For most of its history, methamphetamine had been a second-class drug, never as popular as amphetamines and never as glamorous among drug users as cocaine, heroin or LSD.

Then, about 60 years after it was first created by a Japanese scientist, the drug of choice for outlaw bikers and the rural poor suddenly was being used in Southern California by white-collar workers, young mothers, high school students, nurses, teachers and other seemingly unlikely groups.

The drug's popularity particularly soared in San Diego, which became known to many as the methamphetamine capital of the nation in the 1980s.

Several factors have been associated with the drug's rapid rise in popularity among such broad demographics, but among the most significant was a change in the way methamphetamine was produced.

In 1980, the federal government classified as a controlled substance the chemical phenylacetone, also known as P2P, which until then had been a main ingredient of methamphetamine, which was being made in illicit labs.

Within a year of that new classification, federal Drug Enforcement Agency raids in San Diego were discovering labs making meth with ephedrine, the active ingredient in over-the-counter decongestants. The new meth was easier to make, its ingredients were legal and easy to find, and the drug itself was stronger and more addictive.

San Diego also was in a perfect storm, geographically speaking, for meth use to spread. Since the 1960s, the drug had been distributed in California by the Hells Angels motorcycle club, which was founded north of San Diego County in San Bernardino.

Just to the south, methamphetamine was being made in Mexico, where labs operated with little interference from the law.

Adding to the county's meth explosion, unscrupulous entrepreneurs who saw a booming market opened businesses and started selling the drug's active ingredients, known as precursors, and lab equipment directly to drug manufacturers.

Precursors such as ephedrine, hydriodic acid, red phosphorus and Freon were available at several chemical firms, but two stood out as the biggest supplier for meth labs in the 1980s.

Chuck, a retired undercover officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity, remembers those labs well. As an Oceanside Police Department sergeant, he participated in the raid on one of the firms. As an undercover agent with the state Department of Justice, he snared almost 100 meth-makers and shut down 29 labs in the biggest meth bust in history.

Retired since 2003 from a career that included 20 years in the Marines, Chuck sports tattoos, a finely trimmed gray beard, and still rides a Harley-Davidson. A martial-arts expert, he also still has the intense look of a man only a fool would cross.

"Basically, I looked and had to walk and talk the outlaw attitude," he said in a deep gravely voice not unlike actor Sam Elliott's.

The anatomy of meth busts

Chuck was a clean-cut Oceanside police officer from 1972 to 1988, and in his final year on the force helped shut down a chemical company called Quantum on Palomar Airport Road in Carlsbad.

Quantum was little more than a convenience store for meth manufacturers, Chuck said. While the business sold only goods that were legal at the time, they broke the law because they knew their products were being used to make an illegal drug.

Chuck said dozens of customers came into Quantum daily, and the business operated for several years before investigators gathered enough evidence to justify a search warrant and a raid in 1988.

"They were shocked," Chuck said about the day he and other officers came through Quantum's front door. "They were sitting there in their shorts."

Quantum's owner fled the country but was arrested years later, Chuck said. Others working in the shop feigned ignorance about how their products were used but were convicted, he said.

Quantum was not the only company capitalizing on San Diego County's new drug problem in the 1980s.

Beginning in 1982, the DEA began investigating RJM Laboratories, another precursor wholesale business.

Operating a cash business with little paperwork, RJM made a difficult target for the DEA, which suspected the company of supplying more than 2,000 meth labs in California, Texas, Tennessee, New Jersey and Washington, Frank Owen wrote in his book, "No Speed Limit."

In 1986, RJM owner Robert Miskinis brazenly hired a lobbyist who persuaded lawmakers to delay implementing a bill that required bulk purchases of ephedrines to be reported to the state Department of Justice, Owen wrote. After the media reported that Miskinis had been charged in 1978 with making methamphetamine, embarrassed politicians revoked the delay that they had agreed to earlier.

