CHEHALIS, Wash. _ Roger Daily worked as a logger until a falling tree ruptured a disk in his lower back and forced him to change professions. He became a cook, whipping up batches of the methamphetamine stimulant that once helped him get through his workday in the woods.
Several times a week, Daily donned a filtered facemask and retreated to a small shed behind his house. There, in 5-gallon plastic buckets, he mixed anhydrous ammonia and other chemicals with tablets of pseudoephedrine _ a drugstore decongestant that he transformed into flaky white crystals known as crank.
In a county where the annual per-capita income is less than $20,000, Daily found he could earn several hundred thousand dollars a year from his new part-time job.
'There was never any trouble selling the stuff,' said Daily, who is now serving time in the Lewis County Jail in Chehalis. 'People, they would come around like dogs, begging for a treat.'
Washington state, according to federal Drug Enforcement Agency figures for 2000, had the second-most meth-lab seizures in the nation.
Meth labs are booming, illicit businesses in the struggling economies that characterize much of rural Washington. Though urban Pierce County is considered the epicenter of meth use in the state, hundreds of remote cook labs are tucked away in the pine forests of the Okanogan, the sagebrush lands east of Yakima, the Cascade forests and along coastal beaches.
Last year, sparsely populated Lewis County, with a population of 68,600, ranked first in the state _ on a per-capita basis _ for the number of residents admitted to state-funded programs for treatment of methamphetamine dependence.
At a time when the old resource-based economy of timber and farming is on its heels, Lewis County is struggling to deal with what law-enforcement, health and corrections officials and others describe as an epidemic.
They say the drug is wrenching apart families, fueling crimes, soaking up scarce county dollars, and turning the criminal-justice system into a revolving door for addicts:
_State, Lewis County and city officials discovered 99 lab and chemical dumpsites _ including a few large operations with ties to international trafficking rings _ that required clean up in the last three years, up from just 30 between 1990 and 1997. In the first six months of this year, 33 new sites have been discovered.
_In nine years, the rate of Lewis County children in foster care has soared from 5.68 to 8.43 per 1,000 _ double the state average. Officials attribute much of the surge in neglected or abused children to parents so strung out on meth that they ignore basic duties like cooking for their families.
'Our social workers tell me about family after family where meth is the primary source of concern,' said Mike Crowe, a Lewis County area administrator for the state Department of Social and Health Services.
_Meth has been linked to at least two Lewis County murders in the past year, and a barrage of domestic assaults, thefts and other crimes. Gary Hurness, a state Department of Corrections official, estimates that 70 percent of the felony crimes in Lewis County were linked _ in one way or another _ to meth use.
_Lewis County officials estimate 70 percent of their operating budget is consumed by law enforcement and court costs, in a county so strapped that the parks and recreation department's youth-programs division was recently eliminated. This month, voters are being asked to approve a $17 million bond measure to expand and renovate the jail.
Lewis County sits astride the Interstate 5 corridor, midway between Portland and Seattle. But the decade of prosperity that turned those two cities into emblems of the glittering New Economy largely passed Lewis County by.
Two decades ago, the abundance of work in the forests and mills helped push per-capita salaries in the county close to the statewide average.
Even then, the strong timber economy did not insulate Lewis County from substance-abuse problems. Alcohol was _ and still is _ widely abused. Cocaine made a big splash in the early '80s, offering an expensive but glamorous high refined from Latin American coca leaves. Marijuana and heroin were both available. Meth also took hold in the '80s.
But meth use exploded during the 1990s as much of the public land was closed off to loggers and mills closed, sending average wages tumbling to about 70 percent of the statewide average.
The frustration over job losses and limited opportunity, while not causing the epidemic, appears to have exacerbated its impact.
'People get caught up in a sense of hopelessness, of watching their futures fall apart,' Sheriff John McCroskey said.
McCroskey graduated from high school in Chehalis and, after a Navy career, returned home to begin a career in law enforcement. Since winning election as sheriff in 1994, he's cultivated a strong-man reputation, busting meth users and traffickers and instituting a work brigade at the county jail.
The meth that McCroskey fights is a stimulant, once offered to World War II soldiers to keep them alert in combat. It was embraced by '60s motorcycle gangs, who marketed it as speed. And in small amounts _ and in pharmaceutically refined form _ it has prescribed uses to treat attention-deficit disorder, narcolepsy and obesity.
But the home-cooked meth, sometimes rife with impurities, is consumed in prodigious amounts by the addicts, and casual use can quickly transform to addiction. It's a cheap high, with a line of meth _ enough to produce a high for four to six hours _ often selling for $15 to $20.
Meth 'tweakers' may binge for days or even weeks. They forgo sleep and food, and often become skittish, irritable or paranoid. Their teeth rot. And they often lose tremendous amounts of weight.
Studies indicate that meth use also does less-visible damage. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, meth attacks the nerve endings of brain cells containing dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a role in movement and pleasure.
Human-brain imaging suggests that the damage persists for at least three years after people quit the drug and is similar _ but less extensive _ than that caused by Parkinson's disease.
