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APPALACHIAN ICE: THE METHAMPHETAMINE

EPIDEMIC IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

APRIL 11, 2006

Serial No. 109–187

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

DAVID MARIN, Staff Director

LAWRENCE HALLORAN, Deputy Staff Director

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

DIANE E. WATSON, California

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. MARC WHEAT, Staff Director

DENNIS KILCOYNE, Professional Staff Member and Counsel

JIM KAISER, Professional Staff Member and Counsel

MALIA HOLST, Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on April 11, 2006 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Emerson, John J., Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge, Charlotte District

Office, Atlanta Field Division, Drug Enforcement Administration .......... 20

Gaither, James C., district attorney, 25th Prosecutorial District of North

Carolina; Van Shaw, special agent, North Carolina State Bureau of

Investigation, Clandestine Labs Response Program; Gary Clark, sheriff,

Caldwell County, North Carolina; C. Philip Byers, sheriff, Rutherford

County, North Carolina; and Lynne Vasquez, mother of convicted meth

dealer and addict .......................................................................................... 38

Byers, C. Philip .......................................................................................... 45

Clark, Gary ................................................................................................ 42

Gaither, James C. ...................................................................................... 38

Vasquez, Lynne ......................................................................................... 49

Shaw, Van .................................................................................................. 39

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Byers, C. Philip, sheriff, Rutherford County, North Carolina, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 47

Clark, Gary, sheriff, Caldwell County, North Carolina, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 44

Emerson, John J., Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge, Charlotte District

Office, Atlanta Field Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 23

Foxx, Hon. Virginia, a Representative in Congress from the State of

North Carolina, prepared statement of ....................................................... 16

McHenry, Hon. Patrick T., a Representative in Congress from the State

of North Carolina, prepared statement of ................................................... 11

Shaw, Van, special agent, North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation,

Clandestine Labs Response Program, prepared statement of ................... 41

Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Indiana, prepared statement of ............................................................... 5

Vasquez, Lynne, mother of convicted meth dealer and addict, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 52

(1)

APPALACHIAN ICE: THE METHAMPHETAMINE

EPIDEMIC IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 2006

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Lenoir, NC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., in the

Commissioners Chamber, Caldwell County Government Offices,

905 West Avenue NW, Lenoir, NC, Hon. Mark E. Souder (chairman

of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Souder, Foxx and McHenry.

Staff present: Jim Kaiser and Dennis Kilcoyne, professional staff

members and counsels; and Scott Springer, congressional fellow.

Mr. SOUDER. The subcommittee will now come to order. Good

morning and thank you all for coming.

This morning, this hearing continues our subcommittee’s work on

the growing problem of methamphetamine trafficking and abuse—

a problem that has ravaged communities across the entire country.

I would like to thank my fellow subcommittee members, including

our Vice Chairman Patrick McHenry, who invited us here to his

district, as well as Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina’s fifth district. Each of them has been a strong advocate in the

House for an effective bipartisan anti-meth strategy. I am looking

forward to working with them on new legislation for this Congress,

and I hope that the information we gather at this hearing will help

us achieve that goal.

Meth is one of the most powerful and dangerous drugs available,

and it is also one of the easiest to make. It is perhaps best described as a perfect storm—a cheap, easy-to-make drug with devastating health and environmental consequences, consuming tremendous law enforcement and other public resources, that is extremely addictive and difficult to treat. If we fail to get control of

it, meth will wreak havoc in our communities for generations to

come.

This is actually the 12th hearing focused on meth held by my

subcommittee since 2001. In places as diverse as Indiana, Oregon,

Hawaii, and Minnesota, I have heard moving testimony about how

this drug has devastated lives and families. But I have also learned

about the many positive ways that communities have fought back,

targeting the meth cooks and dealers, trying to get addicts into

treatment and working to educate young people about the risks of

meth abuse.

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At each hearing then, we try to get a picture of the state of meth

trafficking and abuse in the local area. Then we ask three questions. First, where does the meth in the area come from and how

do we reduce the supply? Second, how do we get people into treatment, and how do we keep young people from starting meth use

in the first place? And finally, how can the Federal Government

partner with State and local agencies to deal with this problem?

The next question, that of meth supply, divides into two separate

issues, because this drug comes from two major sources. The most

significant source, in terms of the amount produced, comes from

the so-called ‘‘superlabs,’’ which until recently were located mainly

in California, but are now increasingly located in northern Mexico.

By the end of the 1990’s, these superlabs produced over 70 percent

of the Nation’s meth, and today it is believed that as much as 90

percent or more comes from Mexican superlabs. The superlabs are

operated by large Mexican drug trafficking organizations that have

used their established distribution and supply networks to transport meth throughout the country.

The second major source of meth comes from small, local labs

that are generally unaffiliated with major trafficking organizations.

These labs, often called ‘‘mom-and-pop’’ or ‘‘clandestine’’ labs or

‘‘Nazi’’ labs, in the lingo, have proliferated throughout the country,

often in rural areas. The total amount of meth actually supplied by

these labs is relatively small; however, the environmental damage

and health hazard they create in the form of toxic chemical pollution and chemical fires make them a serious problem for local communities, particularly the State and local law enforcement agencies

forced to uncover and clean them up. Children are often found at

meth labs, and have frequently suffered from severe health problems as a result of the often hazardous chemicals used.

As a side point, I just got a Blackberry message that in my District we had a meth lab case, not too far from my house, outside

of the major city of Fort Wayne, which is 230,000 people. And the

guy got 45 years because the lab blew up, it killed his mentally

handicapped sister; and the fire department, the local fire department, because there had not been a meth lab in that area, went

charging in and the explosion occurred just as they were getting

ready to enter, or the whole fire department, the volunteer fire

group, would have been killed as well as the girl inside, because

they did not know they were going into a meth lab case. So there

are dangers associated with these mom-and-pop labs that are different than the crystal meth, the Mexican meth that is coming in.

Since meth has no single source of supply, no single regulation

will be able to control it effectively. To deal with the local meth lab

problem, many States have passed various forms of retail sales restrictions on pseudoephedrine products, like cold medicines. Some

States limit the number of packages a consumer can buy; others

have forced cold medicines behind the counter. We now have a national law that will affect every State with that.

However, these retail sales regulations will not deal with the

large-scale production of meth in Mexico. That problem will require

either control of the amount of pseudoephedrine going into Mexico,

or better control of drug smuggling on our southwest border, or

both. The Federal Government will have to take the lead if we are

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able to get results. And we have started to do that in our major

meth bill as well.

The next major question is demand reduction. How do we get

meth addicts to stop using, and how do we get young people not

to try meth in the first place? I am encouraged by the work of a

number of programs at the State and local level, with assistance

from the Federal Government, including the drug court programs,

which seek to get meth drug offenders into treatment programs in

lieu of prison time; the Drug-Free Communities Support Program,

which helps the work of community anti-drug coalitions to bring

drug use prevention education to young people; and the President’s

Access to Recovery treatment initiative, which seeks to broaden the

number of treatment providers. But we should not minimize the

task ahead; this is one of the most addictive drugs, and treatment

programs nationwide have not had a very good success rate with

meth.

The final question we need to address is how the Federal Government can best partner with State and local agencies to deal

with meth and its consequences. Currently, the Federal Government does provide a number of grants and other assistance programs to State and local agencies. In addition to the programs I

mentioned earlier, the Byrne Grants and COPS Meth Hot Spots

programs help fund anti-meth law enforcement task forces; the

DEA and other agencies assist State and local agencies with meth

lab cleanup costs; and the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program

and the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign help schools

and other organizations provide anti-meth education.

However, we will never have enough money at any level of government to do everything we might want to do with respect to

meth. That means that Congress and State and local policymakers

need to make some tough choices about which activities and programs to fund, and at what level. We also need to strike appropriate balance between the needs of law enforcement and consumers, and between supply reduction and demand reduction.

Fortunately, I believe a big step forward was taken last month

when Congress passed and the President signed into law the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act. This comprehensive law is

designed to tackle meth trafficking at every State, from precursor

chemical control to international monitoring, and from environmental regulations to child protection. There was strong bipartisan

cooperation. The legislation moved through Congress quickly as

Members got the message from the grassroots that meth does not

respect State boundaries. We will be closely watching the implementation of this law and looking for new ways to thwart meth

traffickers and help those individuals, families and communities

that have been devastated by this drug.

Today we have an excellent group of witnesses who will help us

make sense of these complicated issues. For our first panel, we are

joined by Mr. John Emerson, Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge of

the DEA’s Charlotte Division Office.

On our second panel, we are joined by Mr. James ‘‘Jay’’ Gaither,

District Attorney of the 25th Judicial District; Mr. Van Shaw, Director of the Clandestine Labs Program of the North Carolina State

Bureau of Investigation; Sheriff Phil Byers of Rutherford County,

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a veteran witness to our committee; and Sheriff Gary Clark of

Caldwell County. We are also joined by Ms. Lynne Vasquez, who

has a painful story to tell about her son’s involvement with meth

and how it has devastated her family.

We thank everyone for taking the time to join us and look forward to your testimony.

Now I will yield to Mr. McHenry.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]

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Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for coming

to North Carolina and to our 10th District. As we were discussing

before, you are not a stranger to Lenoir nor the furniture industry.

Being a former furniture retailer, you have visited here a number

of times. But welcome back. Thank you for bringing the subcommittee here. I am very proud to work with you on combating

the methamphetamine use and epidemic that we are facing as a

Nation.

I would first like to thank the County Commissioners here in

Caldwell County for giving us the use of this chamber and providing us with the resources to be here today. So I would like to especially thank Chairwoman Faye Higgins, who is here today. Thank

you, Faye.

In March of this past year, President Bush signed into law the

Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005. This act underscores the importance and need to focus attention on the rise of

methamphetamine production, use and distribution across the

country. Today, national law addresses precursor products by putting pseudoephedrine and ephedrine behind the counter, enhancing

criminal penalties, while also addressing prevention, health and

environmental concerns of methamphetamine.

We have a number of experts on our panels today, I am so happy

they are here today. We are being hosted today as well by Caldwell

County Sheriff Gary Clark, who hosted a discussion among the

10th District sheriffs back about this time last year. Out of that

discussion that Gary instigated, we were able to formulate some

additional legislation that has been rolled into the Combat Meth

Act. In particular, doubling the penalties for those that are producing meth or any type of controlled substance in the presence of a

child. So thank you, Gary, for being here and being willing to testify.

I would also like to thank Sheriff Phil Byers of Rutherford County. Philip testified last year before this committee, but I know, because of the problems that he has faced as the sheriff of Rutherford

County with the rampant use of meth and the production of meth

there, the innovation that he is putting into force on the streets.

I am looking forward to hearing an update from him.

I also appreciate Jay Gaither, who is our District Attorney here

in Caldwell, Burke and Catawba Counties. Jay is going to discuss

the impact of meth users on the court system. And as meth becomes more prevalent and, you know, our forces are put out into

the streets to combat meth, he is going to relate to us how theft

and other drug abuse and trafficking issues are affecting our local

communities.

The debilitating mental and physical effects of this drug, the production process, the way it touches everyone, especially in rural

communities, are not being overlooked. Over the past few years

alone, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of meth

labs in North Carolina. Mr. Van Shaw from the North Carolina

State Bureau of Investigation, on our panel today, can attest to the

fact that SBI agents first discovered about nine meth labs here in

North Carolina in 1999. That was working with local law enforcement as well. This number has grown to 328 found in 2005. You

can see how rampant this increase has been.

9

Also with us is Mr. John Emerson, Assistant Special Agent-inCharge with the Drug Enforcement Administration, who has

worked with our local sheriffs and SBI and taken part in law enforcement operations within the past year targeting meth laboratory operators and traffickers here in western North Carolina.

I look forward to discussing the future initiatives that the Federal Government and local officials will undertake to eliminate the

meth problem in our State. Not only do the courts and local law

enforcement have a unique challenge when it comes to meth, but

child service programs, families, they bear the unfortunate burden

of this drug, greater than any government agency. And we are

going to have a witness here today that can attest to this in very

personal terms. So we also must be concerned with the welfare of

children and families and make sure that they are not neglected

and torn apart by this drug as well. Ms. Lynne Vasquez—thank

you for being here, Lynne, I certainly appreciate you taking time

out of your schedule. I know it is going to be difficult for you to

speak in front of such a large crowd and before us, but it is an important story and we appreciate you coming to talk about how

meth has affected your family and affected your life as well, and

how it has touched your child and your grandchildren. So thank

you for taking your time to be here, Lynne.

Let us just get down to it. Promoting awareness of this spreading

problem, protecting our children, providing resources to those on

the front lines are some of the key issues. And we need to solve

this problem and learn more about how we can take innovative solutions that are happening here at the local level, with our sheriffs,

with our district attorneys, with the SBI and DEA, working on the

ground. Let us take this information and plug it back into what we

can do at the Federal Government to have a comprehensive look

at cracking this problem. Look, 25 years ago with crack cocaine on

the rise, if the Federal Government had taken a comprehensive approach early, we would not be facing the severity of the problem

that we are still facing with that drug.

Hopefully, with the fast response of the Federal Government to

put a comprehensive anti-meth bill in place, we can put the resources on the ground to root out this problem before it truly takes

hold of our communities. In an effort to combat meth, as I said, the

President signed in March a bill that included the small provision

that I put in there doubling the penalties for individuals who manufacture or traffic controlled substances in the presence of a minor.

This legislation, as I said, comes directly from local law enforcement agents working on the ground. And the sheriffs today I hope

can give us additional ideas so we can continue to root out the rising use of meth. And let us make sure that we focus on our children, our families and our communities in this whole process.

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Mr. Chairman, thank you for bringing the committee here today.

I thank the community for being here and being engaged and I appreciate the expert witnesses that we are about to hear from. I am

also grateful that my colleague just to the north of us, Virginia

Foxx, Congresswoman Foxx, who is also a first term Member of

Congress, who I have enjoyed working with during my service both

in the General Assembly in Raleigh and while in Congress. I appreciate Virginia being here as well. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Patrick T. McHenry follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. As Congressman McHenry said, it is kind of like

being home in more ways than one. Not only am I a furniture dealer, but I have a High Brighton dining room suite and High Brighton tables in our living room and my bedroom furniture is Broyhill,

so I really do—and Hickory Tavern sofa—so I really do feel very

much at home.

