It can be easily made in a house or an apartment, and its main ingredient can be purchased over the counter at the corner store.
Once the key ingredient, a standard component of cold remedies, is brewed with an assortment of more toxic chemicals, it turns into a highly addictive street drug -- methamphetamine -- that can lead to crime and violence and ruin families.
"It's a total nightmare drug. It destroys your thinking, it destroys your family life, your home," said Kathryn Jett, director of the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs.
In 2003, for example, a Riverside County mother was convicted of child endangerment after the death of her infant son, who may have ingested a lethal dose of the drug from her breast milk.
The problem of methamphetamine use is spreading. In California, "meth" has become the leading substance that brings people into publicly funded treatment centers, topping heroin and alcohol. In much of the nation, law enforcement agencies consider meth their greatest drug threat.
More than 1.3 million people are said to have used meth in 2003.
"This isn't a fringe drug. It's a drug that's moving in the mainstream," Jett said.
With Congress pushing this week to restrict sales of the cold drug that is key to methamphetamine, Jett and two university researchers recently explained the drug's history and dangerous consequences:
Question: What goes into methamphetamine?
Answer: It is a synthetic drug and is "cooked" using a combination of man-made chemicals, many of which are toxic. The primary ingredient is pseudoephedrine, which can be found in cold medicines such as Sudafed and NyQuil. Methamphetamine results when pseudoephedrine is mixed with other easily available chemicals, including red phosphorus, the substance on the tips of matches; anhydrous ammonia, which is in farm fertilizer; battery acid; and a base, such as lye or drain cleaner.
Because the elements are so common, meth is cheap to make. As a result, while cocaine sells for $100 to $150 a gram, meth goes for about $25 a gram.
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Q: Why is it so attractive to users?
A: Meth creates a powerful euphoria. It stimulates excessive levels of dopamine, the brain's natural pleasure chemical, said Richard A. Rawson, associate director of UCLA's Integrated Substance Abuse Programs, who has been studying meth use for 25 years.