Federal and state officials say that meth has a strong presence nationwide in many rural areas, which offers both remote locations for manufacturing and an expanding market of customers.
In Lewis County, local officials say meth use cuts a wide demographic swath. A 32-year-old housewife, now struggling to keep custody of her two children, said she would snort it during the day and then down sedatives just before her husband returned from work to try to bring herself down.
In downtown Centralia, meth use is often a more public spectacle. A parking lot _ just next door to the El Rancho Tavern _ is a notorious hangout for tweakers.
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Inside the El Rancho, at a table lit by candles, gathered three old friends. They were all 1991 graduates of Centralia High School and had all left Lewis County. They had returned for a long weekend that featured a pig roast by the river.
But they said they didn't want to make their homes in Lewis County. Too many of their classmates who had stayed in the county had run into trouble.
They've gotten into meth or done jail time, said Seth Taylor, now a Seattle longshoreman. 'One of my old friends who I used to deliver newspapers with _ he's only 28 years old and his front teeth are all rotted out from meth use.'
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When meth first arrived in Lewis County, it was typically cooked with red phosphorus in a process that took several days to complete. One phosphorus cook _ now trying to recover from an addiction he says began at the age of 9 _ spoke of a secret family recipe that was handed down from his father. It created strong fumes that produced their own special high.
Another phosphorus cook allegedly set up his operation in the basement of the Mug Tree Cafe, a popular Chehalis gathering spot for county officials. Process chemicals _ including red phosphorus _ were dried in a microwave in a restaurant conference room.
In recent years, another much quicker process _ known on the street as the 'Nazi' recipe _ has gained popularity. Most of these producers are small-scale operators, with some labs so small they fit into a cooler and can be transported in the back seat of a car.
These cooks are often discovered as county and city law-enforcement officials stop a vehicle for speeding or are called to intervene in domestic disputes or other altercations.
These cooks are scattered all over, including the tightly knit logging communities of Packwood, Randall and Morton in the more remote eastern portion of the county tucked into the Cascades.
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Diana Daily thought that Morton would be a good place for a fresh start after the death of her husband, an Everett millworker. She moved there in 1987 while her son Roger was in high school. Roger Daily began using meth while still a teenager, dropped out of high school and later worked as a logger. His first wife didn't take meth and divorced him.
He says he got his second wife, whom he is now divorced from, hooked on meth. His lengthy rap sheet includes an arrest for violating a domestic-violence protection order.
Daily, 32, says he would periodically drive from Morton to selected Tacoma convenience stores, where the clerks wouldn't hassle him as he bought up to 1,000 pseudoephedrine tablets at a time. He kept the pills and process chemicals in plastic bags stashed in the woods. Daily once took considerable pride in his ability to turn out a pure, potent product.
When it came time to brew a batch, he would first grind the pills and dry the powder in a microwave to strip away the ephedrine. Then the powder would be mixed with lithium that was extracted from the tape wound around the insides of Double A batteries.
Anhydrous ammonia _ a gaseous and toxic nitrogen fertilizer _ would be dripped into the plastic buckets to convert the ephedrine to meth. Other chemicals were added to further refine the meth.
The mix of chemicals is a toxic stew capable of turning a house or dump into a hazardous-waste site that requires expensive clean-up.
The process also offers ample opportunities for mishaps, as evidenced by the multitude of fires, explosions and injuries involving meth production throughout the country. In one of the most serious Washington accidents, a 1999 explosion in the Thurston County home of a meth producer killed three people.
Daily said he tried to work safely.
'I was a careful cook,' he said. 'I didn't make mistakes.'
Daily now resides in a Lewis County jail cell with 15 other inmates. He wears a white cotton uniform and dons a hairnet each day to work a six-hour shift as the jail's cook.
He is serving a 14-month sentence for second-degree assault for ramming his ex-wife's car and unlawful possession of firearms. He views the jail time as a kind of lifesaver that has allowed him to quit meth.
The first weeks were hard. He slept all the time and yearned for the drug. Now, he says he's over the hump, clearheaded and able to get the same buzz from a cup of coffee that he once got from a line of meth.
Money for meth treatment is scarce. And most addicts who do get treatment end up relapsing, according to state treatment officials.
'Once somebody gets involved in it, the chances of digging themselves out are slim,' says Hurness, the Department of Corrections official. 'We see that day in and out.'
Daily hopes to beat the odds. When he's released from custody next year, Daily says he plans to move away from Morton and steer away from old friends who might tempt him back to cooking meth. He wants to be a father to his 13-year-old daughter, and go to schools to warn other teenagers about the perils of meth.
'I'm looking forward to getting out and staying clean,' Daily said. 'But there will always be someone to take my place.'
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Hal Bernton can be reached at 206-464-2581 or hbernton(AT)seattletimes.com
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(c) 2001, The Seattle Times.
Visit The Seattle Times Extra on the World Wide Web at http://www.seattletimes.com/
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