Mark Suppelsa's Closer Look

Meth Magnet

It may soon become much harder for all of us to buy cold medicine. U.S. Senators have voted unanimously to take medicines like Sudafed and Nyquil off store shelves and put them behind pharmacy counters, nationwide. If that sounds familiar, it's because some stores and some states have already done it.

Except Illinois, Robin. These cold medicines contain the essential ingredient for methamphetamine. Meth, the highly-addictive, illegal drug that's ravaging our country. People who make the stuff are now coming to Illinois to buy their ingredients here. How has the Prairie State become a Meth Magnet? Some answers in my Closer Look, riding along downstate with one of six Illinois State Police meth task forces.

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"You pick a county in Southern Illinois, I could take you down a country road somewhere and we'd come across this."

'This' is part of a meth lab.

"There you go. That's part of a lab."

So is this.

"My first find!"

...and this.

"See that bag there, how that bag's tied off, laying on the shoulder? We'll turn around and take a look at that."

It may look like trash, but Sergeant Bill Sons knows better.

"You realize we found all this stuff at three different stops in about fifteen minutes time?"
"Yeah, that's the way it is. It's everywhere," says Sons.

They call highways in these parts 'Tinfoil Alley.' The name comes from empty blister packs, thrown from car windows as meth makers prepare to turn common cold medicine into a potent, addictive and profitable poison.

"This box right here ought to produce -- they ought to be able to get two grams of meth out of this. So you got five dollars, you're gonna get $200 worth of dope," Sons explains.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan helped pass a law that put certain cold medicines behind store counters and limited sales to two at a time.

"January first of this year, Illinois had the only law and had the strongest law in the surrounding area," says Madigan.

But since then, neighboring states -- Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, and Indiana -- have all gone further. Making folks show ID and sign a log to buy medicines that could be used for meth.

"It's the only ingredient that can't be substituted for something else in the manufacturing process. It's the key ingredient," says State Rep. David Reis, (R) Olney.

"The fact that every state around us has taken this action oughta be a big wake-up call to us," adds State Rep. Roger Eddy, (R) Hutsonville.

Eddy and Reis have tried to 'wake up' their colleagues in Springfield, as they've watched meth tear their communities apart.

"Without pseudoephedrine, you can't cook this poison," says Eddy. "So if we're able to make it less readily available, busting a lab means a lot more. Then you've taken an operation out that may not start the next day."
"Otherwise, it's like killing a dandelion."
"Absolutely. They're gonna be back."

One lawmaker worries that Illinois is becoming a meth island. With tougher laws over the bridge, there in Kentucky. Same thing over here, over the bridge in Missouri. Meth users are driving to Illinois to get high.

"We arrested people last week from Arkansas. Up here buying Sudafed. They came from Arkansas. Drove four hours specifically to come to Southern Illinois to buy their Sudafed," says Sgt. Sons.

State Police say Jeremy Jirus had 1,500 pills in his car, when he was stopped for speeding in July. They say the Missouri man was on a 600-mile mission to stock up on pseudoephedrine in Illinois.

"Ive had them brag before that 'Hey, I can go to such and such a town and I can buy a thousand pills in an hour,' " says Sgt. Sons.

"Even through they're pretty buzzed up; they're smart enough to know how to get around the system?"

"Right. Right. That's all they're doing," Sons says. "Joe Blow's going out there and he's buying 20 boxes a week. We have no way of being able to track that."

Since other states are now tracking that, meth makers come here. To places like Belleville, Carbondale, Effingham and Quincy.

"Illinois is going to be the place these people come. We've established ourselves as the haven for those folks," Rep. Eddy says.

The fear is: If they come here to buy cold medicine, they may not leave.

"It's not a drug trafficking problem, it's a drug manufacturing problem," says Rep. Reis.

Unlike cocaine or heroin, many meth users make the stuff themselves. It's cheap and easy, though extremely dangerous. Recipes are all over the Internet. The tools are probably in your garage. Naturally, addicts are going to stay where it's easiest to get supplies. What they often leave behind is a toxic mess.

"That right there is capable of killing or completely disabling a person."

