by Theodore Wiesehan

    The face in the left photo is that of a healthy woman in her mid-thirties. She bears traces of a smile.
     To the right, a bedraggled face stares back morosely. Sunken cheeks, pockmarks and deep wrinkles give the appearance of a woman decades older than the first.
     The difference between the two pictures, Mark Kula of the Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center told an audience of area students and residents in the Seward High School auditorium, is two-and-a-half years of methamphetamine use.
     "(Methamphetamine) takes no prisoners," Kula said, rattling off a laundry list of the drug's detrimental effects - from tooth loss and "meth mites" (the sensation of insects crawling under the skin that prompts addicts to pick away at their own flesh) to schizophrenic-like behavior and even death.
     The photo comparisons were part of a 90-minute presentation Oct. 30 detailing the dangers of the drug and its increased abuse and manufacture in rural Nebraska. The event was organized by Seward, Centennial and Milford Future Farmers of America chapters and paid for funded by a Byrne/Jag grant through the federal government to combat drug and violent crime.
     Meth began making inroads in Nebraska during the early to mid 1980s, Kula estimated. The drug's low cost, ease of production and high level of addiction have caused meth use to swell in both rural and urban areas.
     Like other rural Nebraska counties, Seward County is not immune to the epidemic.
     "Meth use is here in Seward County," Seward County Sheriff Joe Yocum said. "I perceive that we started seeing it in the mid '90s and it kind of took the place of some of the other illegal illicit substances. But it's really taken hold in the last four or six years or so."
     While its low cost and long-lasting high (four to 12 hours, Kula said) have given meth the moniker "poor man's cocaine," Kula's comparison of the two drugs highlighted meth as more addictive and more physically damaging to the body.
     "Methamphetamine has one of the lowest recovery rates of any drugs, just because it is so psychologically addictive," Kula said. "People can be clean for a long, long time and then all of a sudden they're back on it."
     "It does not respond real well to traditional treatment program methodologies," Yocum agreed. "The individuals are going back to it upwards of three to five years after they have started treatment programs."
     Furthermore, while the purity of cocaine found in Nebraska is usually aroun 29 to 30 percent, Kula said that methamphetamine in its crystal form - known as "ice" - found in Nebraska is much higher.
     "The purity of ice that we're seeing is very high," he said. "Seventy percent all the way up to 94 percent we've seen."
     Like cocaine addiction, methamphetamine addiction develops around a cycle of binging. Addicts will inject or smoke methamphetamine triggering a five- to 30-minute euphoric "rush," Kula said. A four- to 12-hour high then sets in.
     "They don't want to come down from that feeling, so they take another hit," Kula said. "They will never ever achieve the feeling of that first high, but they will try."
     Methamphetamine may also be snorted, ingested or taken as a suppository, though once a user reaches the point of addiction the preferred method is injection or smoking, as the other methods do not provide the initial rush.
     As the addict strives to reach the feeling of their first meth high, they will "binge" - continue to smoke or inject larger and larger amounts of meth - for as long as two weeks with little to no sleep.
     As the drug's effects wear off, the meth addict enters a stage known as "tweaking." The user becomes paranoid and may hallucinate. Their behavior becomes unpredictable and their movements nervous and jittery.
     "They become very paranoid," Kula said. "This is when they begin imagining helicopters over their house."
     Yocum said the unpredictability of users poses a serious threat to law enforcement officers, as well as anyone whom the addict may perceive as a threat in their delusional state.
     "It's a dangerous situation if you encounter somebody under the influence of meth," Yocum said. "They are paranoid regarding police - and sometimes even the people they deal with - that someone's going to try to rip them off or the police are going to arrest them. It can be a full-blown psychosis."
     Kula said one way to spot a tweaking person is by their eyes. While a user still high on meth will have dilated pupils, during the tweaking stage the user's eyes are wide, pupils constricted and eye movements are extremely rapid.
     After exhausting their body's energy reserves, many users will experience the "crash" phase. The user enters a heavy sleep for as long as three days from which they cannot be awakened.
     Because methamphetamine is relatively simple to produce using common household and agricultural products, clandestine meth labs have been popping up throughout rural Nebraska and Seward County.
     "Some of these individuals are manufacturing (meth) in houses next to residences who have no clue what's going on," Yocum said. "They're putting it together in a variety of places - houses, trailer houses, outbuildings, cars, station wagons, under bridges and in the rural setting out in the open."
