirmed: the horse-trailer is filled with contaminated meth trash.
Mike Hall: They're so paranoid, they're afraid to throw anything out, they're afraid to throw anything to where they feel like law enforcement or somebody could find it and catch them.
You see a lot of staph infection, MRSA, different types of diseases you know that you get when you're just dirty.
Every one of these plastic bottles and glass jars represents a cook.
Every time you see one of those plastic bottles laying there that means they cooked.
Evidently they like to use needles here which is a tremendous hazard for us especially if they carry AIDS/HIV, tuberculosis, you know whatever.
Narrator: From the pharmacy, through manufacture, to injection, the meth drug supply chain is ravaging once peaceful rural communities across America.
And narcotics officers are left literally picking up the pieces.
Narrator: The volatile substances used to manufacture meth can cause an explosion powerful enough to kill.
The Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville has one of the nation's premiere burns units.
Patients are flown here from all over the southeastern U.
S.
At any time, victims of exploding methamphetamine labs make up about a quarter of the unit's patients.
Mark Buckner has been in intensive care for 53 days.
He suffered burns on over 60% of his body when his meth lab exploded.
Buckner: All it took was one drop of sweat.
That sweat hit the, hit the bottle and it blowed up in my hands.
I was in my RV.
I've never seen nothing burn that quick.
It blowed me out of the door.
It burned everything I had, everything I owned.
Narrator: Mark's mother holds down his tracheotomy tube, a surgically inserted airway in his throat, to help him speak.
Buckner's mother: I come every day, don't I? Narrator: Mark was once under constant pressure to supply other addicts with meth.
Buckner: I don't know, 50-75 people over here.
Car loads all day long,in and out in and out.
I'd go 2 or 3 weeks without sleeping.
Narrator: When he was flown in by heliCopter, Mark was near death.
His injuries caused renal and respiratory failure.
Dr.
Jeffrey Guy is Mark's surgeon and the Burns Unit Director.
Doctor Guy: When a flash burns comes you know, it's thousands of degrees.
And he's burned on roughly 60% of his body.
This is absolutely a life threatening injury.
And as you can see in his case, there's certainly a life changing injury.
We literally have to kind of shave this burnt skin off, this is dead skin, and then we do a series of skin graphs where we literally shave the healthy skin from his lower legs and we basically transplant to the burns.
Narrator: But Mark's case is just one of many.
Doctor Guy: We typically have about 20 patients on the service that have some sort of meth related event, where they're using meth, or cooking meth.
We get about one, you know, true meth lab explosion about once every couple of weeks, you know, maybe every three or four weeks, that ends somebody in the intensive care unit or on life support.
Narrator: Mark survived the tragedy, but his life is forever changed.
Buckner: I'll never be able to go out in the sun like I used to or nothing.
It's changed everything that's true.
Narrator: Methamphetamine cooks are often unwilling to admit the cause of their injuries.
Dr.
Guy looks for the telltale signs of meth use.
Doctor Guy: Meth mouth is certainly the most obvious.
Er, meth mouth is rotting of the teeth and it's pretty dramatic.
Er, you'll see people who are just Er, just totally emaciated.
The other thing is that their bodies are just so revved up, particularly if they're still coming off the meth and since their body has seen so many drugs that our medications won't touch them.
Narrator: Mark Buckner is one of the 48% of meth users who have no health insurance and place a great strain on the hospital resources.
Doctor Guy: You know, when all is said and done, this will probably cost a million dollars.
Um, and it's the right thing to do to take care of somebody like that.
But that's a million dollars of uncompensated care.
This one hospital last year did approximately 300 million dollars in charity care.
This one hospital in Central Tennessee.
Um, and so you have to question how long can one hospital provide 300 million dollars of uncompensated care.
There has to be an end to that.
Narrator: Overall healthcare costs for Methamphetamine users in the U.
S.
alone are estimated at almost $864 million dollars per year.
Buckner:Hell, it's not worth it.
I've done it, not because I wanted to get high, I done it for the money, that's it.
And no amount of money is worth this much pain.