Recognizing the problem, most of the nation's chain drug stores have -- voluntarily -- done what these lawmakers, and some in Congress, hope to make all stores do. They moved more meth ingredients behind the counter.

Sandy Fitch says addicts now come in to her Kroeger store, turn around, and leave: "But if they don't get it at our store, they're just gonna go somewhere else. So until all the stores get together and do the same thing, nothing's gonna work," she says."

"It works. But no law is effective immediately," replies David Vite, who heads the Illinois Retail Merchants' Association. The group will fight any attempt to toughen the state's law.

"We flew around this state with the attorney general and her staff, not even a year ago, touting it as one of the best laws," Vite says. "The marriage of law enforcement and the retail community! Trying to stop this scourge on society. Now, because other states have done a different thing, we haven't had a chance to really learn if our law is as effective as some others."

"We certainly don't want Illinois to become the meth ingredient shopping mall of the Midwest. And so, we are going to make sure that our laws are as strong as -- if not stronger -- than those in our neighboring states to keep that from happening," says Madigan.

"There are certain times public safety trumps profit. This is one of those cases for sure," says Rep. Eddy.

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Police say it's great that the big chains are taking action on their own. But it's not having any effect without those log books. Unless the police have a database of who's buying what where, the stores are just slowing folks down. They can still go store to store to store... and we saw the receipts.

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Adolescent Steroid Abuse

As professional athletes get bigger and bigger, so are many teenage boys. Trouble is, they're taking steroids. Not just to be better athletes. But to look better, too. What they're shockingly unaware of is what else it can do to their bodies: stunt growth, shrink testicles, cause baldness and depression.

If that's not disturbing enough, wait until you hear how little Illinois schools are doing about it.

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Why are some football running backs 80 pounds heavier than they used to be? How did baseball slugger Barry Bonds grow from a tiny rookie to a super-sized home run king? Bonds and other major leaguers have repeatedly denied using steroids. But that's exactly how many minors--teens--are trying to mimic the incredible physical changes in their sports heroes.

"They're looking at all these tremendous athletes setting records, hitting home runs, whatever the case may be, just getting bigger and bigger in physical size," says Dale Hass, a gym teacher at Lincoln Middle School in Park Ridge. He suspects some of his junior high students have tried steroids. They're hardly alone. A study by Blue Cross/Blue Shield found more than a million teenagers have tried potentially dangerous performance enhancers.

22-year-old Tony B. is one of them. He was on steroids for three years. "Oh yeah, when I started, I was about what I am right now. Maybe about 170. The heaviest I got up to was 235," he says.

Tony got turned on to steroids at his local gym. The juice is readily available online -- without a prescription -- from Mexico, the Netherlands and Spain. Here at O'Hare, 4,000 drug packages come through every day, meaning only a few shipments are caught by customs. "You just find out the easiest way to get it, the best way to do it, and then you just get wrapped up in it," Tony says. "When I was inside the gym, everything was like this big rush for like an hour and a half, two hours. My whole day revolved around it."

Soon, his life revolved around it. He turned down a soccer scholarship to stay at home to pump iron for body building competitions. The steroids had a quick and stunning effect.

"All over, it was a total body, mentally and physically at that time. The pumps that you get are just three times, four times the amount than if you weren't," says Tony.

He looked... incredible. And it was just that. Not credible, not real.

"These individuals have no idea what they are doing to themselves when they start using this stuff," says Dr. Lawrence Elegant, a retired pediatrician who has seen not only the impressive results, but the devastating side effects that can come with them. "The youngest I ever saw was a 12-year-old. He wanted to become a football player. The mother brought her son in because he was growing breasts. She had no idea."

Amazingly, three-quarters of the teenagers surveyed by Blue Cross/Blue Shield could not name a single negative side effect associated with steroids. Mike Collet is trying to change that. He is one of a few, dedicated freelancers who go school to school--on their own--dishing straight talk to kids as young as ten.

"This person, over here, might get cancer. Heart disease. Degenerate bone disease. You might just get lucky and have your hair fall out, but 20 years later, not be able to have children," lectures Collett. The Illinois High School Association -- the people who supervise and regulate prep sports -- have no such program.