Cass Ballenger was a close friend of mine and we went, when he

headed the Central American Subcommittee, we have been in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela multiple times and Colombia and elsewhere and he gave one of the greatest introductions

ever to the Republican Conference when Congresswoman Foxx was

running. He introduced her as a spirited mountain woman. So we

are really glad she is here today too. And do you have an opening

statement?

Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You have a good memory.

I want to thank the Caldwell County Commissioners for allowing

us the have the hearing here today. I represented Caldwell County

in the State Senate for one term and I am always happy to be in

Caldwell County.

I want to thank the chairman and the vice chairman for holding

this field hearing in western North Carolina and thank you for listening to the successes and struggles of our communities with the

scourge of methamphetamine abuse in our great State.

Mr. Chairman, your leadership on this issue in Congress has resulted in tremendous gains on the war on meth that have rippled

throughout the communities I represent. I am deeply appreciative

of the work you do and for the opportunity to build on our successes with this hearing today. And I am particularly appreciative

to Congressman McHenry for inviting us to come so close to my

district here today.

And I want to thank the members of the panel for the work that

they are doing in their community, for collaborating with the subcommittee today in this constructive dialog on how to combat this

crisis nationwide. I frankly was a little surprised when I got to

Congress to learn what a nationwide problem this was. As a State

Senator, I was quite aware of it and worked very hard to increase

the penalties for dealing in meth and for having any involvement

with it. And as the chairman mentioned, he had heard about a bust

in his district and a fire, one of the reasons I got very involved with

this was from a very personal situation also, in Watauga County

where we had a volunteer fire department go to fight a meth fire

in Deep Gap and Darien South, who was one of those firefighters,

totally unaware of what was happening, is in the hospital now

struggling for his life. The fire department responded, they did not

know that this was a meth fire and he has lost most of the use of

his lungs, as did some others have permanent injuries. So the people who are responsible for the meth lab only spent 2 years in prison, but our law enforcement people are going to spend the rest of

their lives dealing with this. I was able to get an amendment in

a meth bill in North Carolina to increase the penalties strongly for

people who injure anybody involved with law enforcement.

We had a hearing also in Washington and I was very glad, as

Congressman McHenry was, to bring one of my constituents and

community leaders, Sheriff Mark Shook from Watauga County to

15

that hearing. He is a leader in this area and has done outstanding

work in helping us reduce the number of meth labs in Watauga

County. We have very little crime in Watauga County and most of

it has been associated with drugs and with meth labs. But we have

made great strides and the number of labs has gone down significantly and I am really pleased to have that.

Our law enforcement personnel have valiantly raided meth labs

and driven mass production out of our area and we have delivered

a strong blow to the supply side of the problem locally, but without

a national response, it will only drive production of this drug elsewhere. And as the chairman pointed out, we have to worry about

the giant labs, the superlabs, but we need to be concerned about

it everywhere. The outstanding job Sheriff Shook, Sheriff Clark

and all of our sheriffs have done in our area must be duplicated

at the Federal level if we are going to eradicate meth from our

communities.

We all agree that the response to the nationwide methamphetamine epidemic must be multi-faceted. If there were a quick and

easy fix to the problem, we would have enacted it already, but the

supply and demand intricacies are complex and our response needs

to be an all-encompassing response. Some combination of controlling precursor chemicals, eliminating meth smuggling from Mexico,

severely punishing offenders and empowering our law enforcement

must be accomplished.

I am proud to have supported the anti-meth bills that we have

had in the Congress that have passed, and especially the provisions

in the PATRIOT Act that President Bush signed into law on March

9th. Among other things, the law will make it more difficult to obtain the ingredients necessary to manufacture the drug, crack

down on meth cooks, traffickers and smugglers by strengthening

Federal criminal penalties.

The challenge meth abuse poses is strong, serious and immediate, and so too must be our response. I look forward to receiving

the testimony of our panelists and hope we can use that feedback

to create a firm legislative response to the meth problem.

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Virginia Foxx follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Before we hear testimony, we need to

take care of some committee procedural matters first. I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to submit

written statements and questions for the hearing record and that

any answers to written questions provided by the witnesses also be

included in the record. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Second, I ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents

and other materials referred to by Members and witnesses may be

included in the hearing record and that all Members be permitted

to revise and extend their remarks. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Let me briefly explain to those of you who may not be familiar

with our subcommittee, a few things with procedural matters and

what we do. This is an oversight committee. Congress is set up—

and actually the oversight—the House was set up with funding, so

appropriations has always been part of the House. The second

group of committees that were established under the Constitution

were oversight committees and then third were authorizing committees.

The way theoretically that this works is that an authorizing committee today, for example, would pass an education bill like No

Child Left Behind, the appropriators would fund it and then the

oversight would go to Government Reform. This committee also has

oversight over education, for example.

We have oversight over all drug issues. Now we are also authorizing on drug issues. The drug czar office goes through our subcommittee, the Office of National Drug Control Policy goes through

our committee as well as the Community Anti-Drug Act. So we are

unique in the sense that we are the only committee that does oversight and authorizing on that issue.

Most people knew our committee when President Clinton was in

through a lot of the investigations we did there, on everything from

Indian gaming to Waco, to those type of things. Today, in particular, the vice chairman and I got quite a bit of publicity off the

steroids hearings, so we do not want to hear anybody here say ‘‘we

are not here to talk about the past,’’ because in an oversight committee, that is what we do, we talk about the past and we try to

figure out how to avoid in the future.

We swear all of our witnesses in. The penalty for lying under

oath is death, so you just need to know that. Not really. But we

have prosecuted people for perjury—so far, not from any of my subcommittee hearings. Mark McGwire, for example, spent 3 days trying to avoid a subpoena for the steroids hearings, went to several

cities and did not want to testify the way he did because he knew

he was under oath and that is why he did not want to testify because he could have been prosecuted based on some of what he

said, which is why he did not want to talk about the past.

The third thing is that we have a light system here because we

take testimony for 5 minutes. At 4 minutes, a yellow light comes

on, then red. Now we are going to do that with the southern drawl

today, so it will go a little past the 5-minutes that we do in Washington, but roughly. You heard me go through the procedures, all

the written statements will be in the record, anything else you

want to submit, that record will be published as a hearing book

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that will be one of a series of this period. We have been doing a

very thorough analysis of methamphetamine and there will be a

published book. But so we can get to questions, if you can keep it

close to that timeframe.

Now Mr. Emerson, if you could come forth. In oversight, we always by committee tradition, do the Federal first, because that is

our primary, is the Federal. And our first panel is Mr. John Emerson, Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge, Charlotte District Office of

the Drug Enforcement Administration.

If you will raise your right hand.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that the witness responded in

the affirmative.

Thank you for being with us today. As noted earlier, we have

been together in Bolivia a number of times and Cocha Bomba and

Santa Cruz and it is good to be in a place where we are less likely

to get shot at—at least hopefully—and where we have a President

different than Evo Morales. Thank you very much for coming today

and we look forward to your testimony.

STATEMENT OF JOHN J. EMERSON, ASSISTANT SPECIAL

AGENT-IN-CHARGE, CHARLOTTE DISTRICT OFFICE, ATLANTA FIELD DIVISION, DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION

Mr. EMERSON. You are welcome. Thank you.

Chairman Souder and distinguished Members of Congress, before

I start my testimony, I would like to take this moment to thank

my other distinguished law enforcement panelists for their efforts

in combating methamphetamine in western North Carolina. Sheriff

Gary Clark of Caldwell County, Sheriff Philip Byers of Rutherford

County and Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge Van Shaw of the

North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation have been outstanding partners in this fight. It has been my pleasure and that of my

agency to work closely with you. Thank you for your efforts.

In addition, I would also like to acknowledge the hard work of

Mrs. Gretchen Shappert, U.S. attorney for the Western District of

North Carolina and her staff of prosecutors who have been very

supportive in the prosecution of methamphetamine lab cases.

Chairman Souder and distinguished Members of Congress, my

name is John Emerson, I am Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge of

the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Charlotte District Office in

the Atlanta Field Division. On behalf of DEA Administrator Karen

Tandy, the Atlanta Field Division Special Agent-in-Charge Sherri

Strange, I appreciate your invitation to testify regarding DEA’s efforts in the North Carolina area to combat methamphetamine.

We have witnessed a rapid evolution of methamphetamine in

North Carolina. While not new to the Atlantic southeast, we are

now finding more meth than ever before. Law enforcement has

been combating methamphetamine for well over 20 years and we

have seen first hand its devastating effects. In the Atlantic southeast and across the Nation, we have led successful enforcement efforts focusing on methamphetamine and its precursor chemicals

and have worked with our fellow law enforcement partners to combat this drug. Methamphetamine found in the United States origiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:20 Dec 04, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\30526.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
21

nates from two general sources, controlled by two distinct groups.

Most of the methamphetamine found in the United States is produced by Mexico and California-based Mexican traffickers whose

organizations control superlabs. Current data suggests that roughly 80 percent of the methamphetamine consumed in the United

States comes from these large labs.

The second source for methamphetamine in America is small

toxic labs which produce relatively small amounts of methamphetamine and are not generally affiliated with major trafficking organizations. A precise breakdown is not available but it is estimated

that these labs are responsible for approximately 20 percent of the

methamphetamine consumed in America.

Methamphetamine is a significant drug threat in North Carolina,

where demand, availability and abuse remain high. The market for

methamphetamine, both in powder and crystal form, is dominated

by Mexican trafficking organizations. Small toxic labs produce anywhere from a few grams to several ounces of methamphetamine

and they operate within this State. These labs present unique problems for law enforcement and communities of all sizes. The DEA,

both nationally and in the Atlanta Field Division, focuses overall

enforcement operations on the large, regional, national and international drug trafficking organizations responsible for the majority

of the illicit drug supply in the United States.

The Atlanta Field Division’s enforcement efforts are led by DEA

special agents and task force offices and State and local agencies

who, along with our divergent investigators and intelligence research specialists, work to combat the drug threats facing North

Carolina. During the last year, our efforts in North Carolina have

resulted in significant methamphetamine-related arrests, some of

which occurred as part of investigations conducted under the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force Program and the Priority Target Organization Investigations Program. The western portion of this State is a hot spot experiencing a surge in methamphetamine trafficking, but DEA is working with other law enforcement

agencies in a campaign to fight its increased presence.

Training is vital to all law enforcement officers involved in this

hazardous investigation and since 1998, DEA’s Office of Training

has provided training to over 12,000 officers from across the country. Since fiscal year 2002, our Office of Training has provided clandestine laboratory training to more than 154 officers from North

Carolina.

In 1990, the DEA established a hazardous waste cleanup program to address environmental concerns from the seizure of clandestine drug laboratories. This program promotes the safety of law

enforcement personnel and the public by using companies with specialized training and equipment to remove hazardous waste. The

DEA’s hazardous waste program with the assistance of grants to

State and local law enforcement supports and funds the cleanup of

a majority of the laboratories seized in the United States. In fiscal

year 2005, the cost of administering these cleanups was approximately $17.7 million. Through our hazardous waste program since

fiscal year 2004, DEA has administered nearly 552 lab cleanups in

North Carolina at a cost of over $1.1 million.

22

The DEA is keenly aware that we must continue our fight

against methamphetamine. Nationally and within North Carolina,

we continue to fight on multiple fronts. Our enforcements are focused against methamphetamine trafficking organizations and

those who provide precursor chemicals. We are also providing vital

training in lab cleanups to our State and local counterparts who

are outstanding partners with us in combating this problem. Law

enforcement has experienced some success in this fight, but much

work remains to be done.

Thank you for your recognition of this important issue and the

opportunity to testify here today. I will be happy to answer any

questions you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Emerson follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much for being here and for DEA’s

steady work. I have expressed a lot of frustration on the House

floor and to the individuals involved about the drug czar office’s

lack of response on meth. They last week presented, the ONDCP,

to the Hill, to the meth caucus, started to present their meth plan

which they waited until we passed the bill and then decided to

come up with a plan about 5 years late. DEA, on the ground, has

been doing this, as you pointed out, for 20 years and in particular

under Director Tandy has been very aggressive. But once again, it

was kind of interesting because it appears it came from the bottom

up. In other words, the DEA offices were dealing with the meth on

the ground and the Washington headquarters was not even aware

of how much DEA was immersed in the battle on methamphetamine because this is probably the first drug issue we saw, particularly in the small labs, where it was coming at Washington from

the grassroots level rather than being defined as a national problem and going back down.

A lot of States had already put in the pseudoephedrine controls,

the Federal control will not actually take effect until I believe October 1st, although some implementation starts to go through on

June 30th on some types of drugs. Have you started to see in the

zone that you are working some drop in the meth labs because of

the feeling that there is a tightening up, local law enforcement

being more aware of it and an increased move to crystal meth yet?

Or how is it working in this zone?

Mr. EMERSON. Last year, in calendar year 2005, we saw what we

are calling like a leveling off of the labs. They were roughly doubling each year from 1999 through 2004. They were anticipated to

go somewhere near 600 at the end of 2005. The number was 328

and opposed to 322 the year before. So we saw some leveling off

last year.

The pseudo law that North Carolina courageously passed last

year and went into effect January 15th this year has been in effect

for almost 3 months and the Attorney General just released information that the labs are down about 30 percent for this first 3

months of the year as opposed to the same period last year. So we

have seen some effects, a leveling off last year and then with the

law in effect this year, a slight decline for the first 3 months of the

year.

Mr. SOUDER. When the pseudoephedrine law—this is just kind of

a curious question, I have no idea what—there is always a danger

in asking a question when you have no idea where this answer is

going to go. But have you seen any direction out of either DEA or

out of the drug czar’s office or out of the FBI or anybody’s office,

DHS at the border, that now that we are going to do this federally

on October 1st, but also that when a State pseudoephedrine law

takes effect, that there is a strategy shift that says every other

place that did a pseudoephedrine law in the United States, that

crystal meth came in behind it within 6 months and that somehow

there needs to be an adjusting to understand who is going to supply the meth in that region. There is no exception. In Oregon and

Washington, Hawaii that were the first States that had the big

meth problems, this happened. Oklahoma, which touted their law,

is now overrun with crystal meth and the regulation of

31

pseudoephedrine, while it is better for local law enforcement, really

is not better for the people who get addicted. In fact, it is cheaper

and more potent.