Narrator: Mark will need more skin grafts and it's unlikely he'll ever regain full use of his hands.
Serious meth burn victims need ongoing care for years.
Sometimes decades.
Narrator: Methamphetamine is among the most addictive substances in the world.
Despite the horrors of exploding meth labs, many burn patients still return to meth abuse.
Leading Neuro-pharmacologist, Dr.
Edythe London, has spent her entire career trying to figure out why users are so addicted to this drug.
Doctor London: Neuro-pharmacologists are interested in understanding how drugs work, and particularly how medications might work and interact with brain function.
Narrator: Maggie Lavalle is a member of Dr.
London's meth study.
Maggie: Well a typical week if I'm a full and flourished meth addict, I can go anywhere from, I can smoke anywhere from $200 worth of meth to $400 worth of meth.
Out of my mind.
Doctor London: Go and close your eyes for me for a second.
Narrator: The volunteers undergo a series of PE scans that produce images that allow Dr London to look inside the brain and analyse the drug's effects.
Methamphetamine causes the brain to release chemical messengers called 'neurotransmitters' that make us think, feel and behave in a particular way.
Dr London: One of the neurotransmitters that's primarily affected by methamphetamine is dopamine.
Now we think of dopamine as the pleasure transmitter.
Narrator: Many narcotics stimulate a flow of dopamine to the brain.
But methamphetamine floods the brain up to 1200% more than normal.
Dr.
London: There is a huge release of dopamine and that produces a feeling of intense euphoria.
It also produces feelings of competence.
Narrator: But the areas receiving these chemical messages, the dopamine receptors, are damaged by toxins in the methamphetamine.
Over long term use, the receptors begin to fail.
Meth addicts may have up to 16% fewer dopamine receptors than a normal brain.
Doctor London: We've recently shown that the level of dopamine activity in the brain is highly correlated with impulsivity.
The fewer dopamine receptors the more impulsive a person is.
So dopamine in the methamphetamine abuser is very much linked to self-control.
Narrator: This lack of self-control not only adds to the severity of the addiction, but also leads to other violent or compulsive behavior.
Maggie Lavalle found herself unable to control an impulse to steal.
Maggie Lavalle: I embezzled $32,000.
I closed down a gas station that I worked at.
Whatever I needed I had it 'cause I took the money.
Narrator: Dr.
London has discovered that the brain damage can often, but not always, repair itself.
While the search for a medical cure continues, the only real option available to addicts is behavioral therapy, like drug counseling.
Maggie Lavalle's story isn't unusual.
In some Californian cities, nearly a third of all persons arrested test positive for methamphetamine.
At the Santa Barbara County Jail, Chuck McClain is determined to combat the problem.
Chuck: We started 12 years ago.
The chief of the jail at that time decided that, you know, we need to get something going here because, you know, they run a 75% recidivism rate.
Narrator: McClain has 150 inmates in behavioural therapy for drug abuse.
65% of them are meth users.
They receive a combination of reading materials, group therapy sessions and one-on-one counselling.
Like many inmates at Santa Barbara, Dave Wagman is a repeat offender.
Dave: The way I use is, they're called runs or binges I would inject myself up to 5 or 6 times a day if the stuff was reasonably good.
Probably the last five years I cannot stop doing it until I get arrested.
Narrator: For many, Chuck's program works.
34% of the inmates are caught re-offending far lower than the jail's 75% average.
Still it means over a third of his participants will return to jail.
Chuck will see some of these faces again and again.
Chuck: You have children? Olga: Seven.
Chuck: You have seven kids? Olga: Yes.
Chuck: How old are you? Olga: I'm 34.
Chuck: 34.
Narrator: Keeping a prisoner in Santa Barbara Jail costs $26,000 a year.
It's a heavy burden for the taxpayers.
Nationally, the cost of methamphetamine-related crime is estimated at around $4 billion.
Chuck: When they're out there using, they're not working, they're not contributing to society.
They're taking away from society.
It takes a lot of money to house 'em, it takes a lot of money for the police force to arrest them and so on and so forth.
And that's a huge cost.
And that's what this is all about, is reducing the cost to the community at large of addiction.