"I think through our education efforts, we are helping schools, we are getting them what they need," says Kurt Gibson of the IHSA.

How are they educating high school athletes on the dangers of steroids and supplements? No required classes or seminars. No motivational videotapes.

I asked Gibson if he felt the need to be proactive and suggest to the membership that more needs to be done in this day and age of bigger, better, faster.

"Short of testing, I don't know what that would be!" Gibson responded.

He says testing for steroids is too expensive, too controversial. But in Phoenix, they've been doing it for more than a decade. And California lawmakers want to require steroid tests in every school.

"It's just been our position -- rightly as some people would say or wrongly -- that at the end of the day, local schools and local communities have a better handle on how to address that," says Gibson.

Tony says he was never warned about the risks. "Mentally, it was just some days, I was the greatest and some days, I was so low, I didn't even want to come out of my room," he says.

And after three years on the stuff, his bloated, 235-pound body was finally telling him: enough's enough.

"Yeah, wake up in the middle of the night, I could feel my heart beating. It hurt every once in a while, I was 18-19-20 years old and my blood pressure was like 170 over 100 or something. I mean, that's ridiculous," Tony remembers.

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President Bush has promised $23 million to help schools pay for those price drug tests. But no one we talked to knew of a single Illinois school testing athletes for steroids.

The head of the Illinois Football Coaches Association told us he doubts kids are being pressured to use supplements. "The stakes just aren't that high," he said.

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Risky Business: Medical Malpractice Insurance

Is Chicago physician Mark Macumber a daredevil? A trailblazer? Or a physician with no other choice? In tonight's Closer Look, we have the answer: all of the above.

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"Started out at $2,000, went to $4,000, then it went to $10,000, and then they told me it was going to be $20,000. But when I got the bill in the mail, it was for $40,000."

Dr. Mark Macumber is complaining about his medical malpractice insurance. The annual cost? More than the average Chicago household makes in a year.

"As long as we pay whatever is asked, they can ask whatever they want. I said, if I do that too, it's never gonna change."

Other doctors have changed their practices, changed locations, even changed careers. They've marched on the capitol and held symbolic strikes.

Dr. Macumber's prescription? He canceled his insurance policy.

"What possessed you to do this?"
"It certainly wasn't my dream to do this. Really, I didn't have too many choices."

Macumber says the idea actually came from his patients.

"I said, 'The only way I could still see you is if I didn't even have insurance.' And they didn't even hesitate. They said 'So what?' "

"I'm behind him 110%. And I told him that," says patient Diane Morioka.

"I thought, here's a guy with guts," agrees Alan Becker.

The move is gutsy, but very risky.

"You can sue me any time you want. But I don't have a million dollar insurance policy. I don't have a million dollars. I feel like I've got a million dollars in loans," Macumber explains.

"I don't feel it's a risk because I trust him," says Morioka. "When my kids--when they're too old to see their pediatrician, I'll take them to Dr. Macumber."

"I trusted my doctors. I never thought this could happen to me!" exclaims Gina Santoro-Cotton.

She knows trust can't pay for a lifetime of treatment and therapy.

"It's very expensive to raise a child like Joey," she says.

Her six-year-old was left severely brain damaged by her doctors' mistakes during childbirth. Joey received $10 million for his care.

"I don't know if Joey would be here today with us if I didn't have that," Santoro-Cotton says.
"You think this doctor's crazy!"
"I definitely do. I think he needs to get into my shoes and see what I've been through, what I've done."

Dr. Macumber does remind his patients: he's only human and can make mistakes. But they're just happy he spends more time and charges less per visit. His practice is thriving.

"I'm seeing people who are frustrated by their insurance and just giving up on the whole system and now have someplace to go," he says.

Like Dr. Becker, a dentist and new patient, who can relate to high insurance rates.

Dr. Macumber has become a virtual outcast in the medical world. With no malpractice protection, he's lost his hospital privileges and cannot bill insurance companies. Banks won't deal with him, either. He was forced to take out a home equity loan to open his modest office on Harlem Avenue.