Is there a strategy that says when we do this, this is how the

drug dealers are going to react, and drug addicts?

Mr. EMERSON. We have certainly talked about it and certainly

we have received information like that from our headquarters

about shifts in patterns and trends. We do see that information out

of headquarters. And we also, as you heard from my testimony, believe that 80 percent of the meth that comes into the States, including North Carolina, is from Mexican organizations. So we are

already focused on identifying organizations, Mexican traffickers.

We have been tracking them, arresting them when we have sufficient evidence for a number of years, and we plan to continue to

do that.

But in a local sense, because the pseudo law is in effect, both

statewide and federally, we, in planning our strategy for this coming year versus last year, I see us more working toward the Mexicans than we did with the labs last year. We took a lot of cases

on regular local labs under Federal conspiracy laws, especially in

Rutherford and McDowell Counties, which were the worse two

counties hit by the labs. So we had a lot of emphasis on that last

year. But we do expect to see more this year because of the pseudo

laws to look at the Mexican organizations, a couple of particular

areas that we know are hot spots for meth trafficking in the western part of the State.

Mr. SOUDER. One of the things that has been unusual in meth

other than other drugs is that the mom and pop labs are not where

the traditional drug trafficking organizations have been. In other

words, if you take, in my district, Fort Wayne will have a coke

problem, will have no mom and pop labs in Allen County except

one rural town had one. Just north of it, there was a county that

is getting anywhere from 70 to 100 labs in that county alone and

yet 10 miles away, they do not have any meth. As the

pseudoephedrine law takes effect in Indiana, what we are seeing

is the crystal meth move into some of these small towns that, generally speaking, meth has been more of a white, blue collar drug,

crystal meth has a slightly different variation. Cocaine has been

more in the urban areas and you have got a different mix.

The question is OK, now, what do you do if in these rural areas

where you have much less law enforcement resources, much less

treatment resources, if their kind of mom and pop meth, Nazi lab

meth, turns into crystal meth, how are we going to deal with a different mechanism. Now presumably it will still be coming—is this

your assumption, still going to come through Charlotte or through

Atlanta, Knoxville, into the mountains in this case, even if it is

going into a different population? How do they develop a network

to reach that market, because this traditionally would not be a

market that is supplied through those organizations. That is what

Oklahoma has run into and eastern Oregon.

Mr. EMERSON. The way we have done this traditionally is keeping good relations with our State and local partners. They see

things first on the ground, the local sheriff’s office, the local police

departments, they are going to see those trends and they help us

32

identify targets, they bring information to us, intelligence. We have

agents assigned to particular counties and their job is to coordinate

with those local law enforcement officers to identify those trends

and patterns and identify specific traffickers that we would target

then for investigation. So I hope the answer to your question is

that through intelligence, by having our agents doing what they

are supposed to be doing out in the field, that they are going to

gather the intelligence on who those traffickers are and try to cutoff that supply when we can.

Mr. SOUDER. Is there a regional DEA task force in this zone anywhere? What is the closest, Charlotte?

Mr. EMERSON. Yes there is a task force in Charlotte and there

is a task force in Asheville, the Asheville post of duty.

Mr. SOUDER. And are these counties included in either of those?

Mr. EMERSON. Yes. Well, not every county participates because

they do not generally have a lot of manpower and they cannot—

you have to dedicate someone full time to a task force. But we do

have agents assigned that are either part of the task force or not

part of a task force, but they have a certain county assignment, so

we would have an agent who works with, let us say, three counties

with the sheriffs’ departments, the police departments, in those

counties. And his job is to be out there working with those officers

and identifying the biggest traffickers in those particular counties

and then making that case go from a local level case to a Federal

level case, so we can take it into Federal court and have the best

option for prosecution and length of sentence.

Mr. SOUDER. What is the closest meth hot spots for them, eastern Tennessee? Are there any in North Carolina?

Mr. EMERSON. I do not know.

Mr. SOUDER. You do not know. If you do not know the answer

to the question, there probably is not one. And is the closest

HIDTA—what is the closest HIDTA?

Mr. EMERSON. There’s a small HIDTA in Atlanta. It is an urban

two-county HIDTA, I believe. And then Tennessee has a couple of

HIDTA offices and I believe they are a spinoff of the Appalachian

HIDTA.

Mr. SOUDER. So nothing in North Carolina?

Mr. EMERSON. Nothing in North Carolina.

Mr. SOUDER. South Carolina either?

Mr. EMERSON. No.

Mr. SOUDER. So Baltimore/Washington would be the closest to

the north and Atlanta is focused heavily on the airport and downtown?

Mr. EMERSON. That is right.

Mr. SOUDER. Thanks. Mr. McHenry.

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The question I have for you, Mr. Emerson, you discussed the

DEA has administered 552 lab cleanups in North Carolina. Do you

see that—where do you see that trend going this year and next

year?

Mr. EMERSON. Well, I think it is a little hard to say at this point

because the Federal pseudo law, as Mr. Souder pointed out, is still

going into effect, the State law just went into effect in January. If

we look at other States that have passed the pseudo law, there has

33

been generally a 30–40 percent reduction in labs I believe and we

have already seen a 30 percent reduction more or less in the first

3 months. So we hope this year with the aggressive prosecution

federally that we did of traffickers, of meth cooks last year, along

with enhanced North Carolina laws with increased sentencing, plus

the pseudo law, both State and Federal, that there will be a reduction this year. Obviously we will not know that until the end of the

year. But we hope that is the direction that the small toxic labs are

going.

Mr. MCHENRY. Now you also mentioned the clandestine laboratory training that you provide to local law enforcement. I know

some of our sheriffs’ departments have taken advantage of that,

not out of want but out of need and necessity. Where do you see

this training going?

Mr. EMERSON. I see more classes coming out of Quantico. I think

we have teletypes in now for three more classes very rapidly, May,

June, and July, I believe there are new classes. And we have a certain amount of slots in the Atlanta Field Division for local officers

to go, State and local officers, to go to those classes. It seems to

me that the amount of classes increased this year from last year,

from what I can tell.

Mr. MCHENRY. Part of the question I have from local law enforcement on a frequent basis, and I had a conversation to this effect with a sheriff in my district, was the staffing levels for the lab

cleanups. It is just very difficult because of the size of North Carolina, the number of cleanups you have to administer, to get a very

quick turnaround time for lab cleanup. So oftentimes you have to

have a sheriff’s deputy posted at a lab for 24 or 48 hours, 72 hours,

just to make sure no one enters the lab. Where do you see the staffing levels go for this, and their response time?

Mr. EMERSON. Well, actually, with that program, DEA just administers the funds. The protocol in this State is the State Bureau

of Investigation is the primary agency that responds to the lab,

they are a great team, they have been around for years, they are

well-equipped. They are the team that responds. Although DEA

has people to do that, the protocol in this State has always been

that SBI does that and it does such a great job, it is a big advantage for us. But then, through the COPS funds, private contractors

come out and actually do the cleanup. So that is not a staffing

issue for us. That is done through those contracts.

But the container program that has been established in Kentucky, which I believe is spreading through a number of other

States, is a goal to help reduce that amount of time. Whereas certified law enforcement officers would go to the scene, clean up

whatever evidence there is of the lab there, bring it to a container

and that would happen in a short period of time and then the contractor would go to the container and pick up the waste and then

dispose of it within a week’s time. So that is DEA’s goal, is to move

that, to cut down that time period by spreading this container program and the costs are much more reduced that way. The average

cost of a lab cleanup nationwide is $1,900 per lab. With the container program, it is $350 per lab. So that is the way DEA is looking to try to reduce that time and save money.

Mr. MCHENRY. When do you see that coming to North Carolina?

34

Mr. EMERSON. North Carolina is one of the States slated for it.

The timeframe I am not sure of, but I saw that they are on the

list for a visit to present the program in North Carolina.

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you. And thank you for coming and thank

you for your testimony.

Mr. EMERSON. You are welcome, thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Ms. Foxx.

Ms. FOXX. Last summer, the DEA concluded Operation Wildfire,

which is described as the largest national law enforcement operation to target meth manufacturing and distribution to date. Can

you tell us what the impact was in North Carolina? Did the operation meet its goals and what were some of the lessons that we

learned from that?

Mr. EMERSON. Yes, ma’am. We were certainly, I think for those

days, were more successful than we had planned. We had a number of targets that we were interested in. We went to our State and

local counterparts looking for targets, people that had been involved in meth-related crimes, especially repeat offenders. Our goal

was to have some impact to find labs and to—primarily find labs

and to arrest people that there were warrants out for, to find out

if there were any children in homes where meth was being cooked.

So it was a surge operation to try to have some impact for a period

of time in the western part of the State. I think we involved some

15 counties, other Federal agencies, Probation and Parole, Department of Social Services. We arrested 70 people in about a 3-day period, which was the highest number anywhere in the country of the

427 arrests that took place nationally.

So for that short period of time, I think it was an impact. We

got a number of people off the street, especially some repeat offenders. Long-term, I am not sure if there was any really long-term impact from that, but at the time, we seized six labs, we seized about

64 grams of methamphetamine, I think 30 guns, some cash. So

there was some impact for a period of time.

Ms. FOXX. Thank you.

Mr. EMERSON. You are welcome.

Mr. SOUDER. I had a few followup questions.

Are the main trafficking organizations, is the pattern coming

from—is the primary point across the Mexican border or up

through Florida here?

Mr. EMERSON. The Mexican border.

Mr. SOUDER. Laredo, El Paso, or Arizona, more to the southeast?

Mr. EMERSON. We have cases with Tucson, Phoenix, but primarily McAllen, Laredo are probably our biggest, but we have seen

from Arizona and actually Los Angeles has been very active lately.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you see anything in this region coming from the

Tri-Cities area or Washington State or where it goes up and

across?

Mr. EMERSON. No, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Is it mostly Mexican or is it Central American as

well?

Mr. EMERSON. Mostly Mexican.

Mr. SOUDER. Any signs out of Charlotte in this region of the Salvadoran gang distribution or you do not have as much——

35

Mr. EMERSON. There is MS–13 presence in Charlotte and some

other gangs and they are involved in drug trafficking, but we see

much more street level and we have not really gotten involved in

that that much, with so many other priorities on larger Mexican

trafficking organizations that have moved into North Carolina. But

there is gang activity for sure in Charlotte.

Mr. SOUDER. And have you seen any sign of meth moving into

the African-American population in North Carolina?

Mr. EMERSON. I have heard of it, but we have not seen it that

much as far as cases and arrests. But we have heard about it. But

we do not see it as any growing trend at this point.

Mr. SOUDER. Are there any tensions between where the Mexican

trafficking organizations are hitting the African-American trafficking organizations that traditionally have had cocaine?

Mr. EMERSON. We have not seen that at the wholesale level. The

Mexicans dominate the trafficking situation here.

Mr. SOUDER. There is a mythology developing that the AfricanAmerican population will not use meth. But in Minneapolis in one

of our hearings, we heard that in one neighborhood, the AfricanAmerican trafficking organizations started selling meth and within

3 months, 20 percent of the addicts in Minnesota, Minneapolis,

were African-American meth addicts and it was just one neighborhood of the city. It had spread faster than crack. And it is something we are watching very closely because if crystal meth substitutes for cocaine, we just are not ready to handle it. And when

it hits an urban area—because traditionally this has been more of

a rural problem—in St. Paul, on the other side, which was a totally

different thing in the Minnesota hearing—in St. Paul, the number

of kids in child custody went from zero to 90 percent with meth addicts’ kids with no labs, no labs at all, it was all crystal meth—90

percent in 6 months when it hit the city, much like the way crack

takes over a city.

Omaha, I believe, and there is a little bit at the edge of Detroit,

but very little even crystal meth in most cities. Is that true here

too? Even in the crystal meth, does it tend to be out from the major

cities a little bit more?

Mr. EMERSON. Meth is definitely our biggest problem in the rural

areas, but there is no doubt, there is a good availability of meth

in the urban areas of Charlotte particularly, more than other parts

of the State or the bigger cities in the State. We see more meth

coming into Charlotte. We still see that though with Caucasians

mostly, the meth use. We have not seen that hit—there is a steady

supply of cocaine that comes in here through Mexican traffickers,

so there is still a good supply of cocaine coming in unfortunately

for the Charlotte area and other bigger cities in North Carolina.

Mr. SOUDER. Winston-Salem and Raleigh?

Mr. EMERSON. Cocaine is primarily what we seize.

Mr. SOUDER. And what about on college campuses, have you seen

any crystal meth around the college campuses?

Mr. EMERSON. Some, but again, we do not really deal that much

at the retail level, so I cannot answer that question for you completely. We hear more about Ecstasy and marijuana on the college

scene than we do with meth, but certainly, as you know, meth

36

knows no bounds. So it is there, we just do not see it at a level

that has come to our attention.

Mr. SOUDER. Two weeks ago, the New York Times reported

that—which we had been picking up at the edges of our hearings—

that on the Indian Reservations in America and the Indian Nations, at least west of the Mississippi, meth has replaced alcohol as

the No. 1 problem, which historically has been the problem. It has

devastated in Arizona, Montana, upper Dakotas, just overwhelmed

even the alcohol problem. Have you seen any of that in Cherokee

or any of the Indian Nations here?

Mr. EMERSON. Meth is a problem on the reservation and we have

met with Chief Hicks of the Cherokee Tribe and after meeting with

them and their officers there, I think we have a consensus on the

source of that meth. And instead of trying to work on that reservation at the retail level, we are familiar with the sources for the

meth coming to the reservation and we have plans to work those

cases.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Any other questions?

Ms. FOXX. I have one more question.

There is a lot in the news in the last few days about immigration

and particularly illegal immigration. The journey from Mexico to

North Carolina is a long one, especially for somebody with illegal

drugs and probably someone who is coming here illegally. Do you

have any suggestions on what we could do to interdict meth traveling from Mexico to North Carolina?

