Angels wheel and deal
Call it "speed," "crank" or "poor man's coke," the powder produces a cocaine-like high at half the price. Methamphetamine, at $60 a gram, is the discount drug of choice on the West Coast and a multimillion-dollar-a-year business for a new form of organized crime, a California-style Cosa Nostra on wheels. "We've got contract murders, interstate narcotics transactions, shipments of stolen property, cars and weapons," asserts U.S. Marshal Budd Johnson, member of a San Diego drug task force, the Organized Special Investigation Team (O.S.I.T.). "The Hell's Angels today are the...