Cleaning Up Toxic Meth Labs

July 19, 2005 -- -- When police in Sheboygan, Wis., responded to a call recently about a domestic disturbance they found something they had not seen before in their city -- a meth lab, which turned the house from a simple crime scene to a hazardous waste site.

The discovery of the lab -- the second found in the county in the past two months -- gave police all the evidence they need that the methamphetamine epidemic is still spreading. Crews in hazmat suits spent hours, anxiously watched by neighbors, as they tried to make the house safe.

"In our particular area of the state, meth labs have been pretty rare, so this has been -- I don't know if it's shocking, but it is upsetting," said Lt. Kurt Brasser, head of the Sheboygan County Multijurisdictional Enforcement Group, a drug task force. "We don't want to deal with any drugs, but meth is the worst because of the range of problems and the cost to the community."

Meth use has spread like wildfire across the country since the early 1990s in part because it is so highly addictive, but also because it can be produced from products readily available in hardware and drug stores, and can be "cooked" in the home.

With meth labs come not only crime and the ravaged lives of the users themselves, but a broad range of social problems, from environmental damage from the toxic byproducts of the labs to the swelling ranks of children sickened by exposure to meth and placed in foster care.

"In terms of damage to children and to our society, meth is now the most dangerous drug in America," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Monday at the summer conference of the National District Attorneys Association in Portland, Maine.

He said that according to a recent survey, 58 percent of the nation's counties list meth abuse as their most serious problem.

Traditional crime-fighting techniques have failed to stop the growth, as the number of meth labs seized grew year after year across the country. But a year ago, a law that limited access to one of the key components of the drug, pseudoephedrine, went into effect in Oklahoma.

It has been more effective than anyone expected, and federal lawmakers are considering similar nationwide legislation, though authorities in Oklahoma say the bill may not have enough teeth to have the dramatic effect the law there has had.

In March 2004, there were 105 meth labs seized statewide in Oklahoma, before the law went into effect on April 6, 2004. In May 2005, there were just six meth labs seized. By contrast, statewide meth lab seizures had risen 12,000 percent between 1994 and 2003, soaring from 10 seizures in 1994 to 1,233 nine years later.

"You just couldn't get a handle on it," said Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drug Control. "Now, for the first time, we've been able to move on large-scale, drug-trafficking investigations, instead of being caught up in busts of these mom-and-pop meth labs we were finding everywhere."