"I don't have to hire a staff to sit there and check people's insurance, verify their eligibility, submit the claims, argue with the insurance companies," Macumber explains. "The medicine I'm doing today is more rewarding than anything I've done before."

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Dr. Macumber is not alone. In Miami, nearly one in five doctors now practice without insurance. But conditions are not so critical everywhere. According to one USA Today report, the average doctor spends more on rent than insurance.

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Hardcore Customers: The New Face of Heroin

If you're surprised to learn that Chicago has just climbed to number one in heroin and cocaine abuse, wait until we tell you who's buying it. It's not who you think.

Most of us have a distinct image of what the war on drugs looks like. Phrases like "crack head" instantly convey a certain picture in our minds, which may not accurately describe the new face of today's hardcore customers. They can be athletes, church kids, your neighbors and their kids.

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It's an all-too-familiar image. Drugs bought and sold on the meaner streets of Chicago. But what's old is disturbingly new again.

"We do have a cocaine and heroin problem here," says Rick Sanders, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Chicago office.

Cocaine and heroin: cheap, plentiful and now killing more people here in Chicago than anywhere else. Who's using, and dying, is also new.

"They're typically younger people, people who are white. People who are from the suburbs," says Dr. Mark Mycyk.

"You look out your window now. What do you see?"
"You see a lot of suburban buyers. People who obviously don't live here," says Rev. Marshall Hatch, of New Mount Pilgrim M.B. Church.

"If somebody had said, 'Do you think your kids would ever get involved in heroin?' Not in a million years. I would have put everything I had on that," says Cindy McLaren.

Her oldest son, Kevin, tried heroin first.

"He had it. And Tim walked in on him. And it was kind of an, 'either tell me what you're doing or I'm telling mom' kind of thing," McLaren explains.

That was Christmas Day a few years ago.

"Young kids are curious and they think they're invincible," says McLaren.

Together, the young brothers took a path too many suburban teens travel today. Inbound on the Eisenhower, in search of a West Side street corner, and their drug of choice.

"The price of heroin has plummeted. A bag of heroin now costs four dollars a bag. That's almost as much as a pack of cigarettes," says Dr. Mycyk.

It's not only cheaper, it's stronger. And it's sending a growing number of our children to area emergency rooms.

"You have a lot of naive users who are trying the stuff for the first time. And they don't expect the kick that they're actually getting," Dr. Mycyk says.

By one measure, hard luck cities like Newark and Baltimore have actually cut heroin use in half. While in Chicago, it's more than doubled since 1995.

"Could there be an argument that the DEA is in part to blame for that rise?"
"I think not," replies Sanders. "Because we at DEA have to focus on all the different drugs."

Authorities deny their well-publicized war on 'club drugs' has diverted their attention, or resources, from heroin and cocaine.

"Heroin is a quicker, faster addiction. More lethal."
"Quicker addiction, I agree with. More lethal, I disagree with," Sanders says.

But you can't disagree with death certificates. As many as 500 people a year now die from heroin here. It's been four years since anyone died from Ecstasy.

"I know neither of them realized the dangers of it, or they never would have done it the first time," McLaren says.

As for Kevin, he went straight. Then straight to the military. Straight to Baghdad.

"There was as much danger there as there was for him here," McLaren says. "Kevin cleaned up, and he got a conscience. The first thing he worried about was his little brother."

For good reason. It got so bad, Cindy called the cops on him. Twice. That didn't work either. This seventeen-year-old, 135-pound, unarmed kid resorted to stealing from his dealers.

"The buyer is desperate. The seller is desperate. And so we're talking about people whose only common experience is desperation," explains Rev. Hatch. "And of course that desperation makes life dangerous for all of us."
"And can lead to?"
"Innocent people being killed."

Reverend Marshall Hatch runs a church in West Garfield Park, the deadliest neighborhood in the city.

"It's pretty clear that the drug trafficking is fueling the murder rate," Hatch says.
"And then you've got the suburbanites coming down to contribute to that. And then leaving!"
"Yes. Back to nice communities. It's patently unfair," he agrees.

