Methamphetamine

Re "A military wife's battle is lost here at home," Column One, March 3 We would like to believe that the lives of our soldiers fighting for us overseas are ones of heroism and grandeur. However, this article challenged that ideal by explaining that the lives of the military are far from it. A lot of those overseas are young, and many have young families waiting at home for them. However, what are the conditions in which they are waiting? It is unfortunate to read that a 25-year-old mother, the wife of one of our heroes, has struggled with depression and methamphetamine use. One has to ask, would this have happened had the husband stayed at home?

Take a drug said to have fueled the taut aggression of Hitler's fighter pilots and tank crews, scatter it liberally among the children and teens in the slum areas of Cape Town -- and you have a social problem of mammoth proportions. In the United States, it is known as crystal meth, a highly addictive and toxic drug that makes users feel active, powerful and alert, with no need to eat or sleep.

Re "Teens try cough medicine for a high," Dec. 5 I am a physician who cares for hundreds of patients who have severe and chronic cough. The American College of Chest Physicians recently issued clinical practice guidelines indicating that most over-the-counter medications don't work. However, dextromethorphan is one of the few medicines that, in fact, do work to suppress cough, in the appropriate doses. Now it seems that the government is seeking to regulate the distribution of dextromethorphan because of thrill-seeking, overdosing teens.

The methamphetamine laboratories that once plagued California's hinterlands and powered a national explosion of drug abuse have been replaced by an increasing supply from Mexico, U.S. law enforcement officials say. Methamphetamine production has surged south of the border, from Baja California ranches to the highlands of Michoacan to the industrial parks here in Mexico's second largest city, where authorities in January busted the largest laboratory ever discovered in the Americas.

Former Dodgers pitcher Steve Howe, whose history of drug and alcohol abuse hampered his baseball career, had methamphetamine in his system when he died in a single-vehicle crash on April 28 east of Palm Springs, according to a coroner's report. Howe, 48, died of blunt force trauma when his pickup truck rolled over on the westbound side of Interstate 10. Toxicology tests established the presence of methamphetamine, though the coroner's report did not specify the amount in Howe's system.

Federal agents closed three Southern California meth labs and arrested five people Tuesday after an eight-month investigation into a major drug ring that investigators said distributed large quantities of methamphetamine throughout the United States. Special Agent Kumar Kibble, who heads the U.S.

A Riverside County judge declared a mistrial Thursday after a jury deadlocked on murder charges against Amy Leanne Prien, who was accused of killing her infant son by feeding him methamphetamine-tainted breast milk. The trial was the second for the Perris woman, whose 2003 second-degree murder conviction was overturned last fall by a state appellate court because the trial judge gave the jury inaccurate instructions.

A garden center owner was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for selling iodine used to make methamphetamine in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. Joseph Swafford, 62, also must forfeit his business, Broadway Home and Garden Center, to the government. He declined to comment at his sentencing in Chattanooga. A jury in March convicted Swafford and his business of conspiring to aid illegal drug-making by selling iodine to customers who used it to make methamphetamine.

A newlywed couple pleaded not guilty to drug charges in front of the same judge who pronounced them husband and wife the day before their arrest. David Navarro, 19, and Tiffany Castro, 18, were arrested Thursday on suspicion of selling methamphetamine after officers stopped them for a traffic violation and found about an ounce of drugs, scales and $3,300 in their car and home, police said.

Medical equipment seized in a methamphetamine lab raid had been stolen from Stanford Medical Center, where one of the suspects worked, officials said. Benjamin Ruezga, 49, one of six men arrested May 5 when officers raided his house and seized 5 pounds of methamphetamine valued at $225,000, worked in the warehouse at the center and had access throughout the hospital.