Mr. EMERSON. Certainly the more intelligence we have, the better off we are going to be. The best cases are always derived from

the best intelligence. So any way that we can develop more intelligence, we are trying to do that all the time through all the

sources and means that we have and working with our State and

local partners. Certainly if there is any suggestion, the State and

local interdiction teams on the highways have been a great asset

to us, not only for interdicting drugs coming northbound, but

money going southbound. But the intelligence that we derive to initiate Federal investigations or we see that there are ties into other

ongoing nationwide or even global investigations has been a great

help to us.

So certainly I think any help that could be done for improving

the interdiction team situation would be a great help for us and for

other States.

Ms. FOXX. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, the good news is we are going to have the

southwest border controlled in the next 60 days or so. [Laughter.]

Mr. EMERSON. That is good news.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you for your testimony. We may have a few

more written questions, but appreciate your leadership and work

in this area.

Mr. EMERSON. Thank you very much.

Ms. FOXX. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. If the second panel could now come forward. Mr.

Gaither, Mr. Shaw, Sheriff Clark, Sheriff Byers, Ms. Vasquez.

If you would remain standing while I give you the oath. Please

raise your right hands.

37

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative. I will now yield to Mr. McHenry for the

introductions.

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly appreciate

the distinguished panel we have here today, and in order of testimony, I will introduce the distinguished panel that we have put together here for the committee’s attention.

First, we have James C. ‘‘Jay’’ Gaither, Jr., the District Attorney

for the 25th Prosecutorial District—that is a mouthful—encompassing Burke, Caldwell and Catawba Counties, a resident of Catawba

County.

Jay graduated from Davidson College with a undergraduate degree, then graduated from law school from California Western. Has

had extensive prosecutorial experience as well as law experience.

In 2002, he was elected district attorney.

Mr. Gaither and his wife Beth live in Hickory and have four children.

In 2005, Mr Gaither was successful in drafting and helping pass

Rachel’s Law which increased the punishment for shooting into occupied dwellings and vehicles, an incident that involved someone

that Mr. Gaither had been involved in helping their family.

So thank you for being here, Jay.

Mr. GAITHER. Thank you, Congressman.

Mr. MCHENRY. Next testimony will be from Mr. Van Shaw from

the State Bureau of Investigation, he’s the Assistant Special Agentin-Charge. He has worked for the SBI for 19 years, including the

last 4 as clandestine laboratory response unit supervisor. He

helped initiate the Drug-Endangered Children Program and also in

the State of North Carolina pseudoephedrine restrictions and increased penalties for meth production.

Thank you, Mr. Shaw, for being here.

Next, we have Sheriff Gary Clark, our host here today, with 22

years of law enforcement experience here in Lenoir. He was elected

sheriff in 2002. He has gone on to be involved in a number of meth

lab seizures, has been a real innovator in this area of law enforcement.

He is also a graduate of Law Enforcement Executive Training

from UNC-Chapel Hill and he has over 4,000 hours of training in

law enforcement.

Thank you, Mr. Clark, for being here.

Finally, we have Sheriff C. Philip Byers. Philip is the sheriff

since January of this year in Rutherford County. Before that, he

served for 15 years with law enforcement service and experience,

including the previous 4 as chief deputy of Rutherford County.

He has an undergraduate degree from Appalachian State University and he has a masters of public administration from Western

North Carolina University.

He and his wife, Sheila, reside in Rutherford County.

Finally, our last witness of the day, Ms. Lynne Vasquez. She has

a personal story to tell of her son Chad, who got mixed up in meth,

and because of that is now serving a sentence in jail. And Ms.

Vasquez has been a wonderful grandmother to her two grandchildren and has since adopted them and taken custody of these

38

two grandchildren. She is going to tell a personal story today of

how meth has affected her family. And this is a story that, Ms.

Vasquez, unfortunately other people have the same story that you

have. But I appreciate you being willing enough to be here today

to tell the public what you have faced and how meth harms families, what it does to individuals. I am sure your son was a good

young man and just got messed up in horrible, horrible, destructive

drugs that just took hold of this fine young man.

I appreciate you being here and being willing to testify. Thank

you, Lynne.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, our first witness is Mr. Gaither, and the Indiana Gaithers would sing their testimony. We would appreciate it

if you just would state it rather than sing it. [Laughter.]

STATEMENTS OF JAMES C. GAITHER, DISTRICT ATTORNEY,

25TH PROSECUTORIAL DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINA; VAN

SHAW, SPECIAL AGENT, NORTH CAROLINA STATE BUREAU

OF INVESTIGATION, CLANDESTINE LABS RESPONSE PROGRAM; GARY CLARK, SHERIFF, CALDWELL COUNTY, NORTH

CAROLINA; C. PHILIP BYERS, SHERIFF, RUTHERFORD COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA; AND LYNNE VASQUEZ, MOTHER OF

CONVICTED METH DEALER AND ADDICT

STATEMENT OF JAMES C. GAITHER

Mr. GAITHER. Thank you, Chairman Souder. The information

that the Gaithers were based in Indiana was not known to me. I

knew they were from Tennessee and I do claim kinship. As long as

they do not deny it, I will claim it. They are a great name to share.

I am Jay Gaither, the District Attorney for the 25th, Burke,

Caldwell and Catawba County.

I want to thank Congressman Patrick McHenry for his concern

regarding the methamphetamine epidemic in our counties and

thank the Congressman for your part in introducing and passing

new Federal laws protecting children threatened by the manufacture of this awful substance, and thank you for drawing attention

to the growing crisis in our communities by calling this hearing

today.

Chairman Souder, thank you for traveling from Indiana, this

week in particular, where a lot of people like to be at home with

their families. We appreciate you being here in North Carolina.

Congresswoman Foxx, when you were a State Senator, I recall

when I would send you e-mails concerning issues regarding the

drug trade in North Carolina, I could not hardly get up from my

desk but that I had a response. You are one of the most responsive

elected officials I have ever known and it is good to see you again.

I have not seen you since you have been elected. Congratulations.

As a State prosecutor now for 3 years, one of the first things I

realized was the quick response of the Federal Government far outpaced the State’s abilities. The ability for the Federal Government

to apprehend and incarcerate these individuals who manufacture

and traffick methamphetamine was impressed upon me immediately. I met with Gretchen Shappert within the first month after

my election and since that time have been working closely with the

39

Federal Government and am in awe of the men and women who

put their lives on the line for the State of North Carolina and for

the U.S. Government here in western North Carolina. It has been

a privilege to work with each and every one of them and to watch

how they work with my local law enforcement.

At the same time, North Carolina cannot abdicate its responsibilities, should not in my opinion be taking the relatively light steps

that we are taking to address this epidemic. The punishment for

selling and delivering methamphetamines or for possessing

methamphetamines is woefully weak here in North Carolina. We

need new prisons and we need tougher laws.

Probably the most important thing that can be addressed resources wise, and it has already been touched on, is the lab issue

in the State of North Carolina. Our State Bureau of Investigation’s

lab is woefully under-funded; 9 months to 12 months is how long

we have to wait in order to get a lab report back. The biggest problem for me there as a prosecutor is until I get that lab report back,

my prosecution summary is not complete and I cannot go forward

with a prosecution.

Oftentimes, these individuals are arrested in our communities

and then they are released back into the community. The impression that people get is that they have been released and are not

going to be prosecuted. For 9, 10, 11, 12 months, they continue to

trade in drugs and they continue to flaunt our laws with no apparent repercussions for the arrest that has been made by the Sheriff’s

Department and the task force. And that just increases, I think,

the likelihood of further criminal activity and the likelihood that

our laws will be taken lightly when people are out there who have

been arrested but not yet capable of prosecution because of the

shortage of funding for the labs and the slow time that—or the long

time that we have to wait for that SBI lab report to come back. We

need increased funding for the lab and for law enforcement.

The final thing I want to talk about is my desire to see good

things come out of this hearing today and also for local and State

government to start looking at public safety, what I consider the

third leg of the future of our economic prosperity. Schools and

roads receive a lot of the funding, they also receive a lot of the attention. Public safety I believe is sometimes not focused on as a

positive. I would like western North Carolina to go the further step

rather than being in a defensive, to be in an aggressive, proactive

posture where we can boast to other States and to other regions,

listen, we have one of the safest communities—well, since we are

in western North Carolina—in North Carolina and one of the safest

States in the country.

So this is my perspective on the total picture of drug trade and

specifically here on meth. Thank you for inviting me and I look forward to answering your questions.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

Mr. Shaw.

STATEMENT OF VAN W. SHAW

Mr. SHAW. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, committee members.

The State of North Carolina has seen the abuse of methamphetamine rise dramatically during the past 5 years. The number of

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methamphetamine laboratories, chemical and glassware seizures

and related dump sites have nearly doubled every year from a total

of 34 in 2001 to 322 in 2004. Through the hard work of the North

Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, the North Carolina Department of Justice, State Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement

Administration and numerous local law enforcement agencies, we

have begun to see a decrease in the number of laboratory seizures

across the State.

The enhancement of methamphetamine manufacturing laws and

restrictions on the sale of pseudoephedrine have been instrumental

in bringing about this decline. The trafficking of methamphetamine

by Mexican national drug organizations still remains a significant

problem, and trends suggest that it will only increase in an effort

to fill the demand for methamphetamine that is no longer being

produced domestically.

The North Carolina Department of Justice, in conjunction with

the State Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration are formulating a Methamphetamine Trafficking Task

Force that will seek to combat the flood of methamphetamine into

western North Carolina. This task force will be modeled after the

highly successful south and eastern Tennessee methamphetamine

task force which has received Federal funding for its operation.

The task force seeks to organize local, State and Federal law enforcement efforts and methamphetamine trafficking investigation

to maximize productivity and the utilization of funding. This task

force would provide overtime funding to local law enforcement

agencies, training for law enforcement officers, public education

programs and drug intelligence dissemination throughout the

State. Efforts would also be coordinated in the area of enforcing

pseudoephedrine laws to ensure the continued decline of methamphetamine laboratories. Federal funding of this task force would

provide the financial foundation to ensure its success in slowing

the flow of methamphetamine into North Carolina.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much.

Sheriff Clark.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Shaw follows:]

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STATEMENT OF SHERIFF GARY CLARK

Mr. CLARK. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, distinguished Members of Congress, colleagues, guests and visitors. Welcome to

Caldwell County.

My name is Gary Clark, I am the sheriff of Caldwell County.

Caldwell County is a semi-rural area consisting of a population of

approximately 77,000 people. The primary industry in this county

is furniture-based. However, with this industry quickly disappearing due to overseas manufacturing and the unemployment rate

climbing, we are seeing a frightening increase in the production,

sale, distribution and use of methamphetamine.

Known as crystal meth or ice, methamphetamine is an illegal

narcotic that can be easily manufactured using recipes found on

the Internet, raw materials readily available from the corner pharmacy, convenience store or the local hardware store. It is manufactured in makeshift labs that can fit into the trunk of a car or a duffel bag. The ease of production and relatively low cost of raw materials make it an illegal product for an industry that is driven by

one motive, which is greed. The manufacturing process itself raises

other serious concerns in that it produces toxic byproducts that

pose serious environmental concerns. The process itself is highly

volatile. Explosion and fire are common with illegal meth labs.

Manufacturing meth involves a variety of toxic and explosive

chemicals, solvents, metals, salts and corrosives.

The drug also poses a serious threat to children. Seventy-five

percent of meth lab seizures in Caldwell County occurred at sites

where children live of play. One such example in our county was

in fact a day care for preschool children.

Meth attacks and breaks down all social barriers. We have found

in Caldwell County that there is a direct correlation to meth and

increases in violent and property crimes, computer crimes, identity

theft and child neglect. I am sure that each person here today has

their own personal horror story concerning meth addiction and

abuse, but we are here for possible solutions.

Limited manpower is the No. 1 issue facing law enforcement in

Caldwell County in keeping up with the growing number of clandestine labs and dealers. If a lab is found in our county, we sometimes have to wait hours or days due to limited number of State

cleanup teams with those teams being stretched so thin across

western North Carolina counties.

We have made great strides in combating this epidemic by stiffening laws and limiting accessibility of over-the-counter medications used for meth production. However, I believe that in order to

effectively combat this problem, Federal, State and local law enforcement must come together to form task forces throughout the

State. This would enable Caldwell County and other smaller jurisdictions with limited resources to address problems as they arise,

as opposed to prioritizing problems based on severity.

Although we have somewhat inhibited the production of meth in

the States, we must continue to look for ways to stop its transportation into our country through more aggressive interdiction and

maximum penalties for those responsible for this type of violation.

The scope of drug awareness and resistance education must continue for our children and must be broadened into the high school

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levels where the greatest potential for abuse exists. Education, I

believe, is the No. 1 weapon in addressing any problem.

We should also address the abuser after rehabilitation. The limited number of centers designed to deal with this type of abuse and

their easy accessibility are crucial in order to prevent a relapse of

abuse.

The solution to this epidemic, as with any other epidemic, comes

with a price. In order for these things to come to fruition, our representatives will have to find ways to funnel resources to Federal,

State and local municipalities and continue to take a proactive approach.

I appreciate you, our representatives, taking the time to listen

and I hope by informative sessions like this, we can help raise

awareness about this issue and encourage all citizens to get involved in its prevention.

Thank you and I look forward to your questions.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Sheriff Byers, good to see you again.

[The prepared statement of Sheriff Clark follows:]

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STATEMENT OF SHERIFF C. PHILIP BYERS

Mr. BYERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The last time I was before this honorable committee and its

members, you informed me I was sitting in a chair that Sammy

Sosa had sat in a few days before when he was before your committee. I am not sure who has been in this one, but I am still honored

to be before you today. Congressmen, Congresswoman, thank you

so much for being here.

On July 26, 2005, I had the privilege of addressing the members

of this Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human

Resources. During the testimony, I made several recommendations

to include: Restricting the sale of pseudoephedrine products nationally; tightening the Mexican border to help prevent traffickers from

entering the United States; longer prison sentences for traffickers

and methamphetamine producers and anyone who involved children in the trade or allowed children to reside in a home used for

meth production; address pseudoephedrine black market, Canada

and China being two of those; funding for interstate drug and

criminal interdiction teams; and continue to prosecute methamphetamine cases in Federal court, due to the longer sentences.

