EVANSVILLE, Ind. — With tears in her eyes, Denise Quintanilla begged the judge to spare her a life sentence in prison.

        “You know, this is my life, and I pray that the Lord's guiding you, you know. I'm scared,” the 33-year-old mother of three told U.S. District Judge Farris Mason.

        Married to an imprisoned drug lord, Mrs. Quintanilla was convicted last fall of trafficking methamphetamines, helping to funnel drugs worth $250,000 from Texas into southern Indiana.

        Police say she is just one player in an ever-increasing cat-and-mouse game between methamphetamine traffickers and authorities in the Midwest.

        In the federal court system in southern Indiana, the number of defendants charged with meth trafficking increased from 7 percent of the caseload in 1995 to 28 percent in 2000. Elsewhere in the Midwest, meth cases have clogged court systems and cost taxpayers millions — up to $125,000 per site — to clean up discarded meth labs.

        The problem, at least in Indiana, appears concentrated in rural areas, said Tim Morrison, an assistant U.S. Attorney in southern Indiana.

        “Will it stay there for a long period of time? I don't know,” Mr. Morrison said. “I can tell you, five years ago it wasn't here, and now it is.”

        Indiana State Police helped seize 681 meth labs in 2001, compared with just six in 1995, Sgt. Todd Ringle said. In Kentucky, police dismantled six meth labs in 1996, and 268 in 2001, according to state police figures.

        In the Midwest, methamphetamines are distributed about equally by two different sources, said David Barton, director of the Midwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area in Kansas City, Mo.

        Organized drug rings, most from Mexico, typically import meth produced in “super labs” in California or other Western states at a rate of 10 pounds a day.

        The second source is mom-and-pop cookers who buy ingredients — cold medicine and lithium batteries, for example — at retail stores and produce it.

Labs increasing

        Some call methamphetamines the poor man's cocaine because it is a highly addictive stimulant that produces a euphoria similar to cocaine, but lasts longer — six to eight hours compared with 20 minutes to an hour for cocaine, Sgt. Ringle said.

        The price, however, is equivalent, roughly $100 for a gram, about the contents of a sugar packet, Kentucky State Trooper Mark Applin said.

        “You can smoke meth, you can snort it, you can ingest it or you can inject it,” Sgt. Ringle said.

        Authorities say the abundance of chemicals used to make meth — particularly the fertilizer anhydrous ammonium commonly found in area farm communities — is a factor in its new popularity.

        “It's very easy to make with a large profit return,” Trooper Applin said. “It will probably be the longest-running drug problem we'll see in Kentucky in the next 10 years.”

        Nationwide, the number of meth labs seized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration increased from 287 in 1994 to 1,837 in 2000, said Joe Long, a DEA spokesman. That does not include the labs seized by state and local authorities.

        In Kansas, 702 labs were seized in 2000, compared with 189 in 1998; in Missouri, the number rose from 679 in 1998 to 890 in 2000; in Illinois, the number increased from zero in 1995 to 246 in 1999.

        In Iowa, where retailers work with police to limit the sale of meth ingredients, the number of seized labs has leveled off. But the demand is being filled with the methamphetamines smuggled by Mexican gangs, said Mr. Barton, of the Midwest task force.

        “We're seeing a lessening in some part of the Midwest on the number of the smaller retail level labs, but we're seeing that reduction in labs reinforced with imported meth from Mexican trafficking groups, or we're uncovering larger capacity labs,” Mr. Barton said.
       

Everyone affected

        The meth problem in Indiana and Kentucky touches a wide segment of society — from the farmer who needs to protect his fertilizer from theft to the Wal-Mart sales clerk watching for customers who buy a large amount of cold tablets containing the raw ingredients for the drugs.

        Smaller-scale producers often hop from store to store to buy the needed products; they steal others.

        The lure of drug money tears families like Denise Quintanilla's apart.

        Mrs. Quintanilla — whose children are 17, 15, 13 — was sentenced to life in prison. The woman maintained she is innocent. But the judge, citing two prior felony drug convictions, said he had no choice but to lock her up for life.

        Her lawyer, David Shaw, said even if she did help traffic meth, she did not deserve to be sentenced to life in prison, arguing that “life in prison for passing on messages or running an errand is grossly disproportionate.”

        But the police on the streets, and increasingly on the rural roads of Indiana and Kentucky, are not swayed.

        Concluded Mr. Barton: “A meth cook not in jail is cooking.”

Baptists cancel Cincinnati gathering
Boycott coalition sues arts group
Civil rights leaders show support for boycott
Sharpton backs boycott in city
School, housing plans don't always mesh
Closing worries Carthage
School plans by neighborhood
Six killed on return to campus
Abuse crisis casts shadow across priesthood
Arrest made in 6 area bank holdups
Celtic groups take stage at museum center
Cleanup fund would speed Norwood development
Hate crime not same as federal crime
Pamphlets to exhibit positive city image
Parents group huddles on schools
Police still looking for suspect in shooting
Shuttlesworth honored for life's march
Tristate A.M. Report
Youths looking for jobs
BRONSON: Second opinion
HOWARD: Some Good News
PULFER: Court to rule
Some nurses get OK to prescribe
Spread of meth labs, use surge across Midwest
'Talking books' maker goes digital