THERE IS NO SAFE SPEED

By Anastasia Toufexis

THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS AN EXPLOsion boomed through the eucalyptus-dotted hills of Aguanga, a small town in Southern California. Concerned neighbors came running toward a large mobile home that had burst into flame. Kathy James, her son Jimmy, 7, and two men managed to scramble out, but trapped inside, screaming in terror, were James' three younger children--Deon, 3, Jackson, 2, and Megan, 1.

Neighbors were horrified, but James seemed oddly oblivious. Dazed and seriously burned, she insisted to a neighbor that she didn't want anyone to call for help. When rescuers began arriving, she and the men walked off with her son. By the time fire fighters discovered the children's charred bodies, James and the other survivors had disappeared. After sifting through the debris, investigators believe they know why. The tragedy, they say, was caused by James' illegally "cooking up" methamphetamine in her kitchen.

Drug experts are not surprised. The stimulant known as speed, embraced in the 1970s by outlaw bikers, all-night revelers, exam-bound college students and long-haul truckers, is more popular than ever, with teens and middle-class workers and suburbanites swelling the ranks of users. Meth production is surging in clandestine labs set up by drug syndicates and individual users alike. "It's absolutely epidemic," declares John Coonce, head of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's meth-lab task force.

Methamphetamine use is especially prevalent in Western states. Meth-related hospital admissions rose 366% over 10 years in California. Arizona's Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, reports methamphetamine-linked crimes have jumped almost 400% in three years. And the drug is spreading rapidly across the U.S. In recent months, officials have seized huge shipments of methamphetamine originating in Mississippi and Tennessee.

Meth has always been the poor man's cocaine. Like coke, it can be smoked, snorted or injected, but "it's much cheaper and it gives people a longer high," notes Ed Mayer, head of the Jackson County, Oregon, Narcotics Enforcement Team. For decades, its manufacture and distribution was a low-level enterprise dominated by motorcycle gangs. The current surge is driven by powerful Mexican syndicates, which have found that meth offers far greater profit margins than cocaine or heroin.

Meth does not require huge, heavily guarded growing fields or sophisticated equipment. It can be cooked up by amateurs with a few simple chemicals in makeshift labs hidden away in cheap motels, mobile homes or isolated farms and ranches. Just $4,000 in raw ingredients converts to 8 lbs. of meth worth $50,000 wholesale.

Speed kitchens flourish in California because the Mexican syndicates smuggle ephedrine, a key ingredient that is tightly controlled in the U.S., across the border. In 1994 authorities busted 419 clandestine labs in California, compared with 272 in all the other states combined. "What Colombia is to cocaine, California is to methamphetamine," says Bill Mitchell, special agent in charge of the DEA's San Francisco office.

Most of the labs are sophisticated operations producing pounds of meth for distribution, usually safely. Alarmingly, however, more and more users are setting up dangerous "stove-top" labs to brew a few ounces of methamphetamine for their own needs. In untrained or careless hands, the chemicals are a volatile stew that can explode if spilled onto a hot plate. Officials suspect that's what happened to Kathy James, who has not yet been charged and is now in a burn ward in San Bernardino.

And they fear that such calamities will keep happening because the meth epidemic has gone largely ignored. "We've been fighting it really strongly for nearly seven years," says Edward Synicky, a special agent with California's bureau of narcotics enforcement, "but cocaine gets all the publicity because it's glamorous. And law enforcement in general doesn't put the resources into meth that it should."

More public education is needed about the drug's ruinous effects, which include hallucinations, addiction, depression, paranoia and violent rages. Police report that many of the most brutal crimes are now committed by people using meth. "Maybe the legacy of the three James children can wake up the country to the danger of methamphetamine," says Synicky. "I sure hope so."

--Reported by Adam Cohen/New York and Elizabeth B. Mullen/San Francisco

With reporting by ADAM COHEN/NEW YORK AND ELIZABETH B. MULLEN/SAN FRANCISCO