We also discussed the fact that working with mental health care

providers would be necessary for a recovery and treatment plan for

those who were addicted.

With the passing of the Patriot Act legislation earlier this year,

the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 became law

and provided the following, or will provide the following as of October: Restricts the sale of medicines containing pseudoephedrine;

creates a DEA classification for meth precursors; provides $99 million a year for the next 5 years for Meth Hot Spots Program which

will train local and State law enforcement and also assist in investigating and locking up meth offenders; requires new reporting and

certification procedures for the exporting and importing of

pseudoephedrine products into this country; provides $20 million in

funding in 2006 and 2007 for the drug endangered children response teams to promote work with Federal, State and local agencies; requires reports to Congress on designations of byproducts of

meth labs; and enhances criminal penalties for meth production

and trafficking.

As a result of the passing of the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 and the North Carolina Methamphetamine Lab

Prevention Act of 2005, we have already witnessed a reduction in

meth labs in western North Carolina. During the month of March

2006, 14 labs were discovered in North Carolina, compared to 40

in March 2005. And 33 labs in March 2004. First quarter lab seizures for North Carolina compares as follows: 2006, 73 labs for the

first 3 months of the year; 2005, we had 108; 2004, for the same

period of time, 81 labs.

Methamphetamine lab responses in western North Carolina in

2006 through March 31st by county: Unfortunately Rutherford reports 14; McDowell, 12; Madison, 2; Haywood, 2; Watauga, 1;

Mitchell and Jackson both, 1 lab.

We are beginning to experience limited success in fighting local

meth labs, but the overall methamphetamine trafficking and addiction problem continues to grow. In Rutherford County, we have

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fewer meth labs, but increased methamphetamine trafficking and

addiction. The majority of methamphetamine, or ice if you will,

that we seize today is smuggled into this country from Mexico. The

methamphetamine or ice that comes from Mexican superlabs is

very potent and leads our users to a new level of addiction. As we

continue to fight methamphetamine and the epidemic in this country, I once again wish to share my suggestions and recommendations to this committee.

First, we must tighten and control the Mexican border and reduce the amount of ice coming into this country from Mexico.

Second, we must continue to work with our Federal prosecutors

to prosecute meth manufacturers and trafficking cases as the sentences are much longer.

We must continue funding interstate drug and criminal interdiction teams.

Work and provide additional funding for mental health care providers to develop a solid treatment and recovery plan. That is necessary.

And we also in North Carolina, along with John Emerson and

Van Shaw, who I must say have been tremendous, without their

help, we would not have survived the meth epidemic in Rutherford

County. I thank them both here before this committee. We are

working to get funds for the North Carolina Statewide Methamphetamine Task Force.

What we are seeing, if you look on a map, there are still a lot

of counties in North Carolina, basically half the counties, with zero

meth labs. We want it to stay that way. But if we do not work with

those counties to let them know what is coming, then they will be

much like we were in western North Carolina several years ago.

We were not prepared, and they will not be prepared. So we hope

we can get funding for that statewide task force.

This information is based on my experience in dealing with meth

labs and struggles that I have witnessed. I hope a small portion of

this information will help to develop a better system of fighting

what continues to negatively impact local governments in western

North Carolina.

I thank you for the work that you have done and continue to do,

and will be happy to address any questions.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Ms. Vasquez, you are batting cleanup today. Thank you for being

with us and being willing to share your testimony and you will

have as much time as you need.

[The prepared statement of Sheriff Byers follows:]

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STATEMENT OF LYNNE STARR-VASQUEZ

Ms. VASQUEZ. I think I am somewhat the opposition here. Thank

you for having me.

I am the mother of a 25-year-old sentenced on January 5th in

Federal court—thank you, Jesus, for Federal court—for methamphetamine use, abuse and manufacture.

If I had anything to say that would be most important to me and

my family and what we have experienced over the past 3, 31⁄2

years, it would be time. Time has been a real element for us.

It was a year and a half after I turned my son in—I turned him

in myself, and it was a year and a half after I turned him in before

he got on the hot list that I could see, where they really pressured

him. I have not done this without—I said I was going to be OK.

I have not done this alone and I had the best backup that I could

possibly have. I fought for my grandbaby, I fought for him over a

year before I got him. I have no idea what he has been in, I do not

know what he has seen, I do not know if he has been contaminated. But I got him, took me a long time to get him.

It is hard when you watch your child die, and that is what I was

doing. And if I had steps to make over again, I would probably do

the same thing that I did before. I called and I called and probably

a lot at the Sheriff’s Department think I am just crazy, you know,

because I called them so much. And after I got that baby, in the

morning, when I made sure he had his security blanket to go to

school, I made sure I had my security blanket, which was the business card of this man that sits to the right of me. Never one time

have I called him that he has not called me back and I really appreciate that—I really do.

I really appreciate getting on a first name basis with the narcotics agents in Rutherford County. I wanted them to do it quicker because I was losing him, and for every day that I went and I turned

the key, I did not know if that was going to be the day that he was

not alive. He got down at one time to 139 pounds. My son is a very

handsome man, normal weight maybe 222, something like that. A

long time to get him where he needed to be, a long time for them

to do their job. Time is important here.

I say time, time over and over again. They indicted him into Federal court on December 17th, and attached to my papers, I have

a picture of him 1 month before he was indicted. On the night that

Detective Will Sisk, December 16th, he met me at the courthouse

and my son turned himself in. I had not seen him in awhile, just

talked to him on the phone, and I did not realize that his body was

gone, he was deteriorating. I do not know how much he weighed,

but his skeleton was all I could feel when he went to kiss me goodbye.

These people have stuck with me through all of this and when

I called and I cried and asked for help, they were there. But they

could not move up the time. They processed him and they put him

under house arrest December 17th. They sent me home from Federal court without a support system. There was no counseling for

him, there was nowhere for me to take him.

I have laid and held my son and I have watched him cry and beg,

I have watched him have seizures, I have called the hospital and

they told me he is playing with you, it has been too long. I have

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taken him to as many as three hospitals in a night and when I finally found somebody, all the way down in Kings Mountain, they

said he needed just something for his nerves and let him sleep. He

had an allergic reaction and by the time I got back into Rutherford

County, he had stopped breathing. Back into Cleveland County and

they adrenalined him and I thought I was losing him.

I went through all these things for almost 4 months and then it

started to lift off and he fought to be clean, he really fought to be

clean. But he did not fight long and hard enough because it had

him.

Over and over, I talk about Will Sisk because Rutherford County

is a big county, but he got personal with me and I know he had

a job and I know he has got a lot of jobs, but I would call Will and

I would tell him, Will, Chad is using again, put the heat on him

and Will would show up. He would talk to him, he would let him

know I am here, he befriended Chad. And I think with the help of

some of these things, I did not lose him all the way.

Struggling to stay clean is hard. The Federal court set him up

with counseling agencies, counseling agencies turned down the contracts. He would go to another counseling agency, they would keep

him in a week or two, they turned down the contract. They would

withdraw contracts, one place to another to another and time goes

on.

He got straight through the summer last year. He had a baby

born and I thought that he was going to be OK after she was born

because methamphetamine took everything from my son. He lost

his home, his car, his wife, his children. And he had no reason—

he had no reason to keep going and he had a little girl July last

year. And he had a reason to fight for the first time in almost 4

years. And she passed away on October 29th. And my son fell harder than he had ever fell before and I was back to the phone calls.

These people have stood by me and they have helped me. But

they did not do it quick enough. The law process is not quick

enough. Getting my children, my grandbabies out of danger was

not quick enough. I needed them home with me when their mom

and dad first started using. I did not get it, I had to fight. There

was nowhere for me to go, when I had used all money to take care

of legal expenses and bail him out of jail, and that is what a mom

does to start with. Unfortunately some of them do it continuously.

I did not have the money to go get an attorney to get my grandchildren. I did not have the money. I finally found an attorney in

Rutherford County and I owe that man today, but he got my kids.

DSS did not have a part in it. Not even when my son and his wife

sat in the Rutherford County jail for a full blown meth lab in their

home, guilt or innocence is irrelevant when they sit in the county

jail accused, DSS still would not help me.

We need help. We need to target—I feel we need to target people

who have not used, because people that have used, they know. We

need to talk to mothers and tell them the hardest thing that you

will ever do in your life is go on a back street somewhere behind

a church and talk to the SBI and tell them come and get your

child—it is hard, but we have a choice, we have a choice. If we turn

our back, we are going to watch them die. We turn them in and

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maybe they will have a chance to live. And I know what the percentage rates of recovery are.

I thank these people here for being with me, for sticking with me

for all those calls. It has been a long, hard road—a long road. He

is in a U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, GA today. I have not talked

to him in almost 3 weeks. You know, there is something different

about me and my son, bad, good or indifferent, he tells his momma

what is going on. This is why Detective Sisk helped me. And I remember always, I remember. Go get your baby, he will come home.

They have cut me off from him, and every day a part of me is

gone, every day. Every day a part of him is gone. Thirty days does

not seem like a long time, it is a real long time to an addict. It is

a real long time when you have lost everything that you had and

then you are losing everything else. It is a real long time.

So anything and everything I could tell you would come back to

the same thing. It is time. We need to change the time elements,

time is what we are working with from the beginning to the end.

I almost lost my son, but I did not.

I am a student at the University of South Carolina and for almost 2 years, I pull up into that parking lot and I step out of my

car and I say OK, God, you got it, because I cannot carry this no

more. And through the grace of God and these people that are here

today, they got him and he is alive.

And that is all I have to say.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Vasquez follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you all for your testimony and for all the

testimony. It is really hard when it is that personal, but we appreciate it very much.

Mr. Gaither, if I could followup on one of the points you made

relating to time, and that is getting the lab reports back. Mr.

Shaw, maybe you could address this too.

Who do you send the lab reports to in North Carolina? What is

the process that it goes through?

Mr. GAITHER. Law enforcement—I am sorry, can you hear me?

Mr. SOUDER. Yes.

Mr. GAITHER. Gary Clark, law enforcement, collects the items,

sends them to the State Bureau of Investigation and they send the

results back to myself and also a copy to the law enforcement agency making the arrest.

Mr. SOUDER. And is this—by the way, this is true in every State,

it is not just North Carolina that is having this problem. I do not

mean to imply it is just North Carolina, but this is not something

we traditionally talk about and yet it is happening. In my home

State, they are saying that they will release, and often they will

be up for their third meth lab by the time they are prosecuted for

the first meth lab.

Is meth different than other drugs? Does it take longer than

other drugs? Or is this a problem regardless of what you are prosecuting somebody for?

Mr. GAITHER. Let me defer that to the agent, if you do not mind,

as far as the difference that the lab might have in assessing one

drug over the other.

Mr. SHAW. Well, exactly as you stated, the backlog has existed

in the laboratory for a number of years, much like it does in other

States. The problem is attrition, the number of cases that are coming in and continue to increase.

What has compounded this is that the processing of a methamphetamine lab manufacturing case takes approximate 50 to 60

hours of analysis in the laboratory. So that agent is doing that

analysis for practically 1 whole week plus overtime. So you can see,

as those numbers increase, it is going to decrease the number of

cocaine cases, meth cases, trafficking cases, everything else down

the line because they are now doing something that 4 and 5 years

ago was very rare for us to do.

Mr. SOUDER. Could you explain why that takes so much longer

in a meth case?

Mr. SHAW. When you go to a methamphetamine laboratory, you

are taking samples of all the unknown liquids, violator liquids that

are present and part of the manufacturing process. And because

most of those are in 2-liter bottles, mason jars, containers that they

are not supposed to be in, you cannot just look at it and say I know

exactly what that is. So the chemist actually draws samples. Those

samples are then transported back to the laboratory and analysis

is done on each and every sample to tell what it is, what part of

the manufacturing process it is and also, obviously, the presence of

methamphetamine and what State it is in. So there is a lot of analysis and identification that goes on to make the manufacturing

case.

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It is further complicated by the fact that we take each and every

drug laboratory that we process and we process it to the Federal

prosecution standard with theoretical yields, quantitative and qualitative analysis, which is used in Federal court that may or may

not be used in State court. A lot of times we do not know whether

the case is going to State or Federal court when we are processing

the scene. So we do add a little bit of time onto that but it has paid

great dividends when it comes down to prosecution time and the

Federal prosecutor wants to go back and pick up multiple cases.

And it has prevented us from having to go back and redo those

cases.

So it has caused a significant backlog in our laboratory in addition to what already existed.

Mr. SOUDER. Is this because they are household chemicals that

would be legal unless they are used in certain mixes and combinations?

Mr. SHAW. Exactly. And just having that identification, and not

only that, what type of role that household chemical plays in the

reaction to get the manufacturing because in almost every trial,

you are educating that jury and the more information that can be

provided to have someone understand why hydrogen peroxide,

which is an everyday item we all have, is a component of meth

manufacturing and having that in conjunction with other things is

critical to the case.

Mr. SOUDER. And does this become even more difficult—you have

a law in North Carolina I presume, based on some of the prosecutions, that you do not actually have to find the meth at the place,

it can be a prospective lab or a retrospective lab, which means that

you would have to establish different lines of criminal evidence

than if you had the cocaine and meth there.

Mr. SHAW. Right, we do have the manufacturing charge as well

as the possession charge and we are prosecuting cases when there

is not meth on the table, but there are the elements there that suggest manufacturing as well as we have a precursor State law, that

if they just possess a few chemicals but we know they are associated with it.

Mr. SOUDER. What in the legal sense could we do that would

shorten the evidential proof process and still make it stand up in

court? Because this is an incredible problem, if it is 50 hours compared to just a little. There is not enough money in the United

States as this problem expands to try to address this problem, yet

we are putting the meth people right back out on the street because we do not have the evidential chain. Is there anything that

you could see that could establish a shortening of that process?

Mr. SHAW. Well, I think one of the things that is happening is

that we are seeing more and more prosecution, both at State and

Federal level. It is like any new problem. This one is so scientific

in nature, quite frankly, many of the assistants and district attorneys, when their first case came up, they were not sure how to try

it. And understandably so, much like law enforcement was not sure

how to investigate it.

