The police kick in the door to a small, rundown house in a rural town. Officers storm through the disgusting living room packed with rotten food, dirty dishes and empty beer bottles. They enter the kitchen and see what they came for, the source of the toxic fumes that neighbors have been complaining about.

On the stove is a large glass container full of a red liquid. Tubes and funnels connect to buckets of chemicals. Coffee filters stained red clog the sink and overflow from the trash can. Discarded matchbooks and empty packages of Sudafed litter the floor. 

The owners of the house aren't home, but sitting in the corner of the kitchen is small sickly boy, no older than three.

*****

This is the scene of a meth lab, and in the last two years Tennessee police have seized more than 1,600 labs. Methamphetamine, also known as "crystal meth," "speed," "crank" and "ice," is a recreational drug that has been rapidly gaining popularity in the United States for about 15 years. 

Meth can be made in as little as 6 to 8 hours, and labs capable of producing an ounce of meth, enough to get 100 people high, can be carried in a suitcase. Recipes for meth can be found through a simple Google search.

Ingredients include pseudoephedrine, which is found in Sudafed and other nasal decongestants; red phosphorous, easily scraped off the strikers of matches; anhydrous ammonia, a common fertilizer found on farms; lithium from batteries; drain cleaner; anti-freeze and lye.  All are easily accessible and can be purchased for less than $200.

In response to the devastating effects of meth and its wild spread across the United States, Section 1001 of Title 19 of the PATRIOT Act required that any medicine with pseudoephedrine or ephedrine as an ingredient must be moved behind the pharmacy counter. To purchase the product, customers must show a driver's license and sign a log book. 

The maximum purchase is 3.6 grams of pseudoephedrine in a month, which works out to about two boxes. A local official picks up the sheets and compares names to see if anyone is "shopping" pharmacies to purchase large quantities of pseudoephedrine.

Meth can be made in as little as 6 to 8 hours, and labs capable of producing an ounce of meth-enough to get 100 people high-can be carried in a suitcase.  Recipes for meth can be found through a simple Google search.

The measures have been highly successful at shutting down local meth labs. In Oklahoma, the seizure of meth labs has dropped 70 percent since moving pseudoephedrine behind the counter. Tennessee has seen a 30 percent decrease.

Darren Brock, an investigator for the Knoxville Police Department's Narcotics Unit, said, "Having to show your face deters most people, and those that aren't deterred get caught quickly. And meth users aren't your hard criminals like rapists or murders. They're addicts trying to get a fix, and it's easy to get them to talk."

Brock said many of the people they catch are proxies, "Lots of them are desperate so they go to a guy who tells them to drive across the state picking up the max amount of pseudoephedrine at every pharmacy. The guy gets the Sudafed, makes the meth."

With this system, one person ends up making lots of money and the other gets a fix and a bottom bunk at a local prison. Under the PATRIOT Act, the penalty for pharmacy shopping is five years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

Despite the success at curtailing large local meth labs, the small portable labs set up in hotel rooms or vacant buildings for a short amount of time are much tougher to detect. Even worse, two-thirds of the meth in the United States comes from superlabs in Mexico that produce mammoth quantities of the drug.

*****

Meth, which can be brown, white, pink or yellow crystals, can be smoked, ingested, injected or snorted. If injected or smoked, the user gets a rush within 5-10 seconds and experiences euphoria or a state of agitation that can last for several hours.

The brain is linked by nerve cells with small gaps called synapses. Electrical signals, which are neurotransmitters such as dopamine, communicate by jumping through the synapses. Dopamine serves many functions in the brain, but one of its primary purposes is to transmit pleasure. 

Meth usage blocks the reuptake of dopamine, so the high levels of the neurotransmitter get backed up in the synapses, causing intense pleasure. But those few hours of pleasure come with a high cost.

While over-stimulated with dopamine, the brain shuts down other normal processes, leading to brain damage that can only partially be repaired. The intense high followed by a bottomless low quickly lapses into addiction. For meth users, the relapse rate after detox is 90 percent.

Long-term use is often associated with psychosis, paranoia and meth mouth -- losing teeth due to long periods of poor hygiene, diet and clenching.

*****

Pseudoephedrine is the precursor. Making meth isn't possible without this substance, which is most commonly found in Sudafed and other nasal decongestants.

What makes it so effective at getting rid of phlegm also makes it perfect for synthesizing the destructive stimulant. Pseudoephedrine is a vasoconstrictor, meaning the drug shrinks blood vessels and raises blood pressure. The extra space created by the shrinking blood vessels allows more room for drainage.

Fearful of losing sales, pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, the producer of Sudafed, have introduced a new drug that will stay out on racks. Sudafed PE, which has been in stores since early 2006, has phenylehprine as its active ingredient.

Unfortunately, studies have shown that not only is the phenylephrine not as good as the previously used pseudoephedrine, it's barely better than a placebo.

Dianna Drake, a pharmacist in the Knoxville area, said, "It's not nearly as good. People complain all the time."

Drake is still skeptical about selling real Sudafed. "Most people want it for legitimate use, but you get people coming in from other counties. They weren't just driving by and suddenly got congested. Meth is a cheap, accessible drug for people who can't afford pills or other hard drugs."

Even with the law in place, some pharmacies sell the drug anyway. Brock said, "There are plenty of Mom and Pop pharmacies in rural areas that just don't have the business. They need to sell Sudafed to make money, so they do, even though it's illegal."

*****

Several recipes exist for making meth.  They all begin by breaking down and refining pseudoephedrine. The pills are crushed and mixed with a solvent so a chalky substance settles at the bottom of a container. The liquid then is run through a coffee filter, and the powder left on the filter is raw"It's hard to keep a lab secret in an urban area because neighbors complain about the awful smell. Or they start getting sick."  - Darren Brock pseudoephedrine.

Using the various methods, there are seven or eight more steps to "cooking" the drug, and there are plenty of pitfalls along the way. Adding iodine and to red phosphorous creates an unstable liquid that easily explodes. Meth labs frequently catch fire, and most local cooks disable the fire alarms to avoid detection.

Anhydrous ammonia, especially common in rural areas where it's used as a fertilizer, is a noxious substance that will burn the skin and the vapors will sear the lungs. Hydrochloric acid is another common ingredient that is especially dangerous.

One of the biggest problems with local labs is the risk to others. Brock said, "It's hard to keep a lab secret in an urban area because neighbors complain about the awful smell. Or they start getting sick."

One study estimates that 50 percent of meth cooks are parents. Children, because of their small stature, are at a much higher risk than adults. Besides the high risk of poisoning, addicts rarely make good parents.  Children found at meth labs are often malnourished, neglected and abused.

*****

In the world of meth, there are few winners. The addicts mortgage their life for a high. They steal from family to pay for their next fix. They ignore their children. Their bodies and their brains deteriorate, and so does everything around them.

Methamphetamine is considered by many to be the number one drug problem in America despite the fact it's not the most widely used drug. Alcohol abuse is much more prevalent, and of the illicit drugs, crack claims more users.

Brock said, "Crack is still number one in Knoxville. In the bigger cities like Atlanta, meth use is higher, but it hasn't caught on yet here."

It's heartening to see decreases in local labs, but already 139 labs have been seized in Tennessee in 2007. For each lab that's busted, there is at least one life, and probably more, that has deteriorated with little hope of redemption.