METHAMPHETAMINE USE RISES CAUSING CONCERN FOR POLICE

In Kodiak over the past three years, methamphetamine has surpassed
marijuana and cocaine as the drug most often involved in drug complaints.

"We have seen an increase, but we're not at epidemic proportions
yet," Kodiak Police Department Chief T.C. Kamai said.

Meth cases are different from marijuana or cocaine cases, Kamai said.
Meth, unlike cocaine, can be produced quickly and cheaply from
materials available at most grocery stores. And, unlike marijuana,
meth doesn't need time and space to grow and be harvested.

Detective Dan Olsen, the only KPD officer assigned full-time to drug
cases, said "It's been busy."

Kamai said his department has fielded a lot of questions from people
in the community asking how to identify meth.

Pointing to a pile of the drug, he said, "How do you describe that? I
don't know -- salt?"

Olsen said the drug can look like "anything from a powder to big rock
salt-looking stuff."

But unlike cocaine, which usually looks more like baking soda, "You
can look at it and it looks crystalline."

Olsen said he has only seen one type of meth in Kodiak -- white
powder and crystals.

But officers across the country have seen yellow, brown, gray orange
and pink. It can look like brown dirt or even a stick of chalk, he said.

Meth users are mainly "older teens and younger adults," but, Olsen
said, "that seems to be the same with all the other drugs."

Kamai added, while young people are more likely to use the drug,
users come from all age groups and all walks of life.

"No one group is predisposed to using this stuff," he said.

Street price in Kodiak is somewhere around $100 for one-tenth of a
gram, Olsen said.

Most meth in Kodiak, Olsen said, comes from outside the community --
mainly from the Lower 48 and the Philippines.

But in the last five years, KPD has shut down three local meth labs,
Kamai said.

Although all three were shut down, he said, "There's probably three
out there that we never found."

Although it's never been reported in Kodiak, meth labs have a
tendency to explode.

The process involves the mixing of explosive chemicals, "they're
making hydrogen gas at one point," Olsen said.

A lot of labs found in Anchorage and Fairbanks, are discovered when
people have "gone to put out a fire, and it's a lab," Kamai said

"One pound of finished methamphetamine results in 5 to 6 pounds of
hazardous waste byproducts," according to a Drug Enforcement Agency Web site.

To make meth, drug labs often employ lye, red phosphorus, battery
acid, and iodine. Lab operators who dispose of the chemicals often
don't take proper precautions. The chemicals have been known to leach
into ground water or contaminate soil.

But the waste is often left behind for someone else to clean up.

The cost of cleaning up labs is huge and is often shouldered by law
enforcement. The cost to the community grows when calculated with the
health costs to treat meth addicts who are more at risk of stroke and
schizophrenia and who often have damaged livers, kidneys and lungs.

"This is not a problem exclusively for the police department. This is
a community thing," Kamai said.

He said he considers his police force proactive in fighting drugs,
but even his officers "don't often find out about it until it's too late."

He urged community members to call in tips to the Crime Stoppers
hotline. Tips on the hotline can be made anonymously by calling 486-3113.