"How unfair is it that such normalcy turned to such tragedy?"
"I can't tell any parent what it feels like to try and resuscitate your child. But it's a day from hell," says McLaren.

Tim died less than a month before his 18th birthday. Cindy found him in his bed. The needle was still nearby.

"I mean, as a mother, I would have done anything to save him. And I couldn't. I stood at his grave, thinking, 'Ugh. You know, he's got his whole life ahead of him.' That--that's gone."

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Community activists have long begged police to target customers, so street corner sales will dry up. Under the new Chicago Police superintendent, that's begun to happen. During Operation Double Play, Chicago Police arrested dealers and replaced them with undercover officers. They then arrested users and addicts: 2,500 of them so far this year.

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Pay for Play: Public School Activity Fees

Whoever thought we'd be paying hundreds of dollars for our kids' after-school activities? It's not your parents' public school system. There's no free lunch. Or free sports. Or free drama.

Homeowners in no mood for even higher property taxes means public school budgets have never been tighter. So schools that were free, are now pay-as-you-go: passing the buck to parents as they scramble to raise cash.

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Joshua Revelo and his brother Alex paid a price to become championship wrestlers. It was their sweat and hard work that earned the dozens of medals and ribbons in their rooms. But it was their parents' hard-earned money that got them on the wrestling mat.

"The whole year, it probably takes me to pay," says Martha Ochoa, the boys' mother.

The Revelos must pay $300 per year for Joshua and Alex to wrestle for Mundelein High School.

"You know, it becomes very expensive," Ochoa says. I asked her if the experience is worth it. "It is worth it, because I really love what they're doing and they just enjoy it," she says.

The family receives a discount, because both brothers play sports. But still, "it becomes expensive for both," Ochoa says.

While Martha Ochoa scrapes the money from her family's budget, other students are dropping sports altogether. Their families can't afford to keep them in the game. One in three kids quit soccer at Viking Middle School in Gurnee. The drama club and band each lost half their students.

"The levels of fees our district has been compelled to impose are Draconian. They're driving kids out of programs!" says Markham Jeep, the only member of the Gurnee school board to vote against the fees. "It's contrary to the whole notion of a free, public education. We're charging kids to be in Honor Society, which is kind of galling."

For kids into athletics, music and more, the fees can add up. $60 for band. $100 for cheerleading. $140 for Science Olympiad. With 80% of Illinois school districts running in the red, the State Board of Education says they've got no choice.

"There's no doubt that there's an awful lot of pressure on local school boards to figure out where the next dollar is coming from," says Wade Nelson, ISBE spokesman.

That "next dollar" is often coming from parents' pockets. In Lake Bluff, they're charging for the school bus -- nearly $300 a year.

"Hope you don't have three kids, or have a good relationship with your banker," Jeep warns.

"We understand it's tough to do. At the same time, the rest of the community appreciates not having to pay for things that they aren't really participating in," explains Kelly Happ, Director of Public Information for Mundelein High School.

"In referendum questions, taxpayers are frequently saying 'no, we won't approve the increase that you're asking for,' " Nelson says.

"They don't dislike kids and they don't hate teachers and they're not against education. They're concerned. And how far can they be driven?" asks Jeep.

Some have been driven far enough. This sign outside Carl Sandburg high school boasts of many championship teams. But parents haven't had nearly as good a season. The district was forced to hire a collection agency to get unpaid fees from a thousand families.

Educators say after-school activities offer kids more than a workout -- teaching teamwork and leadership. Skills some parents call priceless.

"It's good, not bad, you know. Because coaches are very good..." says parent Bhupinder Nager.

"Sports is something that really means a lot to me. I come to my high school not just academically but also for sports," confides Nager's daughter.

For the Revelo family, higher fees mean tough choices --

"Sometimes we stop going out for dinner," says Martha Ochoa.

-- either pay to play during the school year, or pay for wrestling camp in the summer.

"That cost more than a thousand dollars," explains Ochoa. "This time, we don't know how much it is. So we have to wait."

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Schools in 40 states have had to raise fees to make up for cuts in state and federal money. The highest fee we found was $1,000 in Massachusetts for some sports. But at least five states declared these fees unconstitutional.

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