Narrator: Santa Barbara is the only county facility in California to offer a full-fledged treatment program.
Until scientists like Edythe London find a cure for methamphetamine addiction, America's jails and treatment programs will continue to house the drug's victims.
Narrator: Methamphetamine directly impacts the brain's pleasure center, and there's one pleasure that's heightened more intensely than any other: sex.
The health impact on some communities is extreme.
San Francisco is a mecca for gay, lesbian and bisexual people from around the world.
In a community that has suffered the terrible effects of HIV and AIDS, methamphetamine has taken a strong hold, with dire consequences for those fighting the HIV virus.
Since the mid '90s, 'Crystal' meth has become the drug of choice in the gay club scene.
Aaron Schirmer took many drugs, including heroin, before he discovered meth.
He was part of San Francisco's gay crystal meth scene for 8 years.
Schirmer: Crystal Meth is very accessible.
You can walk down the street and find crystal meth, you know, in most of the gay communities.
On the weekends it's really easy to find in clubs.
You know, I used to go into bars and stand in the rest room and be offered a line.
Narrator: Crystal meth gives users a rush of energy.
The cascade of dopamine entering the brain and central nervous system also intensifies feelings of sexual arousal.
Schirmer: Like an amazing euphoric rush.
Like you know, like I'm experiencing primal life, you know, urges that I've always wanted to feel.
Narrator: Aaron, a photographer and club DJ, has been HIV positive since he was 15.
For him, unsafe sex is usually fraught with the danger of infecting someone.
But when he's injecting, or "slamming" methamphetamine, sex suddenly becomes uninhibited and guilt-free.
Schirmer: It's like this kind of sex that you would have pre HIV you know, it's like where you could just take all of your clothes off, be totally naked and be raw with someone.
Losing all of your inhibitions like that feels really amazing, Narrator: Many HIV positive men in the city end up having unprotected sex with one other.
Schirmer: You know, there's a population of people who shoot crystal meth, or who use crystal meth who are all HIV.
And so that sex pool, that pool of people you know, can all have sex with each other and not worry about transmission to one another, which is in some ways has been like kind of a beautiful part of it, of, of the crystal meth scene.
Narrator: Crystal Meth soon becomes more than just a club drug.
Homosexual Meth users turn to Internet dating sites to hook up, and the search term 'Party and Play' or 'PnP' becomes code for drug-fuelled sex.
Seiver: If you put PnP people, instantly know that you're interested in doing crystal meth and having sex.
You know, it's kind of like the fast food version of, of sex and drugs is, you know, and you get online and you can have someone, at your door within minutes with drugs and ready to have sex with you.
Narrator: For those high on drugs, practicing safe sex is often forgotten in the haze.
Seiver: You can get high on crystal meth and party all night long.
And Partying all night long can mean having sex with lots of guys all night long, even days on end, because the drug keeps you high for that long, and unfortunately what often happens is that using any kind of protection goes out the window.
Narrator: When HIV negative men join in, the crystal meth craze becomes even more deadly.
Schirmer: You have the people who are newly coming into the crystal meth scene who lose all their inhibitions and are HIV negative who are really vulnerable, and especially when you have like, you know, HIV areas and non HIV areas all shooting up and all losing their inhibitions at once.
Narrator: Of the 28,000 cases of AIDS diagnosed in San Francisco through 2008, three quarters were among men who have sex with other men.
Within this community, crystal meth is now a major driver for new HIV infection.
Seiver: Gay men who use methamphetamine are three to four times more likely to have HIV than the gay men who don't.
It's really a significant part of why HIV infections continue to occur.
Narrator: Despite the risk, the pleasures that come with crystal make it extremely hard to give up.
Schirmer: It was the most psychologically addictive drug I've ever taken in my life, and to this day getting off crystal meth, I think is a lot harder than getting off heroin.
Narrator: The overall cost of methamphetamine to the United States is estimated at $23 billion a year, but the human cost of the ruined relationships, careers, and health of addicts, is impossible to quantify.
Even so, $35 billion worth of profits from producing and distributing meth continue to pour into Drugs, Inc.