Eastern Missouri: Ground Zero for Meth Junkies

July 22, 2008— -- One of the most addicting and damaging drugs is making a slow and vicious return. Methamphetamine, commonly referred to as meth, is back.

It was thought meth's wave of destruction had crested several years ago, but if eastern Missouri is any indication, there's still a lot of work to be done.

In 2005, new laws in Missouri put pseudoephedrine, the cold medicine and the crucial ingredient used to make meth, behind pharmacy counters. Customers who wanted to purchase the drug had to submit photo identification and sign a log as part of the government's effort to track potential abusers.

At the time, these new measures were hailed as a definitive blow to the meth trade.

Now, those efforts appear to have been stymied.

Sgt. Jason Grellner, who leads a squad of narcotics agents with the Franklin County, Mo., Sheriff's Department, said that, after a two-and-a-half-year lull, the junkies struck back.

"You build a better mouse trap, you get a smarter mouse," he said. "What the pill shoppers have finally figured out is, 'There's more of us than there are the cops, there's too many locations.'"

In a process called "smurfing," abusers are hiding their tracks by buying pseudoephedrine at multiple stores, across multiple counties.

In eastern Missouri, ground zero in the meth war, pharmacies are inundated.

Clarissa Hall, a pharmacy owner in Franklin County, said she believes that 80 percent of the pseudoephedrine purchases in her store ultimately go to meth users.

"It's a real problem," she said.

To catch the smurfers, Grellner's team of narcotics agents stakes out pharmacies in unmarked vehicles, tracking each purchase of the common cold medicine.

"We got an officer who will sit inside, be in and around the pharmacy, just kind of hanging out looking for known meth cooks that we know," Grellner said while sitting in a car parked outside a Wal-Mart pharmacy.

He and his team spotted a repeat abuser purchasing pseudoephedrine and pursued him in a car chase that wound through town.