Georgia: Meth, lab seizures on rise

When it comes to methamphetamine, Georgia needs help.

“The state of Georgia’s behind, and we have to catch up,” said Larry Black, commander of the Lookout Mountain Judicial Task Force serving Walker, Catoosa and Dade counties. “We have to aggressively keep trying to get the word out to our Legislature that we need help.”

Meth lab seizures have increased in Georgia and Tennessee and continue to grow, Mr. Black said. In the three-county region of the Lookout Mountain task force, about 50 labs were confiscated last year. In the first four months of this year, more than 100 have been seized.

Before the rise, meth lab incidents in Georgia had decreased from a high of 226 in 2003 to 55 in 2007, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Officials say the increase can be attributed to more people making meth by using faster and cheaper methods and an inability for legislation and law enforcement to keep up.

In Tennessee, an electronic database monitors in real time all purchases of pseudoephedrine, a drug found in over-the-counter sinus medications and the primary ingredient used to make meth. In Georgia, there’s no such system, Mr. Black said.

“We have to do a better job in catching up with our database and how we’re tracking our pseudoephedrine purchases,” he said.

Georgia State Rep. Tom Weldon, R-Ringgold, said he’s examining various legislative proposals to make it harder to manufacture meth.

Too many people pile into vans, head to convenience stores or pharmacies, each buy one pseudoephedrine product and take them back to a meth maker to receive money or drugs.

Rep. Weldon said he and his colleagues must determine whether the best way to deter such practices is to allow only pharmacies to sell pseudoephedrine products — and not other locations such as convenience stores — or make such products prescription only, which still allows those who need the medicine to get it.

“I don’t know many people or many families that haven’t been affected by meth,” he said. “It’s a scourge.”

Tennessee meth

Meth lab seizures in Tennessee exploded, from 583 in 2007 to 815 in 2008, an increase of almost 40 percent. The number of labs seized was the highest since 1,201 in 2005, according to the Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force.

Lab seizures in Hamilton County also increased, from 23 in 2007 to 32 in 2008. Of those, 11 were seized by Chattanooga Police Department officials, according to department data.

Those numbers won’t fall any time soon, and authorities are on target to seize even more labs in 2009, officials said. Through March of this year, authorities have seized 340 labs statewide, putting them on pace for more than 1,000 by year’s end. In Hamilton County, authorities have confiscated 22 labs, including 17 in March, putting them on pace for 88, according to task force data.

“It’s not necessarily all a bad thing,” said Lt. Tommy Farmer, head of the Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force. “That is good law enforcement, good intelligence. It’s efficient use of what we’re doing out there.”

But it also speaks to the resourcefulness of meth manufacturers, he said.

“(The increase) identifies the mobility, the ingenuity of some of the meth manufacturers to be pretty creative, jumping both city and state boundaries,” he said. “They’re traveling long distances to simply acquire the necessary precursors (ingredients).”

The increase also demands changes in state and federal legislation to further restrict sales of products used to make meth, he said.

Meth trends

Meth initially was introduced to cities much like other drugs — from Mexico. But users soon learned to make meth with household items, eliminating the need for distribution and for them to travel into inner cities, said Lt. Van Hinton, head of the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office narcotics division.

“It ended up being housed because you didn’t have a lot of people traveling or buying or dealing with the Mexicans because they were just doing it mom-and-pop,” Lt. Hinton said. “The distribution was stagnant as far as the meth coming from the Mexicans because everybody’s cooking their own.”

But when federal law required valid IDs for the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine with the Combat Meth Act of 2005, communities experienced a resurgence of Mexican meth, he said.

Overall, fewer people obtained meth ingredients so fewer people made meth, and law enforcement officials cracked down on purchases, all combining to create a decrease in meth lab seizures, Lt. Hinton said.

That doesn’t mean homemade meth disappeared. Users instead found other ways to manufacture it, leading to a rise in “shake and bake” labs. Where meth labs once used coffee pots, elaborate piping and an open flame, shake and bake labs use only rubber tubing and a two-liter soda bottle and don’t need fire, he said.

“The precursor remains the same: pseudoephedrine,” Lt. Farmer said. “But the other ingredients, the catalysts, are a little different and they’re not customary to what we’ve trained the community and what we’ve trained our stores to be looking for.”

Those ingredients include ammonia nitrate, lithium batteries and dry ice, he said.