TRYING TO TOUGHEN METH LAWS

Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper Aaron Harrison was scared by methamphetamine before he even knew what it was.

As a paramedic working in Joplin, Mo., in 1992, Harrison responded to an explosion at a motel. The wall of a room had been blown out, and the man who had been in the room was tearing apart the motel's office. He had lost an eye and a lot of blood, Harrison said.

Once Harrison and his co-workers got the man strapped into a gurney and into the ambulance, drops of sweat from his face began bursting in tiny, flaming explosions.

"We knew we had some sort of hazardous materials situation, but we didn't know what it was," Harrison said.

Later he learned that the sodium metals that the man had been using to manufacture methamphetamine were reacting violently with the moisture on his face.

In his three years with the patrol, Harrison has made methamphetamine the focus of his work. This year, he figures that he has shut down about 30 meth labs and gathered information for the Southeast Missouri Drug Task Force on many more.

But despite the arrests, he said, meth makers are still traveling into the criminal justice system and back into society too quickly. Often, he will see meth cooks originally charged with multiple felonies, only to plea bargain down to a single felony charge and ultimately leave court on probation.

"They're back out cooking before I'm done with the paperwork," Harrison said. "To me, that's absolutely wrong."

To solve the problem, Harrison has written draft legislation that would make Missouri's meth laws among the harshest in America. The two bills were pre-filed by state Sen. Peter Kinder of Cape Girardeau Dec. 1.

"We're going to supercharge the meth legislation we've already got," Harrison said.

Tougher meth laws

His version eliminates probation, suspended sentences, parole or conditional release for anyone convicted of manufacturing methamphetamine. After conviction, a person who has made or attempted to make meth would serve three years. Punishment escalates to five- and 10-year sentences respectively for second and third offenses.

California, which is the only state with more meth lab arrests than Missouri, has slightly lower sentences for manufacturing methamphetamine. The California state code gives a range of two to six years in prison to meth cooks.

Harrison also wants to increase the punishment for stealing anhydrous ammonia, a fertilizer commonly used by farmers and a key ingredient for making methamphetamine. He would increase possession of any amount of anhydrous ammonia from a maximum sentence of five to seven years.

However, thefts of bulk amounts of the chemical would become class A felonies, punishable by 10 to 30 years in prison or life imprisonment.

Harrison has shared his legislative ideas with the meth cooks whom he talks with on an almost weekly basis. They don't like it, he said.

"All of them say they would leave the state if it passed," the trooper said.

Sen. Kinder said the legislation focuses on the main threat to a growing meth trade -- the cooks.

"It stiffens the terms for those at the top of the food chain," Kinder said.

Harrison said those who say that enough prisons and money do not exist to lock up those who would be arrested misunderstand methamphetamine. The addiction is greater than any other drug, he said, and a minimum of three years in prison would be the best way for a user to break the habit.

"I'll talk with people who have been clean for a year or so, but they'll have a bad day and go back to it and be worse than before," he said. "It's not like marijuana."

Harrison sees tough laws creating a pattern that would allow law enforcement to catch the most diehard meth makers.

Beating the system

Currently, Harrison finds out about meth labs from users he arrests who give information in exchange for lighter sentences. But many refuse to talk, he said.

"They'll tell me all they're going to get is five years probation, so why cooperate," he said.

But when facing prison time, more people would be willing to bargain, or leave Missouri. Ultimately, he said, this would thin out the amount of meth cooks and allow officers to focus on the most persistent manufacturers.

Although typical cooks will make four ounces or less for themselves and to sell to friends, they find other ways to profit from meth, Harrison said. He knows of a man in Bollinger County who sells instructional tapes on making methamphetamine for $200 each.

Even more money is available from stealing anhydrous ammonia. A quart of the fertilizer has a street value of $200 to $400, Harrison said. A 1,000-gallon field tank would be worth approximately $440,000, while a tank trailer would be worth over $12 million.

Recently, one of Harrison's informants said that a man from the St. Louis area offered him $250,000 to steal a field tank. The man showed the informant the money, stuffed into boxes in a closet.

With this much at stake, Harrison said he needs all the weapons he can get to battle methamphetamine, even if it means he has to write new laws to enforce.

"Our job doesn't stop when we get out of our cars and go home," he said. "When I see a problem, I try to fix it."