Making meth gets easier - Home cooks now can brew their own ammonia

[MadShroomer]

source= http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/03/7/6/17161542.CFM

Published: Sunday, July 6, 2003
Making meth gets easier
Home cooks now can brew their own ammonia
By Katherine Schiffner
Herald Writer

Making methamphetamine used to involve stealing anhydrous ammonia or paying hundreds of dollars to get it on the black market.

Now, all it takes is a trip to the hardware store and some dry ice.

Snohomish County meth cooks have figured out how to make nearly pure ammonia -- a vital ingredient in the production of methamphetamine -- by using household chemicals and dry ice, said Sgt. Mark Richardson, a member of the Snohomish Regional Drug Task Force.

Police worry that this method, first seen in Snohomish County last year, makes it even easier to make a batch of the illegal drug. About a third of all meth manufactured in Snohomish County is now made with homemade ammonia, according to the task force.

"The only hard part was getting the anhydrous ammonia. Now that they can make the ammonia, it's easy" to make methamphetamine, Richardson said. "This is the easiest and quickest method out there."

Police believe that meth cooks learned how to make ammonia when stealing it became too difficult. Local food processing plants, cold storage facilities and agricultural sites stepped up security to protect their ammonia tanks from thieves, Richardson said.

Plus, when thieves break open valves and tap into commercial ammonia storage tanks, the tanks can rupture or explode.

"It's getting harder and more dangerous to steal it," Richardson said. "They know if they get a lungful of this stuff, it can be fatal."

Meth cooks can't buy anhydrous ammonia because state-certified ammonia distributors only sell the compressed, liquefied gas to certified commercial customers, and only in quantities of 500 or more gallons at a time. Many distributors also conduct background checks.

The task force suspected for several years that meth cooks here were making their own ammonia, but didn't know for sure until they found a lab with the equipment, Richardson said.

"We saw a few things that didn't fit with a regular methamphetamine production scene," he said. "Anytime we see that, we sit back and analyze it."

The task force asked chemists at the Washington State Patrol crime lab in Marysville to replicate the process so law enforcement could learn how the cooks were doing it.

"It was a lot easier than we anticipated, and it can be done in a much shorter time than we'd expected," said Erik Neilson, manager of the lab in Marysville.

The process takes up to 30 minutes, meaning meth cooks can produce the drug in about an hour, Neilson said.

"That's the scary part," he said. "That makes these guys harder to catch."

The liquid ammonia produced from this method is about 90 percent pure -- good enough to make methamphetamine but not as good as the 99.5 percent pure anhydrous ammonia. To compare, ammonia purchased at a grocery store is mostly water.

After the chemicals are mixed, dry ice, which is 109 degrees below zero, is needed to cool the gas so it becomes a liquid.
Although dry ice is a critical ingredient, several stores in Snohomish County that sell it say they had no idea that some of their customers may have been meth cooks.

"I've never heard of that," said Ron Cook, owner of Everett Carbonic, which has sold dry ice, carbonated gas, helium, nitrogen and fire extinguishers for 26 years.

Anyone can buy dry ice, he said, though he doesn't sell it to the very young. Customers ask for dry ice for many reasons, he said, from birthday punch to shrinking metal parts.

Cook said he hasn't seen a spike in dry ice sales this year, and does not want to sell to anyone who will use it to make meth.

Direct contact with dry ice can cause severe burns, just one of the many hazards of making ammonia.

Earlier this year, a man attempting to make ammonia was mixing chemicals in a steel container when it ruptured and sprayed him with the mix, Richardson said. The man, who was taken to an Everett hospital, suffered serious burns.

Ammonia "is a nasty material to work with," Neilson said.

"To me, that's the biggest concern. People are going to hurt themselves."

Police also worry about meth cooks dumping the equipment and chemicals used to make ammonia, risking chemical burns to anyone who finds it.

"The whole community is at risk from this problem," Neilson said.

There's little law enforcement can do to stop meth cooks from making their own ammonia, because all the ingredients can be purchased legally. But police are urging stores to watch for people who frequently buy dry ice in large amounts.

Even if there were a way to shut down this method, police say meth cooks desperate for the drug would quickly find another shortcut.

"We wish they could apply their resourcefulness to something useful," Richardson said.

Reporter Katherine Schiffner: 425-339-3436 or schiffner@heraldnet.com.