Word: cranked
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...bird-skinning knife is holstered parallel to his belt. Big John is an original road warrior, a man whose history stretches back to the beginning of time as bikers measure it: 20 years riding the Harley express across the country delivering a variety of drugs -- first methamphetamines (called crank by the bikers and speed by city users), then cocaine, and now crank again. "When the good German meth was taken off the market by those guys in San Diego with the Mexican connection in 1981 or so, I decided I was too old to learn to cook ((manufacture synthetic drugs...
...getting to be a dog-eat-dog world." His face assumes a mournful set: "I've been ripped off by my friends big time; they get down into the bag, on the pure stuff, and get paranoid, and right away they want to get you first." Too much crank can easily produce self- destructive paranoia...
Bernard's skills are much in demand these days. Crank sales in the revitalized industry pushed past the $3 billion mark last year. And because the 25-ton annual demand exceeds manufacturing capacity, there has been a scramble to increase production. Here in the heartland of the meth outlaws, a territory beginning roughly at the southerly edges of the great Los Angeles metropolitan sprawl, anarchy has replaced the discipline of a monopoly maintained for decades under the mailed fist of the renegade motorcycle clubs. Southern California, a nose ahead of Texas, remains the manufacturing capital of the country, with scores...
...skied and chased girls while I cooked," Bernard remembers. This was no home- kitchen production with towels stuffed under the door to contain the pungent odor of the process. This was a major manufacturing operation disguised as a beach party, using black-market chemicals to produce 100 lbs. of crank, presold to a buyer in Grants Pass, Ore., for $15,000 a lb. Almost a million net, even before the powder hit the streets, sold by the gram for nearly the same price as cocaine. A lesser cook chortles, "Those people in Oregon are taking everything we can make...
Danger is integral to the booming crank business, especially in the retailing end, where double crosses are as much a threat as arrest. In a far different territory from the backcountry rendezvous, Surfer Jim, a jobber of the Product, sits in a car in his sales district near glossy Newport Beach, Calif. Just back from a cruise to Jamaica with his wife, the tanned 26-year- old has been thinking things over. "I'm second generation in this, you know, and I don't want my kids to be the third." He jiggles a foot and flops one go-ahead...