There has been a learning curve, and we are even doing that in

some of our analysis in what we can shorten up and what we cannot. I am not sure procedurally how we can alter that process to

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bring a good case into court and not lose it but also try and save

some time, other than continue to train people, you know, continue

to offer things that would enhance everyone’s understanding and

hopefully expedite the case through the system.

Mr. SOUDER. I want to make sure I understood something you

said there. Does it take as long today to develop that as it did when

you first got exposed to these cases? In other words, does experience in fact reduce the amount of time?

Mr. SHAW. Yes, it does; it does in a number of areas. When we

were responding initially to 100 labs a year, we and ourselves as

an agency were in a learning process and we were spending 8–10

hours at a scene. Today, we typically process a methamphetamine

lab in anywhere from 2 to 4 hours. We have simply gotten better

at it. So we have shortened time on the scene, time tying up local

officers, firefighters, EMS. The same thing has happened in our

laboratory in that you become more efficient, you do not take as

many samples because you do not need that many samples in

court. And so that is my point, in that this has been sort of an evolution and we have seen some shortening of those timeframes.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. McHenry.

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to start actually with a few comments that both

Sheriff Byers and District Attorney Gaither both mentioned, and

that has to do with illegal immigration. You both mentioned that

in some way, shape or form. I want to ask how has the problem

of illegal immigration coincided with this problem of this meth epidemic that we are facing?

Mr. GAITHER. Congressman, let me first just address the issue of

illegal immigration in the broader sense as far as the courts are

concerned. Then law enforcement can address it more as far as

they see at their level, the first response level.

The frustration at the prosecution level is to see those who are

illegal immigrants come into our system with a DWI or various

other types of charges and be put on probation. And our hands are

tied, as State officers, from any—there is nothing that we can do.

We are precluded from the enforcement of those laws of the Constitution. Recently Charlotte-Mecklenburg I believe has sworn in

10 of its sheriffs to operate along with ICE in assisting them with

the illegal immigration problem.

This is a great deal of frustration for us and we would really like

to see something come about in the next weeks. Of course, it is the

No. 1 issue on everybody’s minds across the country right now, we

are seeing it in the news.

As far as being able to pick out one group or one element in society that is more likely to contribute to this problem, I cannot really

do that. As the chart shows over here, 2001–2002 and then the

spike is coming up. We are just seeing this in the courts, the spike

in 2003 and 2004 is just hitting the courts now. We have not yet

seen the spike in 2005 hit our court system yet.

But just in a general sense, when you are dealing with the issue

of illegal immigration, the frustration level is through the roof in

the courts, to see folks come in who are illegal immigrants, who are

found guilty of a crime and then they are put on probation. To me,

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a person who is an illegal immigrant and comes in our courts

should never be given the option of probation.

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you.

Sheriff Byers.

Mr. BYERS. Congressman, illegal immigration is on the rise in

Rutherford County, like most every other county in North Carolina

and in this country.

We had a homicide last month that involved two illegals and

when we searched the homes or the mobile homes, we found half

a dozen illegal Mexican identification cards for both the victim and

the defendant.

We are dealing with it now. Sheriff Clark, I know he deals with

this and it is going to be an ever-increasing problem unless we do

something at the borders. And when we have illegals, that is the

easiest way to get the ice, if you will, from Mexico to rural Rutherford County, NC.

Mr. MCHENRY. Sheriff Clark, would you like to comment on this

issue?

Mr. CLARK. Certainly, thank you, Congressman.

What we happen to see in Caldwell County, being rural and a

lot of tree growers in our area, it attracts a lot of Mexicans here

and others of Hispanic background. Which once again, I concur

with Sheriff Byers, that gives a direct line to those individuals in

Mexico responsible for bringing dramatic amounts of meth particularly to this surrounding area. And we continue to see that, even

though we continue to crack down on the clandestine labs here in

Caldwell and Rutherford, Burke, Catawba. We are going to continue to see that influx of meth coming from that direct pipeline

from Mexico.

I think another thing we are going to have to strongly look at

is the trucking industry, because even though this is making its

way from Mexico to Arizona, it has still got to have a direct way

across the United States into western North Carolina. And we are

finding more and more of that is being brought in here through

independent truckers and through trucking companies. So I think

we have to take a closer look at that. I think that is also another

direct pipeline for most of the illegals that make their way to western North Carolina.

Mr. MCHENRY. One more thing. Just a couple of days ago, here

is a quote from the newspaper here in, the Lenoir News Topic,

‘‘Mobile Meth Lab Found.’’ Sheriff Clark, I know you are the commander, you take personal command of the ice unit here, to take

on this problem. But here is a duffel bag found on the side of a

road that is a mobile meth lab.

Sheriff Clark, what ways are you trying to tackle this? Because

here you have really a toxic waste site that someone happened to

put on the side of the road. Can you comment on that?

Mr. CLARK. Well, meth dealers and manufacturers are becoming

more and more street smart to what our methods are of detecting

them. And to have something permanently set up I think makes

them more susceptible to criminal violations, so we are finding

more and more of these individuals have make-shift labs, as I said,

as I testified earlier, whether it be in the trunk of an automobile

or whether it be in a duffel bag, where they can move it very quickVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:20 Dec 04, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00072 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\30526.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ly, where they can disassemble it or assemble it very quickly. At

the same time, I think the threat level and also the potential hazardous situation goes up with that haphazard kind of meth production. But we are seeing more and more of that in Caldwell County.

Mr. MCHENRY. Sheriff Byers, can you comment on Rutherford

County?

Mr. BYERS. We are seeing, again, Congressman, more illegals

bringing the meth. Our meth lab numbers are going to be down

this year and that is a wonderful, wonderful surprise. But it is

from a lot of hard work, a lot of hard work, and we have four of

our agents here today. I will not point them out because they are

kind of camera shy, so I will just say that four of our agents——

Mr. SOUDER. Are they the ones in the red hats?

Mr. BYERS. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman, it would be the ones with the

red hats. [Laughter.]

But the problem still exists. And we have more illegals coming

into Rutherford County, and I will not get into the immigration argument today, I know that you folks have had enough of that or

seem to have had enough on it, and sent it to the Senate. But anyway, we continue to see it and that pipeline will continue to be

there. What we are seeing, I think Special Agent Emerson mentioned 80 to 90 percent of the meth we are seeing now, the ice, is

coming from Mexico.

So we can win the war, the battle, if you will, on meth labs. We

are not dealing with chemists, we are not dealing—in Rutherford

County, we are not dealing with people who passed chemistry in

high school. They are not taking $250 worth of ingredients and

making $1,000 worth of product, therefore making profit. They are

taking $250 worth of ingredients and making $200 worth of meth.

So they are addicts, they are not selling it on the street, they are

addicts, they are making it and giving it away.

But what we are seeing now coming from Mexico is not near as

toxic. Now what our guys were making in Rutherford County and

continue to make, is very toxic. See a lot of people showing up at

the hospital with liver and kidney failure, but it was not very potent, so they had to make it every day. We have arrested people,

the agents here today, have arrested people, jail at 12, out on bond

by 2 and they would follow them to buy the ingredients to make

it again the same day. That is an addict. That is not a businessman, it is a pure addict.

So that is what we have been dealing with. But the ice is so potent that the mental health—it is going to be tremendous if mental

health can keep up with the potency. Not near as toxic, so we may

not see quite as many healthcare problems, kidney and liver failure, but we are going to see a tremendous amount of addiction, because the ice is truly potent and we have more use in Rutherford

County today than we did a year ago or even 2 years ago.

Crime in Rutherford County is down 16 percent, I am proud to

say, crime in 2005 is down 16 percent. The one exception there is

domestic violence. And what is feeding domestic violence? Meth.

So to answer your question, Congressman, I think I went too

long and went too broad, but the bottom line is yes, the problem

we are dealing with now is the ice and I want to personally thank

you before this committee and this group, yourself and CongressVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:20 Dec 04, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00073 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\30526.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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man Taylor were kind enough last year when I sent you the concern and the problem that we had, to find the funding to let us

start a drug interdiction team that will be on line hopefully by midJune. Monies are there and we thank you for that. So we are going

to try to fight to stop the ice, which is coming from Atlanta, even

Charlotte occasionally, but usually Atlanta, through our highways

and spreading across western North Carolina.

So thank you for that and I highly encourage those other sheriffs

here today to help us in that fight, because we have to get it off

the streets before it gets to the homes and to the individuals or we

are going to have—mental health will never keep up with the addiction that we are about to have.

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Sheriff Byers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have additional questions, but I will come to that in due

course.

Mr. SOUDER. Ms. Foxx.

Ms. FOXX. I have one quick question for Mr. Shaw. I think all

of us have heard horror stories about cases being thrown out of

court because every ‘‘i’’ was not dotted, every ‘‘t’’ was not crossed,

that kind of thing. We all hate to see that on procedural matters.

But you pointed out the increased amount of time it takes to adhere to the Federal regulations to take something to Federal court.

Is there anything that is being required for Federal court that

does not have to be required? And if so, have you shared that with

the folks, so that if there is something we can do—I do not want

to damage any case, but is there anything we could eliminate that

is not absolutely necessary?

Mr. SHAW. Well, the short answer is not that I am aware of. We

did meet with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the other assistants

and talked about what was needed. One of the advantages with the

Federal prosecution is the theoretical yield of what the capacity—

what it would have made, if it had not made anything. What it did

make based on historical aspects. So those are good things. They

require a little bit more lab analysis, but it is a much broader approach to prosecuting the meth manufacturer. So it is a very slippery slope you get on in suggesting doing away with something or

shortening something up because the broadness of that jurisdiction

with Federal prosecutors is what has made it so successful as well.

Ms. FOXX. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Emerson, could you come forward for a second?

I wanted to ask you—I think probably for recording purposes, as

long as you can hear him, we will not have him sit down.

When you get the crystal meth type cases that are coming

through, are those the same organizations that are smuggling the

marijuana and the cocaine?

Mr. EMERSON. Generally, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. So there is not any kind of crystal meth channel,

they are basically selling whatever the market is.

Mr. EMERSON. Generally, that is the case. Now I am sure there

are individual cases, we have seen them where we only got crystal

meth and that is what we are investigating that group for. But as

a whole, we see Mexican organizations are moving all three of

those products.

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Mr. SOUDER. Have you seen them shopping crystal meth, packaging it with other drugs?

Mr. EMERSON. We have seen it transported together.

Mr. SOUDER. I should say, are they cutting the price to get initial

addicts. Basically as they see the mom and pop labs decline, they

may have been selling marijuana or other drugs, but they will sell

the crystal meth very cheaply or give it away to try to develop a

market?

Mr. EMERSON. I do not think we have seen that specifically, no.

Mr. SOUDER. And one other question, on the marijuana that you

are seeing, have you seen any of the hydroponic, large, coming in

from Canada in particular, any of the seeds being bought over the

Internet?

Mr. EMERSON. Yes, we have. Mostly through the Asian traffickers. Operation Candy Box, which was taken down about 2 years

ago now, we had Asian traffickers bringing BC-Bud down from

Canada and we have seen some of those cases recently, but not

nearly the amount of cases that we see with Mexican marijuana.

Mr. SOUDER. OK, thanks.

For those who are not aware, people still think we are dealing

with what we call in Indiana ditch weed or 1960’s marijuana, when

the THC content is 20 to 40, the highest we have heard in any area

is 48, which basically is behaving like meth or crack on the brain.

And this pro-marijuana stuff that is going around the country is

just awful right now, because they are packaging, and particularly

this so-called BC-Bud in New England, it is coming down from

Quebec as Quebec Gold and sometimes in the middle you get it

mixed as BC Gold in the midwest. But they are also selling it on

the Internet and you have to really watch for the home grown. You

usually can tell by the amount of electricity they are using.

But I wanted to then get into two other things to watch for. One

is if you found a mobile lab, that is a scary trend because I believe

in New Orleans, we saw a little bit in motels; in Hawaii, they have

had to implement, in parts of Honolulu, an apartment fee to fumigate the apartments because it is left over and the kids move into

the apartment and can develop all sorts of conditions based on

these mobile labs moving from apartment to apartment or motel

room to motel room. In other words, you can be traveling on a trip

and get sick or your kids can get sick because somebody had one

of these mobile labs moving there. And it is a—really kind of

makes it harder in our pseudoephedrine regulation if they are moving around like that.

We were actually doing a hearing in Wilmington, OH, between

Dayton and Cincinnati, and the problem was viewed as a rural

problem, but we had the TV there from both Dayton and Cincinnati, all three networks from each one. And a story came in

from Dayton, they had never had any home labs in the city of Dayton prior to that day, and they took down what they thought was

one meth lab and it turned out to be a block. Part of the reason

meth labs are not found in cities is the smell, and so that is why

you see the problem in the United States has tended to be rural

Hawaii, eastern Oregon where there are national forests, that is

why you are going to see it in the mountainous region of east Tennessee and western North Carolina before you see it in the urban

72

areas because there are places to go out where you are in less populated areas. So Arkansas, in the Ozark mountain area, in Indiana,

the biggest area is the Hoosier National Forest area. It is going to

tend to be in the more rural areas.

But as they move into urban, part of their challenge, even in a

small town, is the smell because people can start to smell it. They

bought a string of seven houses and it was buried in the center,

so their neighbors could not smell it.

None of you have seen a combination in a town yet of multiple

houses, is that correct, you have not seen that in North Carolina?

Mr. CLARK. We have seen it in hotel rooms where they will string

two, three hotel rooms together and do their business out of there

and then once the supply is depleted, then they will go back home

or wherever it is that they originally manufactured.

Mr. SOUDER. No particular chain? [Laughter.]

Mr. CLARK. No particular chain.

Mr. SOUDER. That is a scary concept, that is the first time I have

heard of a string of motel rooms, because that would probably be

a similar type of trying to disguise the smell.

Mr. CLARK. And at the same time, most of these individuals are

smart enough that they check in under a pseudo name, so if they

did have to run from law enforcement, you do not really have any

other identification on them. These dealers and users and abusers

are becoming smarter and smarter to our techniques. They read

just like we do and they watch sessions like this just as we do. So

they are gaining intelligence from sessions like we are having

today, they are gaining intelligence on us in law enforcement and

lawmakers.

Mr. SOUDER. From what we have been able to get from testimony

from meth addicts themselves, is that the one thing that is an advantage that we have in law enforcement is the drug makes them

more paranoid and they are more likely to make a mistake.

