by Anthony R. Lovett

About the author: Anthony R. Lovett is a freelance writer in Los Angeles.

An hour east of Los Angeles is the San Gabriel Valley, a sprawl of tract homes and minimalls where the big attraction is a theme park called Raging Waters. Out here, far from the smog and crime of downtown, the teen-agers do not care about cocaine, ecstasy or other glamorous drugs of the big city. They prefer getting spun, as they call it, on crystal methamphetamine.

A Methamphetamine Epidemic

And suddenly there’s plenty of it around. According to Brenda Heng, an agent with the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement (CBNE), amphetamine use is reaching epidemic proportions on the West Coast. “Even crack is not as widespread in this state as methamphetamine,” she says. “The...