Two years later, the DEA had built a case and raided three RJM labs, including one in Lakeside, where agents found a 200-liter flask capable of making 80 pounds of meth and enough ephedrine and other chemicals to make 50 tons of the drug.

In 1989, the DEA raided three other chemical houses believed to be owned by Miskinis, including one in Carlsbad that sold assembled meth kits and instruction books.

Miskinis was sentenced to 40 years but served only four after an appeals court decided he was not adequately represented by his attorney, Owen wrote.

Undercover bust nabs nearly 100

Chuck, a state Justice Department agent at the time, said RJM and Quantum appeared to be businesses unique to San Diego County, although he knew of a smaller chemical business in Las Vegas that was investigated by authorities there.

There was one other illicit chemical lab in San Diego County, though, and Chuck was the man behind the counter.

With a gun tucked under his belt and a tape recorder strapped to his back, Chuck worked the back room of Triple Neck Scientific on Magnatron Boulevard in Kearny Mesa for nine months in 1988 and 1989.

With hidden cameras capturing the transactions, Chuck trapped his customers in a well-orchestrated ruse. The business advertised in magazines aimed to attract dealers, and its very name -- Triple Neck -- referred to the type of round-bottomed flasks commonly used in meth labs.

Looking every bit as tough as his worst customers, Chuck warned Triple Neck clients to keep an eye out for cops who might spot them coming and going to the business. Meanwhile, he made notes of the license plates of the cars pulling out of his lot.

Chuck also asked customers to bring in the meth they were making, explaining that he wanted to supply some to his friends but didn't want to make it himself. When offered the drug, he declined and said he was a recovering heroin addict who no longer used.

"You didn't pay income tax on any of this, did you?" he would ask his customers selling the drug.

"Hell no!" they would reply with a laugh, oblivious to the hidden cameras that were further incriminating them.

Chuck's act included questioning customers about whether they themselves were actual undercover agents. When a biker turned the tables and patted him on the back and felt his tape recorder, Chuck said it was a concealed gun. The biker asked to see it.

"You'll see my gun only if I need you to see it," Chuck told him. "And it'll be the last thing you ever see."

The biker was satisfied.

But not all customers were hardened bikers. One was a soccer coach, another a nurse, and another was a Neighborhood Watch captain.

Chuck specifically remembers a man who sent his children, ages 10 and 15, into his business to buy chemicals. He didn't blow his cover, but he did blow his cool.

"I told them to go back home and called the dad and said, 'Don't you dare send your kids in here; this stuff is very volatile," Chuck said.

Sting had immediate effect

After nine months, the list of Triple Neck customers was used for a massive raid on a Sunday in March 1989, when 350 officers from state, local and federal agencies raided dozens of homes throughout the county, closing 29 labs and arresting almost 100 people. It still stands as the country's biggest meth raid.

Faced with incriminating videos, 90 percent of the suspects pleaded guilty and the remaining 10 percent were found guilty. Chuck said most were sentenced to 10 to 20 years. The man who sent his kids to buy chemicals pleaded not guilty, he said, and received a stiffer sentence.

Chuck said the operation also revealed, to the surprise of many agents participating in the raids, that meth was no longer just a drug made and used by bikers.

The sting operation, Operation Crankcase, has been criticized because Triple Neck Scientific provided precursors that were turned into methamphetamine used on the streets for nine months. Chuck defended the operation, saying manufacturers would have found their precursors anyway from other sources.

Operation Crankcase had an immediate effect on the county, he said. All measures of the drug's use, from admission rates in rehab centers to urine tests in jails, indicated that the drug's use had decreased.

But Pandora's box was already open. With precursors from San Diego supplied to several other states, meth use began to rise nationally.

"When we took those 100 suspects down, we lost the dubious distinction of being the meth capital of the world," Chuck said. "But sadly, enough of it had spread throughout the United States."

Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@nctimes.com.