It took only a second to get famous.

Blank faces stared straight ahead. An electronic beep of a camera signaled a picture had been taken, a mugshot created.

Theresa Baxter. Jennifer Lundgren. Patrick Lucas. Joseph Harris. James Hibbs. Esther Allison. Perry Bennett. Glenn Lagrew.

By 2004, dubbed the Faces of Meth, the images of these eight individuals would travel well beyond Portland, across state lines and into classrooms nationwide. They would be plastered on the walls of Narcotics Anonymous meetings, jails and probation offices.

The side-by-side, before-and-after mugshots showed in shocking clarity the devastating effects of methamphetamine. Created in Portland by a Multnomah County sheriff's deputy, some of the first compilations were published on the front page of the Metro section of The Oregonian.

Letters poured in from young people across the country, thanking the deputy for his work. The campaign was hailed as a visionary effort to keep people from trying the drug – or compelling them to stop using it.

Glenn Lagrew was kicked out of a North Portland bar when patrons recognized him after the mugs came out. He found out he was part of the campaign when an Oregonian reporter called him.

"I knew that my life was going to change drastically at that point," he said recently. "That campaign destroyed a lot of people."

Coming Tuesday: Faces of Meth live chat

Join us here on OregonLive.com on Tuesday to hear from the Faces of Meth campaign's creator, Deputy Bret King, and one of men featured in the campaign, Glenn Lagrew. King will answer your questions from 12-12:45 p.m. Lagrew will answer questions from 1 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. Reporter Kasia Hall will also be available to answer questions.

A decade after the campaign debuted, The Oregonian revisited the deputy and some of the people whose images originally defined the Faces of Meth. Some are in prison, some still can't shake their demons, some are clean. But to a person, they all say the campaign changed their lives.

The campaign

Faces of Meth wasn't the campaign Deputy Bret King envisioned.

That year, 27 percent of the bookings into Multnomah County Jail were meth-related. The idea was simple — provide a behind-the-scenes, day-to-day look at what King saw in the jails. In addition to compiling mugshots, King recorded video interviews.

"I felt that there was a lot of value to the observations we were making," he said. "I felt that we could have a really positive impact. That was my passion."

But King did not anticipate the speed with which the campaign would explode.

"Overnight it was a full-time job to answer phones. People were asking if I could come speak in schools," he said, so he would bring his presentation, which had grown to 59 mugshots, from school to school. "More and more people wanted to use the mugshots."

And because only the pictures were public record, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office distributed the photos but not the videos. The campaign lurched forward without all of its components -- and without a cohesive vision.

"It had a lot of issues," King acknowledged recently, "but it was still a very successful campaign."

The lack of context in the campaign drew criticism, including from the editor of Behavioral Healthcare Magazine, Douglas Edwards.

"People addicted to substances have a serious, chronic health problem," he wrote in a 2008 article titled Faces of Tragedy. "They are not freaks to put on display, even if the intent is to warn others about the dangers of drugs."

The impact

Esther Allison began experimenting with drugs after foster care. She wanted to fit in, so she started hanging out with the smokers at the corner of the block. She moved on to harder drugs, including meth.

"I lost 30 years of my life. I thought I was going to end up dead in a ditch," the 38-year-old said in a recent interview. "I could've been something."

Today she lives in a small town an hour from Portland. She's known there not as a mother or manager at McDonald's. She's known for her mugshot.

Meth had already taken a heavy toll on the eight addicts. For some, it helped numb the pain of a breakup, the loss of a father or abuse endured as a child.

Faces of Meth exposed their secret.

King, meanwhile, added more mugshots. He didn't expect people like Allison or Lagrew to be happy about it.

Meth deaths in Oregon

In 2004, 78 people died from meth abuse, constituting about 40 percent of the drug deaths in Oregon.

In 2013, 123 people died from meth abuse, the greatest number of people who lost their lives to meth use since 2000.

Source: Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office

He believed the campaign was making a difference. By 2006, Oregon lawmakers began addressing the problem, enacting some of the strictest laws in the U.S. for the drug's key ingredient, pseudoephedrine.

When Sheriff Bob Skipper suggested a second campaign a few years later, King agreed. But this time he wanted to go further to address the behaviors leading to substance abuse.

Fresh faces

It's just after lunchtime on a Thursday, and King stands before a slightly drowsy health class at Franklin High School. Students peer outside the window — it's near the end of the 2013-14 academic year, and summer is almost here.

Deputy Bret King speaks to students at Franklin High School after showing his new anti-drug campaign From Drugs to Mugs.

The class reluctantly looks up at King.

They've heard it before. Don't do drugs. Stay in school. Think about your future.

It's that apathy King is fighting.

For the new campaign, King said he wanted to address teen behaviors that might lead to heavy drug use — the weekend keggers, smoking marijuana or popping pills from the home medicine cabinet.

"I was well aware of Faces of Meth's shortcomings. I didn't want to do a Faces of Meth, Part Two," King said.

So he invited Deputy Curtis Sanders onto the project and surveyed 300 Inverness Jail inmates to see if drugs or alcohol played a role in their crimes. They also surveyed 500 public high school students in east Multnomah County, asking what factors would influence their decision to avoid drugs.

"The young people I spoke to were still facing similar dangers," he said. "The meth addicts I was interviewing were telling me, that's exactly where I started."

The campaign, From Drugs to Mugs, began in 2009. The 48-minute DVD is a mix of the same kind of images that made Faces of Meth popular, coupled with interviews with law enforcement and locked-up addicts.

It's a tough video to watch. Blood infections, scabbing and oozing faces, and dead bodies fill the screen. Some students look away.

The lights come back on, and King asks the teens to close their eyes. Who would they be in five or 10 years? Would they have a job? A home?

The crux of King's campaign? You don't want to live like those people in the movie. You could end of behind bars. Or worse.

"I feel like teens who are educated with all the facts and given all the information, that they will make the right decision," King said. "They should, and I think most will."

-- Kasia Hall

Editor's note: The Oregonian was able to locate and interview six of the eight people featured in its 2004 story about the Faces of Meth campaign. Of the other two:

Theresa Baxter lives in North Portland. Her relatives would not allow The Oregonian to interview her.

Jennifer Lundgren could not be located.

MORE SPECIAL COVERAGE: Read Les Zaitz's "Hooked on Failure" series about addiction treatment