One of the problems in the pseudoephedrine law is that we have

these log books, but one of the charges is moving from place to

place. Do you have a plan, since you have only done this since January 15th, but do you also have a Meth Watch Program that works

with the local pharmacists, the retail stores, to watch how a person

is behaving? For example, without saying the name of the chains,

there are some chains that look for certain types of purses or cases

that come in, they know there is nearly 100 percent chance that

a person coming in with that type of case is going to be getting a

quantity or shoplifting a quantity.

Mr. SHAW. We do have the Meth Watch Program in some counties in the State. We have also attempted to contact different retail

associations. Unfortunately, since the passing of our

pseudoephedrine legislation, there is not quite as much cooperation

with the retail side, just simply because that removed a substantial

amount of products from grocery store shelves and convenience

store shelves and other types of retail establishments. So many

view it as the solution to the problem. Of course, we know that is

not going to be the case, that we are still going to continue to have

a problem.

But the meth watch program is out there, it is flourishing in

some counties. Some store chains are very cooperative, as you menVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:20 Dec 04, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00076 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\30526.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tioned. But it has been met with mixed success. And that is why

we continue to push the pseudoephedrine laws, because we found

that voluntary compliance just simply did not get the job done.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you have a sign-in list?

Mr. SHAW. Yes, we do, we have a log, but there is an inherent

problem with that and it goes back to funding again. With the signing of the log, you can still go from pharmacy to pharmacy and

those pharmacies, unless they are the same chain and not necessarily even if they are, cannot communicate. There is no real

time data base that says I was just at CVS buying it and now I

am at Walgreen’s buying it, so that the Walgreen clerk or pharmacist can go, I cannot sell it to you, you just purchased it 30 minutes ago.

So what we are finding, as Sheriff Byers pointed out, is so many

of these addict cooks are simply buying two boxes here, two boxes

here, two boxes here. That is all they have to do.

Mr. SOUDER. The Indiana State Police, because we have the fifth

highest number, I think last year we actually moved to fourth, we

are down roughly 50 percent 6 months into this law. It is moving

to crystal meth like we knew it would.

But two other things we are watching, because in the first 3

months, the log thing was intimidation, then all of a sudden they

realized that hey, it is not on the computer. But the Meth Watch

Program, some are tips, because if you watch a person, and the

person is alert as a clerk when they sign in, they are likely to be

more nervous if it is not for a cold. And watching that, calling in,

then they do a—occasionally now they are doing a sweep of the log

lists and those tips. What you need are just an occasional high profile person, we got two in the last couple of weeks doing this, jumping from log to log. And all it takes, because of the nature of the

group, if they realize there is a potential chance of just being found

guilty of now another violation, which is in the logs, you are finding them buying the materials and violating another law, has

worked as some deterrence. But if law enforcement does not occasionally sweep those log books to see whether a name is appearing

in multiple places, because it will be there, it is just a pain in the

neck process to try to sort through, particularly unless the clerks

are helping tip off. But a couple of high profile nailings like that

can help give some teeth to that.

The difficulty of—I was heavily immersed in the negotiations of

whether it should have to be sold at a pharmacy or not. But for

example, in New York City, they do not have a single meth case

yet and anybody who has been to New York City, they have little

mini-markets all over the place and you would not be able to get

cold or headache medicine in New York City if we said it had to

be sold at a pharmacy and yet, they have no meth cases. But what

happens is if you find one State does not have the law, people move

to the other law. So it has been a very delicate balance.

And while Target, Wal-mart, big companies, can computerize

this, smaller grocery stores and particularly in rural areas, almost

every rural area in Indiana and I am sure it is true here too, are

fighting to keep a pharmacy or a grocery store, they are barely

making enough money to exist already as the chains hammer them

from the regional areas. And this is a very difficult tradeoff and we

74

have to be as creative as we can in trying to tackle the variations

from this.

Sheriff Byers, did you have a comment?

Mr. BYERS. I would agree. And of course, we border the great

State of South Carolina, who is now addressing the

pseudoephedrine law, if you will. So our addicts are just driving 15

minutes and are able to purchase the products they need. But it

has helped some in our county, we see that. I probably get half a

dozen calls a week from pharmacists who say someone came in,

they have been in twice this week trying to purchase or they were

nervous or these things. So we do get a lot of tips, even though we

do not have the data base that we desperately need. But until

South Carolina steps forward or until October of this year when it

is national, our folks are going to go to South Carolina, 15 minutes

away, and purchase the things.

And again, a lot of our people do not purchase. The one thing

that has helped us is moving the product behind the counter. A lot

of addicts were shoplifting because they are destitute, they did not

have any money. So they were going in and had two options, they

were either stealing weed eaters, chainsaws, anything they could

get and pawn or sell for a minimal amount of money to purchase,

or they were going in in groups of five, they would go to one pharmacy and shoplift three or four boxes, then they would go to the

next pharmacy and another would go in and shoplift. And of

course, they were going to what is called mom and pop stores, but

to our general stores, if you will, and we have a lot in Rutherford

County, and they were shoplifting.

We did have the opportunity in Rutherford County to prosecute

a couple of store owners who had set up their own little markets

and had all the products you needed to manufacture meth on one

shelf. And thanks to John Emerson, Van and the folks at DEA, we

were able to federally prosecute a couple of store owners for intentionally selling the products all off one shelf that were necessary

to manufacture meth. So we got that problem stopped quickly.

Mr. SOUDER. Any signs of buying off the Internet at this point?

Mr. BYERS. Not in Rutherford County. Some of the other counties, I know Wilkes County had a couple of cases where

pseudoephedrine products, bulk amounts, were purchased from

Canada and came into the county. So we have not witnessed that,

but yes, it has been going on.

Mr. SOUDER. Oregon has seen a rise. It is something to watch.

The myth is that these addicts are not going to have the Internet,

but almost all of them got the recipe off the Internet, so they can

use the Internet. The question is at what point does it become disorganized and not purchase. Also, any meth addict who is thinking

about this or might read about this hearing, we are working closely

because the advantage of the Internet is it has to be delivered and

so as we work with FedEx and UPS and others, the Internet may

not be quite as handy for them as they originally thought.

I want to make one comment on treatment, because one of the

challenges in treatment here is since it is a rural area, Charlie

Cruse is from my district, he is the head of ADMHA, the Alcohol

and Drug Mental Health Agency that is doing this and they are

testing meth models and meth is a very difficult—because it is so

75

addictive—in many ways very difficult to get off of. All drugs are,

but that in particular. And one of the things is that they have this

model that they have been developing, and in my district we met

with all the treatment people and the only place that was familiar

with the model was Fort Wayne, which of course does not have a

meth problem. The mid-size county that did had heard of it at a

workshop, and in the most rural counties, they had never had the

money to go to a workshop. Because it is much like law enforcement, the smaller the county, the more junior people you have in

drug treatment, they are starting out their career or did not have

as much training, they do not have as many resources, so the meth

problem is the most complicated treatment and it is the problem

where you have the least treatment dollars and the least experience and the fewest number of people.

So we are trying to figure out how to adjust inside the treatment

model because it then becomes the least efficient way to try to do

drug treatment in the United States when we already have a backlog of people seeking treatment.

But last week, Dr. Barthwell, who used to be Deputy Director of

ONDCP came in and there is an experimental drug that is being

run on the market that shows very interesting promise. They are

doing certain test cases in drug courts in the United States. And

it is not just for meth but it is for others and it is almost like a

methadone off of heroin, but it stabilizes your brain. Because this

is physiological and psychological. The problem is that as people

get stabilized, their appetite for meth will disappear for as much

as 2 weeks, but what they have found is that then they think they

are done with their treatment, when in fact there are problems underneath it that led to the drug addiction and they will give it up

and not get into the social support group, the Narcotics Anonymous, the Alcoholics Anonymous type of programs.

But we are trying to figure out how to integrate this new drug

with the other forms of treatment. It may start to get publicized

as a magic drug, it is not, because even if you are clean for awhile,

the addiction is so potent, even if you do not have a memory of it,

if you get exposed because of the groups you are hanging around

with or your fundamental problems are not addressed, you can

drift back into it even—what it does is it kills the memory that you

used the drug. It is fascinating and so there is no attraction to you

until you hit it again. But if you are in a group that you hit it

again, you will redevelop the addiction.

Mr. McHenry.

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You know, when we had our Sheriffs’ Conference last year, both

Sheriff Clark, Sheriff Byers, the one thing that you all said very

passionately is that something needs to be done, not just because

of the addicts, but because of the children in these meth labs that

are exposed to toxic chemicals and the lasting effect it has. And

Lynne, you actually spoke of that as well. That is a large concern.

And you two gentlemen are most responsible for me going back

to Washington looking at ways to add an increased penalty for

those that produce meth or any controlled substance in the presence of a child.

76

In North Carolina in 2005, there were over 100 cases with children found in the home in meth lab seizures. You said, Sheriff

Clark, that 75 percent of the meth labs you seize here in Caldwell

County have children in them. That is very frightening. I know

that you have come up with some programs to look at ways to treat

children here in Caldwell County found in those circumstances. I

wanted to see if you could discuss that.

Mr. CLARK. We have tried to join in with the local Department

of Social Services and health officials. County Commissioners are

also in-depth into many of the programs we do at the Sheriff’s Office. Foothills Mental Health is a big part of things that are going

on here in the county. But I think most importantly, you have to

team together. I do not think it is just a law enforcement issue or

a Department of Social Services issue or a Health Department. I

think you have to come together collectively as a group to sit down

and look at the law enforcement issues, look at the health issues

and those social issues, particularly right now with some of the

socio-economic issues that we are facing in Caldwell County, I

think it is particularly important that we all band together collectively to put our heads, if you will, together to come up with ways

to address this particular problem.

But out of the last four particular meth seizures that we were

involved in, three of those did involve children. And one of the most

alarming ones that I referred to earlier was in fact a preschool or

day care for children where there was meth in the house.

So once again, I would repeat that there are no social barriers

or boundaries where methamphetamine is concerned. Whereas

sometimes when you speak of cocaine at one point in time, I think

historically looking at that particular drug, it was out of the price

of most individuals, but now you have methamphetamine that has

come along, as Sheriff Byers alluded to, it is very conducive to particularly just those abusers. It is the drug of choice. So we have to

continue to band together collectively, put our heads together, not

only as representatives, as law enforcement officials, as health officials, but I think we are going to have to continue to band together,

put our heads together and come up with a plan of action to address that particular problem.

Mr. MCHENRY. And going right into the same subject, Ms.

Vasquez, you have spoken of Chad and his involvement in meth.

When did he get started in meth, as near as you can tell?

Ms. VASQUEZ. It has probably been about 3 years, 31⁄2 years.

Mr. MCHENRY. Three and a half years.

Ms. VASQUEZ. Uh-huh.

Mr. MCHENRY. And how old is your grandchild now?

Ms. VASQUEZ. I have one 5 and one 3.

Mr. MCHENRY. OK.

Ms. VASQUEZ. And the other passed away, she died October 29th

this past year.

The two things that I really want to say in reference to what has

been said here at the table is I hope that they do not get real comfortable with this idea of pseudoephedrine being put behind the

counter and we have a control on it, because you do not have a control on it. Mexican methamphetamine is 10 times stronger than

what has ever been made in a lab at home, in a home base, OK?

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Some of the methamphetamine coming into Rutherford County is

coming out of Greenville, SC; it does not come across the border,

this particular did not come across the border, it come out of

Greenville, SC into Rutherford County, 10 times stronger. And the

base for it is not pseudoephedrine. The base for it is Clorox. I do

not know how they are breaking down that Clorox, I do not know

how they are cooking it, separating or whatever they have to do,

but because you have this drug confined behind the counter does

not mean that you have a control on. So that needs to be looked

at.

The other thing that needs to be looked at, I feel, is that my

struggle was to get my grandchildren. It became a long, hard struggle. I was threatened by DSS for harassment, OK? This is hard.

They actually gave my daughter-in-law instructions of how to have

me prosecuted for false information, OK? I understand that there

is a problem of where to put these children. I understand that

there are funds that need to be considered. I understand that in

Rutherford County—I know there are not places to put them if

they take them out of their home, we do not have enough foster

parents. But if you have a grandmother saying give me my child,

you do not have to worry about somewhere else to put them. This

needs to be taken into consideration instead of grouping that

grandmother with a bunch of other people.

Mr. MCHENRY. What types of prevention and rehab programs did

your son have access to?

Ms. VASQUEZ. Actually he went down to—the Federal Government had a contract in Cleveland County because there was nothing in Rutherford County for them to tag him to. It was really just

counseling and through the whole ordeal, my son said the same

thing, they sit and they listen to me but they do not hear me, they

do not know what this is. My son has depression problems, he is

ADD. He tells me—and I was thinking about this when you were

saying what does this person coming in to buy this look like. The

very last part of my son being on methamphetamine, I could not

tell. If my son refused to touch his children, I knew he was using

again. I have two pictures of him, one 1 month before he was indicted into Federal court, attached to my statement. The other one

was taken when they put him into Mecklenburg County Jail after

sentencing. But you have to understand that on the second day of

January, my son knew he was going to be sentenced on the 5th,

I, along with these wonderful people that I had to work with me

in Asheville, I knew that he was going on the 5th. He had no idea,

he thought he would have six more months at home or 60 days still

at home before they processed him. My son tried to commit suicide

on January 2nd.

But from October until January, my son was using. As you can

see by the pictures that I put in there, he weighed 196 pounds, face

full, big boy, looks like he is healthy again. No. If I had not known

he was using myself, no way. The kids told me—I am not having

anything to do with my kids, I know that he was using, period. He

is ADD, he has depression problems. I talked on the Web with a

medical doctor from Duke University, problem is, depression problems, ADD, ADHD, they treat them all with what, amphetamines.

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The last 6 months that my son used, he could sleep, no problem;

he could eat, no problem.

On January 2, 2006, he told me I cannot go to jail for something

that I did not do. I did part of this but I did not do all of it. What

do I say? You have to do what the Federal Government says for

you to do. Ten needles of methamphetamine and ran them all on

January 2nd. He said with the hopes that it would either bust his

heart or it blow a vein in his brain. It did neither one. I do not

know where he got the meth, I do not know how that all come

about, but that is what happened.

