Meth marketing or just urban myth

By Abigail Goldman (contact)

Thursday, April 12, 2007 | 7:27 a.m.

The latest drug outrage comes candy coated: flavored methamphetamine, reportedly popping up in chocolate, cola and fruit varieties.

In Carson City, police found a stash of the stuff in strawberry flavor, a punchy pink crystal supposedly called "Strawberry Quick" on the street.

Most cops are calling flavored meth a feat of criminal marketing, a drug dealer's brainstorm to lure younger users who are open to amphetamine if sugar-dusted.

Yet other law enforcement officials are quietly calling the whole thing a fake-out. Flavored meth, an urban myth.

After all, skeptics note, what cop can be certain if he hasn't sampled?

Carson City officers turned up cotton candy-colored meth Jan. 27 while investigating a reported gang member for dealing drugs in the capital. The pinch of pink grit, seized and documented, is rare hard evidence that flavored meth might actually exist, said Steve Robertson, Drug Enforcement Administration special agent and spokesman.

Although the drug increasingly comes from across the border, meth manufacturers can cook it at home, a volatile chemical process that typically involves leeching pseudoephedrine from over-the-counter cold medicine. This produces a bitter white or brown crystal that is smoked, snorted or shot up. Flavoring is probably added after trafficking, by stateside dealers who cut the drug with chocolate powder, fruit gelatin or soda and pitch it as something new, Robertson said.

"It's a way to downplay the danger of the drug," he said. "It's a way to make it seem better and more attractive to a first-time user."

A younger user. This angle has garnered national media attention, with stories of flavored meth sweetly prepared for Valentine's Day and wrapped in pretty paper, or dyed blue and called "Smurf dope."

Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo says his narcotics officers came upon flavored meth four years ago: pia colada.

"In some respects, unfortunately, our meth manufacturers were ahead of their time," he said.

Not everyone is convinced. The pink meth found in Carson City is said to have come from Sacramento, where sheriff's department officials say they've never seen it and doubt the drug tastes special.

If anything, dealers are dying the drug to disguise it, Sacramento County Sheriff's Department spokesman Sgt. Tim Curran said.

No determined drug user would stand for flavored meth because the additive would invariably cut its potency, North Las Vegas Police spokesman Tim Bedwell said.

"Meth is about getting high. It's not about a fun experience or a tasty smoke," he said. "I wouldn't doubt you can find people saying it's flavored, but we don't believe it. We believe flavored meth is a myth."

If this is the case, the marketing of flavored meth is more ingenious than cops give dealers credit for - "Strawberry Quick" isn't an urban legend but a triumph of false advertising. By the time the user realizes there isn't any flavor, it's too late to send it back to the chef.

"We believe that if you mix up a really crappy batch of meth and you want to sell it, you are going to make some excuse for why it isn't good," Bedwell says.

Reports of flavored meth have popped up in nine states including Nevada. Drug users who are informants, or in drug rehab, have vouched to the DEA that the meth really is flavored, but even the DEA's Robertson has to chuckle at this.

"Once they have that first snort, they probably can't taste anything anyway," he said.

Clark County law enforcement officials say they haven't found any. At least not yet.

Kent Bitsko, director of Las Vegas' federally funded High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, says it's just a matter of time. Flavored meth has been on the retired Metro cop's radar for several months.

"It's coming," Bitsko said.

Though just what's coming is unclear, even to law enforcement officers who have seen its arrival.

"I don't know if anyone has an answer on that," Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong said. "I don't know of anybody who can answer the question of whether or not it's really flavored."

In a state that has the nation's highest per-capita number of residents who report having used meth in the past 30 days, according to a federal survey - and where Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto informed the Legislature that 40,000 Nevadans currently use the drug - whether or not the flavor's there is perhaps the least pressing question of all.