‘The stuff was engineered for WWII fighter pilots. Governments created it to create super-efficient soldiers. Well, here I am, baby. The direct descendent.’ —“James,” unapologetic meth user

“I’d say 70 to 80 percent of all narcotics busts our unit makes are meth-related,” Dahmen says. “The public demand is clearly methamphetamines.”

As a result, the manufacture of meth is big business. No longer a niche drug market controlled by biker gangs or rural “meth cooks” setting up labs in shacks or trailers, the meth trade now is ruled by cartels that manufacture 50 percent to 80 percent of this country’s meth in Mexico and California, according to US Drug Enforcement Agency statistics. As a result, drug enforcement officials are seeing a shift away from the large rural “superlabs” run by Mexican nationals in the last decade.

“We don’t have nearly as many big labs out in rural countrysides where whole teams of Mexican nationals were brought in by ‘Mr. Big’ to manufacture meth nonstop for a day or two and then leave,” Monterey County Deputy District Attorney Ann Hill says. “That kind of operation was big in the ‘90s in the Lewis Road area [near the old Salinas Valley landfill] or down in the South County rural area. Back then, meth labs flourished away from neighbors offended by the smell of chemicals and the foot traffic of users.”

Today the large Mexican cartels manufacture meth in bulk quantities in Mexican labs by smuggling tons of pseudoephedrine-based pills to Mexico from factories in Europe, India and Asia. Some experts predict that the cartels will increase Mexican meth production to meet demand left by new laws’ squeezing of domestic makers.

Laws like California’s Precursor Compliance Program (PCP) regulate the sale of controlled chemical substances, laboratory apparatus, reagents and solvents used in the production of meth. California officials hope that even if such laws like PCP don’t reduce meth use, they will reduce problems directly associated with makeshift labs, including the potential for explosions and exposure to toxic chemicals.

“As the drug’s popularity has increased across the state, we’ve seen more people manufacturing on a small scale using more primitive cookware like coffee makers and mason jars,” Detective Sergeant Dahmen says. “Of course, that’s far more dangerous because of the explosive nature in the manufacture of meth. It’s one thing to blow up a barn in a rural area, it’s something else to blow up a house in a neighborhood.”

The new laws seem to be working in California, but not nationally. The DEA reported busting 498 clandestine meth labs in California in 2004—down from 2,063 in 1999, which signals a significant drop. In fact, Abbruzzetti’s lab was one of only three labs busted in Monterey County for all of 2004.

But a national study shows that the DEA busted 9,797 labs in the United States last year compared to 162 in 1995, which indicates that the problem is growing massively.

And even if the rate of meth manufacturing is dropping in California and Monterey County, the amount of meth being used by Californians and Monterey County citizens shows no signs of abating. Dahmen did a five-year study from 1992 to 1997 which illustrated a 1,500-percent increase in meth-related bookings in Monterey County jails.

“Seven years later it continues to be our number one priority,” Dahmen says. “Meth still dwarfs our other bookings.”

“Meth is without a doubt the most popular drug,” Deputy DA Hill concurs. “It’s made inroads in every community in Monterey County over the past five years, except in the city of Seaside, where crack is still the drug of choice.”

And according to Hill, just because less meth is being manufactured in California doesn’t mean California is not still contributing directly to the manufacture of meth in Mexico.

“What we’ve been seeing is Mexican nationals or undocumented persons being paid to go to 40 to 50 stores in a day and purchasing the maximum number of Sudafed of ephedrine that the store will allow,” Hills says. “They’ll have a quota of 100 boxes a day maybe, which they will then deliver to ‘Mr. Big’ to be washed, vacuum-packed and shipped for eventual distribution to these new superlabs in Mexico. We know that thousands upon thousands of boxes are being shipped to LA but currently we just don’t have the investigation resources to follow the trail down there.”

As a result, Hill says, it’s hard to get a picture of the entire meth manufacturing process because the process has been divided up into steps. In other words, the cartels have concocted a more efficient process that is resulting in even more methamphetamine on the street in America.