He decided because that did not kill him, that he would go peacefully on January 5th. I am telling you that all meth addicts—and

my son is an addict—do I believe that when he comes home, he is

going to have a big problem? I believe that. Do I know that only

92 percent ever recover? And I think they raised the odds a little

bit, only 96 percent, if they were needle users, recover. He was a

needle user. Do I believe? I only believe God. I only believe God.

God carried me through this. God got me through this. But we cannot be calm or convinced we have a hold on it now, because when

we get relaxed, the problem is going to escalate.

Mr. MCHENRY. Yes, ma’am.

Ms. VASQUEZ. And through the methamphetamine that has been

being made, it puts off—you were talking about smells, it puts off

four different smells, but the new methamphetamine they are making that they are using Clorox for does not smell at all.

Mr. MCHENRY. Well, going right into your question about the

slowness of the process. I know that the Sheriff’s Department in

Rutherford County was very engaged with you in trying to tackle

this. And we have two tracks, we have the Federal track and the

State track. And we have a prosecutor here from North Carolina,

Mr. Gaither, and I wanted to ask about what the Federal Government can do to assist you as a State prosecutor to fight against

meth production and trafficking? What are the things we can do to

assist you and aid you?

Mr. GAITHER. Let me make a couple of points. One, Congressman, let us realize that if the Federal Government was not already

doing what they are doing, we would be faced with just a tremendous overload in our courts. So we are very thankful for what they

are doing currently.

Our goal, other than specific deterrence, putting that individual

who we have arrested and brought to court behind bars, is also

general deterrence. We want to get the message out to young people and everybody in the community that this type of crime is punished harshly. I would say one of my criticisms of the Federal Government is that when they arrest somebody and when they prosecute them and give them the lengthy sentence that they give

them, a lot of times I do not ever read about it in the papers or

hear about it in the news. And I passed this on to Gretchen

Shappert and I would like to see that change. I think if people saw

the 10, 15, 20 year sentences that the Federal Government is handing down and how they are putting people behind bars for lengthy

sentences, you might get a general deterrence effect.

I would like to make one other point. One other thing I would

like to say is that the worse myth in the world is that drug abuse

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and drug trafficking is a victimless crime. If you took out the

crimes that are committed by people who are under the influence

of drugs, our courts would not be empty, but I would bet that it

would be down 80 percent, 90 percent, it would be a huge amount.

The balance, the net gain for doing what we are doing here is

tremendous and I just ask that you all continue to have the commitment that you have here, have the faith in the people to put the

money and the resources behind the war on drugs and if we can—

I believe we can see on this chart here, that there has been a stake

in the ground, what Gary Clark has been doing with the information that we have gotten from the west, with the cooperation that

we have gotten from the west, I think we have slowed the advancement down. But crack cocaine, methamphetamine, the whole

gamut of drugs, are behind all our break-ins, our assaults, all the

crimes that we see in the courts are drug-related. If we continue

to put money behind the interdiction of drugs, I think we will see

an overall drop in crime and I think that the net gain to the community would be huge. I just wanted to throw that in there.

But as far as the Federal Government assisting us further, you

are doing a tremendous job, we appreciate you very much. I am not

going to sit here and ask for more. I think the State government

needs to step up and carry its load.

Mr. MCHENRY. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gaither, and I appreciate the fact that Mr. Byers and Mr. Clark both discussed the additional burdens on society that this meth problem places. Sheriff

Byers said in particular domestic violence, Sheriff Clark related

that to not just domestic violence but robberies and all sorts of

property crimes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Congresswoman Foxx, do you have anything else?

Ms. FOXX. Well, I was going to make a comment about the fact

that these are not victimless crimes and that we can see that meth

affects everyone in a community, not just those that are addicted

to it. Domestic violence, all the other crimes, the cost of mental

health, social services, school system and long-term effects for this.

I think it is an extremely important issue to think about because

people cannot just say well, my family is not involved with drugs,

so I do not care what happens, because it is affecting everyone.

I just appreciate what all of you have done to try to bring down

the supply of methamphetamine locally, but I think that it is very,

very important that we pay attention to the figures that the chairman used, that 80 percent of the meth is now coming from Mexico

or Mexican sources. It is very troubling to me that is the situation

that we are facing.

Tomorrow, I am going to be hosting a field hearing investigating

the consequences of our borders, our porous borders with Mexico

and I am going to raise the issue there about this, because I think

people who are saying again that we do not have to worry about

closing the border, are only looking at one dimension of the issue.

And I think that the American public needs to be educated as to

the long-term effects of this, especially the drugs and what is happening to us.

So I am very much concerned about this. I do not think—we will

never stop the flow of illegal drugs, I do not think that is possible

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to do. But I think that we can certainly slow down the supply of

it. I think we have done a good job in western North Carolina with

all the law enforcement people, of slowing down what is available

here. But we have simply got to see this as a national issue and

a Federal issue. And I want to do everything that I can as a Member of Congress to see that we shut down the flow coming from

Mexico. And I think the public needs to be aware of what a serious

issue that is for this entire country.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

There are a number of things, I think in the next iteration that

we will be looking at in meth. I wanted to ask Mr. Shaw, we heard

that—are you looking at the Kentucky example of how——

Mr. SHAW. I am familiar with it, the container program.

Mr. SOUDER. Yes. Is that a cost problem in implementing that or

what is the major stumbling block? I talked to Chairman Rogers

and it is very difficult because he chairs an appropriations subcommittee, he is one of the senior Members of Congress. He has

put extra money in his district, which he has the power to do, because of meth. What is not clear to me, and we have been trying

to work out a date to go down to Hazard County area where they

have done this, but it is unclear to me whether that particular component, because it certainly would help local law enforcement in

the contracted out portion, if we could get the chemicals in the

unit. You say you are looking at this. Does it look like a cost question? Is it the evidentiary chain in the court process? What are the

biggest reasons why we cannot go national with this?

Mr. SHAW. One of the major problems or resistance to this program is simply you are taking law enforcement officers and you are

turning them into hazardous waste handlers. This program takes

officers having to over-package, use different types of adulterants—

vermiculite—put it in buckets, load it up in trailers, carry it to a

holding site, unload trailers, meet them back, allow for that to be

picked up, where now we are utilizing contractors. One of the problems has been is that there would only be one contractor per State

or one contractor per 30 States, with different offices. So for years,

our closest contractor that was under the Federal contract was out

of Johnson City, TN. We did not even have an office in North Carolina.

So my opinion, being out there and being one of the agents that

drove the truck and did that in the early days of this program, we

need to have more contractors cleared and available on the commercial side for quicker response. There is no reason I should not

be able to use a vendor out of Greensboro or Asheville or Charlotte

or Raleigh, and I cannot do that at this point in time. There are

just a couple of vendors we are having to use right now.

That, as I see it, is letting those professionals do that job. We are

not tying up officers doing that job, they are out enforcing the law.

So I think that has been some of it.

Mr. SOUDER. Why do you think the vendors are slowed down in

getting cleared?

Mr. SHAW. I am not sure of the contractual process, I just know

that typically they are under contract for a period of time, they are

the sole provider of that service. So we are then dependent upon

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their locations in our State to call upon them, because the Federal

Government is paying the bill.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Emerson, sorry to call you up again, but I have

heard variations of this. Is this predominantly that the number of

contracts is so small, unless somebody has a wider service area,

they will not even bid on the contract? Is this quality control because these places have a lot of turnover in their staff? What would

be some of the challenges that would be faced in getting more contractors?

Mr. EMERSON. I am sorry, I just cannot answer that question.

Mr. SOUDER. That is a written question, consider that a written

question, if you could get back to us and we will also followup with

Director Tandy.

Mr. EMERSON. Absolutely.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Did not mean to put you on the spot

with that, but since I am going to be 56 this summer, sometimes

my memory goes very short-term, so unless I do it right there, I

might have forgot to ask that question.

Mr. Shaw, did you have anything else to add there?

Mr. SHAW. That is simply one of the issues. I know that it has

worked in other States, especially the midwestern States, with long

distances between towns. I think it is a good program for certain

States. North Carolina is transitioning to a much different State

than it was 30 years ago. We are very populated. I do not think

that—our officers are extremely busy and I think if you polled

these two sheriffs, they would probably say the same thing, that

we need to keep that in the hand of a contractor for our State and

let our agents and officers do the job of law enforcement and evidence collection.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank all of you for your testimony, being very

open and direct with us. As you can see, in our next iteration, we

are looking at a number of things like how do we reduce this time

at site and what are some creative ways to do that. Another thing

would be trying to figure out the next iteration of OK, if you control the pseudoephedrine, are you going to pop to another mixture

of the labs, are they going to go to the Internet, working with companies that are trying to get ahead of the curve as opposed to just

being behind it.

In treatment, we are struggling, but we are certainly looking and

there are a number of drug treatment, experimental efforts. This

has gone 2 years ago times four, then last year times eight to try

to figure out affordable ways to do drug treatment, particularly in

rural areas as well as urban areas.

Montana, I met with this amazing man, the Montana Meth

Project, which was done in the private sector, is extraordinary. The

question is how to get prevention like that and get it coordinated

with our national campaigns and to get the private sector and others involved. There is no way the Federal Government will be able

to involve this and this individual cannot do this in every State.

But I mean the ads there and the billboards and the radio and so

on, it has revolutionalized and grabbed. It will be interesting to see

the Montana Project as it moves to other States and whether it has

the same impact and whether it leaves a lasting legacy that makes

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our Federal efforts seem like milk and toast right now, at the aggressiveness that they did. So we are looking at this.

I realize that one thing that the record is not going to reflect

when I said earlier we are going to have the southwest border controlled in 60 days, that was a joke, officially. I do not know whether

we can put laughter by my comment or whatever, so it does not

look like——

Mr. MCHENRY. Unfortunately it is a joke.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. We spent, two terms ago, much of that

year doing north and south border hearings and have continued to

do that, because in addition to the immigration and terrorism questions, I am on Homeland Security and on the Border Subcommittee

there, too. It is an incredible problem because when you are trying

to chase a million people roughly coming across a year illegally, of

which probably 900,000 plus, are coming related to work; trying to

find the drug addicts and the terrorists inside it is impossible. We

could put an army of 200,000 people on the southwest border and

not seal it right now.

We did one hearing at the Tohono O’odham reservation southwest of Tucson and this was 2 years ago. The previous year, they

had seized 1,500 pounds of marijuana. From January to March of

that year, they seized 1,500 pounds of marijuana. The day of our

hearing, where we had more—this is where Organ Pipe National

Monument is where the park ranger got killed as they were going

through, they had to knock off, seal a bunch of the trails because

it is so dangerous to walk through right now because of all the

drug runners and coyotes running illegal immigrants as well, and

armed fighting is occurring a lot. But at the Tohono O’odham reservation, which has just been overrun, we had all these Federal

agents in to testify at our hearing. They were so bold, they did not

even care to see all the Federal agents there. That day, during our

hearing from 10 to 1, they nabbed 1,600 pounds of marijuana of

guys running through the town where all the Federal agents were

sitting. In addition, they had a Blackhawk helicopter and others

took down a group of seven SUVs who shot their way through.

They got most of the SUVs, but the lead vehicles got through. This

is tough and they are dealing in areas in the southwest border

where they do not even pick you up if you have less than 200

pounds of marijuana—unless you have more than 200 pounds, a

Federal case would be 700 pounds.

It is an overwhelming challenge and we are going through a very

difficult political period, because unless we can get our work permit

and other types of things to work with this, I am just telling you

as somebody who has held hearings in almost every single town

and many of them multiple times, the major cities on the southwest border—it is not possible to control the southwest border until

we get it down to a workable number. We need to seal that, we

need more effective things, but there has to be some kind of a compromise here. I am saying this politically, I know it is not popular

to say, but I am telling you as somebody who has been down there

on the front lines, you will not receive the relief in this area until

we can get a tough border and a tough border also requires some

sort of a strategy internally, because we are overwhelmed right

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now and it is a huge challenge. But it is likely to be the most controversial and the most difficult challenge.

And as we start to tackle things like the mom and pop labs, we

push it right back to the southwest border, not to mention for those

of us from northern States, the Canadian border is not exactly

sealed. As you heard, the hydroponic marijuana that is coming into

your area is coming through Canada. The biggest terrorist threat

to our Nation right now is north, not south, even though the

RCMP, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, we do not have to worry

which side they are fighting on, which sometimes we have the

problem with the southwest. The Canadian Government is more responsive in working with us, but on that border, there is nothing

along the north border. And when we push one area, they pop to

the other if they are a large trafficking organization.

The reason I asked about Tri-Cities is that we are now seeing

them working heavily out of Atlanta and they are coming into Indiana and they do not come logically through Laredo and McAllen

and up the shortest way, they will go up through California. There

is a huge trading mart working up just like other wholesale or

traders, working up, because the migrant workers who pick fruit

and tomatoes, they will hide inside them and so they will have a

season in the west, they will get a connection inside the midwest,

a connection inside the south, they will swap guns to Canada for

BC-Bud. They are the same dealers as we heard here who are

doing the crystal meth, the BC-Bud, the guns and you have these

big traffic marts around the country.

The DEA is trying to figure out how to take these down. That

is what these drug task forces are doing. But I hope if nothing else

that I learned a lot about the particulars here, but that you see

how inter-related our State and local and Federal efforts are right

now. Because you might be taking somebody down that looks like

a local problem, but in reality, they are into a regional and into a

national and unless we can get these different groups taken down

and get their finances taken down and work together on this, you

are likely to be picking them up. The Federal Government sometimes thinks they are the end all, be all, but you are likely to get

the person back on the street who you have just got. The question

is how to turn him to the next one to the next one to the next one,

so we can get at the source of the stuff that is coming in and poisoning our communities.

So thank you all and thank all your departments. Each individual along the way is playing a key role in this because we all know

at a minimum 75 percent, probably 85 percent of all crime is drug

and alcohol related, or at least facilitated. So thank you for your

efforts.

We will look forward if there are any additional materials you

want to put into the record or if we have some additional questions,

we will hold the record open for probably 2 weeks.

With that, the subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:45 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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