DEA DIRECTOR SPEAKS OUT AGAINST LABS

Asa Hutchinson was a federal prosecutor and U.S. congressman before
becoming director of the Drug Enforcement Administration in August 2001.
For the past month, he has been traveling the country on a "Meth in
America: Not in Our Town" tour.

He will be in Knoxville on Thursday to hear about the success of the
Southeast Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force's battle to stop the
manufacture, distribution and use of methamphetamine.

What he heard about Monday was news of the deadly explosion of a homemade
meth lab that killed two men and critically injured a third in upper East
Tennessee.

"This most recent lab explosion illustrates the unique dangers posed by
meth," Hutchinson said.

"The fact that you can have people killed in a meth lab, the fact that you
can have danger to law enforcement to such an extreme degree and the fact
that it is so highly addictive points up the unique nature of meth. "It's
an extremely dangerous combination that can wreak havoc in a community."

Finding people to agree with Hutchinson is not difficult.

Zach Wamp, Larry Wallace, and Fran Wiegand do. Wamp is a U.S. congressman
and was a House colleague of Hutchinson; Wallace is the director of the
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation; and Wiegand is an intelligence analyst
with the National Drug Intelligence Center.

Consider the numbers.

More than half of the meth labs seized in the Justice Department's
eight-state, Southeastern region in 2001 were in Tennessee. Nearly
one-fourth of this year's seizures are also in Tennessee.

"The problem is spreading from the Midwest eastward," said Wiegand.
"Tennessee is picking them up the past couple of years."

A law enforcement crackdown in the Midwest may be driving the illegal labs
eastward, Wiegand said.

But also, "Tennessee's landscape is rural and mountainous and that makes it
ideal for clandestine laboratories to be set up."

Wallace, who has fewer than 50 agents statewide dedicated to drug
enforcement, said he wasn't surprised by the trend or the numbers of meth labs.

"We've been warning of this for years," he said. "We need assistance and
resources to fight this cancer."

The TBI is asking for $1 million to hire, train and equip nine agents to
concentrate on what he calls the meth "scourge" in the state.

His request is on hold until the Legislature passes a final budget.

Monday's events, however, "point out one more time the critical need for
resources," he said.

Wamp, R-Chattanooga, calls manufacturing meth a "toxic cycle."

"It's dangerous to be around and dangerous to do," he said.

Wamp has guided an extra $1 million a year to the methamphetamine task force.

"This is a deadly, deadly drug," Wamp said. "We've seen the effects on
families. This is what I call a problem similar to moonshine, but 100 times
worse because of the danger of making it.

"It's a problem that's going to exist in communities where there are not a
lot of resources. It will take a combined federal, state and local budget
to clean up these labs."