     The manufacture of methamphetamine creates extremely dangerous conditions to those nearby. Labs are highly explosive and release hazardous fumes which cause internal organ damage if inhaled.
     Additionally, many meth cooks set up booby traps to protect their labs and alert them of anyone approaching.
     Yocum said his department has made arrests at labs in Tamora and Beaver Crossing in recent years and continues to find abandoned meth labs and dumping sites throughout the county.
     Meth cooks have grown brazen enough to set up labs in unused buildings on the land of an unsuspecting farmer.
     "People will call us and say, 'You know, someone's been trespassing at my place. I don't think they're living there but they brought some stuff there,'" Yocum said.
     Because of the dangers associated with the labs, both Yocum and Kula cautioned anyone who stumbles across a lab not to touch anything, but leave immediately and contact law enforcement.
     "Back out and call law enforcement right away," Yocum said. "Don't turn switches off, don't unplug things. Depending upon the chemical process, if you shut it down at that point...it can become extremely volatile."
     Anhydrous ammonia is used to create one of the chemical reactions in the production of meth, making agricultural areas even more appealing for meth cooks.
     "We continue to get reports from the coops that we network with about suspicious activities and episodes of visits by individuals that are looking to get anhydrous ammonia," Yocum said.
     Cooks will often steal the anhydrous, siphoning it into small propane tanks. Kula said that propane tanks used for anhydrous theft are easy to spot because the brass fittings turn a blue-green color.
     Anhydrous theft is not uncommon in Seward County, Yocum said, and the department has apprehended several individuals trying to steal the ammonia from a tank.
     "We did have one episode in which someone attempted to steal a whole pup tank," Yocum said.
     Recently, Nebraska officials have attempted to put a dent in local methamphetamine production by regulating the sale of pseudoephedrine - a common ingredient in cold medicines and the active ingredient in the creation of meth.
     Medicines containing pseudoephedrine are now kept locked behind drugstore counters and customers must sign for their purchase.
     "I believe it has had an impact, just because now it is harder to get," Kula said of the restrictions. "But as with anything there's either going to be something else taking (pseudoephedrine)'s place or they're going to obtain it some other way."
     Restrictions on ingredients are by no means a solution, as Kula acknowledged. Even if law enforcement officers were able to shut down local meth production completely it would do little to slow drug use, as Kula estimated that about 80 percent of the meth in Nebraska is smuggled in from Mexico.
     Yocum said that the county is working to combat both local meth production and the growing drug trade on I-80.
     "We've had some good meth busts out on the interstate and seized kilo-sized quantities," Yocum said. "But not every county in the state has the ability or the drive or the familiarity of that kind of drug interdiction"
     Despite law enforcement's best efforts at enforcement, both Kula and Yocum emphasized education as essential to success in Nebraska's battle against meth.
     "More needs to be done in the way of education," Yocum said. "I've gone out and done at least three presentations on methamphetamine and it's symptoms and how citizens can help us if they encounter it."
     "Until people quit wanting to use this drug there's always going to be this drug," Kula said. "My philosophy is to educate the youth, and educate people so that sometime down the road there will not be a demand for this drug and hopefully the drug will diminish down into the shadows again."
     Kula's presentation educated students about the dangers of methamphetamine use, parents about the warning signs of meth use and rural landowners about warning signs of meth lab operation.
     He encouraged farmers to regularly inspect vacant outbuildings and parents to administer drug tests to their children. Drug testing kits were made available free of charge to parents at the presentation from the Seward County Sheriff's Office.
     Kula remains optimistic in Nebraska's struggle with meth, saying that education seems to be tipping the scales in the fight.
     "I see it getting a little bit better," he said. "(People are) finally realizing the dangers of this drug. But that again could change in a short time. It just seems like right now statistics are in our favor."
     Yocum, however, sees no end to the problem in sight for Seward County.
     "I'd love to tell you that (methamphetamine use) is levelling off or going down, but I don't think that's the case," he said. "We're finding it in users that we never thought would have tried this drug. They've gone past that experimental stage and gone into a full-blown user phase.
     "It's not just limited to the young crowd, the 16- to 24-year-olds. We're seeing people that are 40, 50 years of age into it. The allure is so great with this drug it's epidemi