Paper beating Meth drum a little too loud

[renegades]

In swim new searches she came across something strange. The News Tribune out of Washington state had two stories regarding meth in which both sounded similar. Read ahead:

Meth battle sees new fronts

STACEY MULICK; The News Tribune
Published: February 19th, 2007 01:00 AM

Here’s the good news: A year old state law making it harder to buy essential ingredients in making methamphetamine has substantially cut the number of toxic labs that used to plague Pierce County neighborhoods. Continued law enforcement pressure and aggressive prosecutors also have helped reduce the problem of homemade meth. In fact, two Tacoma police narcotics investigators say it’s been more than a year since they’ve seen homemade meth being sold on the streets.
Here’s the bad news:
Drug dealers still are flooding Pierce County and the state with a potent and easily attainable form of the drug, known as crystal meth or “ice,” brought from California and Mexico.
“We have a big importation problem, bigger than before,” said Pierce County sheriff’s detective Sgt. Dave Dewey, who supervises the department’s clandestine lab team.
In addition, meth addicts are committing other crimes, including identity theft, mail theft and, most recently, metal theft.
“The battleground has shifted somewhat,” King County sheriff’s Sgt. John Urquhart said. “The meth problem is not any better, but the meth lab problem is better.”
Still, said Pierce County’s Dewey, “I would rather see the importation issue than the lab issue.”
Getting rid of the labs
Last year, the number of reported meth labs and dumpsites continued a decline that began in Pierce County in 2005 and statewide in 2001:
• The state Department of Ecology cleaned up 148 labs and dumpsites throughout Pierce County in 2006, down from 349 in 2005 and a high of 589 in 2001.
• Statewide, ecology teams handled 390 labs and dumpsites in 2006, down from 806 in 2005.
• Ecology teams responded last year to 63 labs and dumpsites in King County and 10 in Thurston County.
• Tacoma police handled 26 labs and dumpsites in 2006, down from 83 in 2005 and 135 in 2004.
• The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department investigated 27 labs last year, a drop from 59 in 2005.
Investigators attribute the drops to a new and tougher pseudoephedrine law that cut the accessibility of the medicine. Before, addicts stole medicine or bought it in bulk, then used it in potentially explosive labs.
The new law, which took effect Jan. 1, 2006, requires stores to put cold medicines that contain ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, essential ingredients in making meth, behind a pharmacy counter and out of the reach of customers. It also prohibits the sale of the medicine to people under 18 and requires stores to keep a log of customers who buy the products.
Tougher prison sentences
Prosecutors also have helped curb the number of illegal labs by pursuing meth cooks, Tacoma officers said. Cooks face more prison time than a meth user caught with the drug.
Pierce County prosecutors put an emphasis on meth cooks a couple of years ago, giving defendants the choice of facing trial or pleading guilty as charged, said Mark Lindquist, the deputy prosecutor who heads the drugs and vice unit.
“We quit seeing the revolving door with these meth cooks,” he said. “The unit has really put away a lot of the more prolific meth cooks in Pierce County.”
The accused cooks face, at a minimum, between four years, three months and five years, eight months in prison.
Many get more time because they have previous criminal convictions and either made their meth with children or guns nearby or within 1,000 feet of a school or school bus stop, Lindquist said.
By comparison, an addict charged with possession of meth faces up to six months in jail.
Addicts often turn to theft to help pay for their drugs. Metal – especially copper wire – has been the latest trend. They steal the wire from light poles, construction sites and other areas, then resell it.
Area law enforcement agencies and governments are working to curb metal theft. The state Department of Transportation and Washington State Patrol launched an online reporting form last week in response to the growing problem.
The King County Sheriff’s Office is scaling back its 18-person lab response team and beefing up its fraud investigations unit to deal with the change in the meth battle.
Local law enforcement agencies also are targeting dealers and distributors through undercover investigations. The investigations, which use confidential informants, mirror how undercover officers address other illegal drugs, including heroin, cocaine and marijuana.
“There is still plenty of meth out there,” Urquhart said. “It’s just the source is different.”
Stacey Mulick: 253-597-8268

Meth trade not gone, just evolving
THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Published: February 21st, 2007 01:00 AM

Legislation alone never cures drug addiction. As fast as policy-makers write laws to choke supply, desperate users and the scum that keep them hooked find new ways to feed the need. Witness methamphetamine. No sooner did U.S. states pass tough laws placing pseudoephedrine — a common cold-medicine ingredient used in meth production — out of reach of backyard cooks than drug cartels from Mexico and elsewhere stepped in to fill the void.
Meth use is still very much a crisis — more than 92 percent of local law-enforcement officials on the West Coast consider it their No. 1 drug threat. But how the drug ends up on the streets has changed in some significant ways.
Homemade meth is on the decline. Pierce County’s experience illustrates what’s happening across the country as meth cooks find ingredients harder to come by. The state Department of Ecology cleaned up 148 meth labs and dumpsites here last year, compared with 589 in 2001.
The drop is cause for both celebration and consternation. Meth’s toxic and explosive alchemy puts not only cooks at great risk, but also families and private property. Fewer meth labs means fewer children sickened by meth exposure and fewer homes, motel rooms, sheds and fields turned into hazardous waste sites.
But kicking meth isn’t as easy as shutting down some mom-and-pop labs. Cutting off the supply of meth ingredients here in the United States has given rise to “superlabs” in Mexico, where drug cartels use established trafficking routes to smuggle the drug into American cities.
The Mexican government has had some success at curtailing the drug trade by racheting down import quotas on pseudoephedrine, according to groundbreaking reporting by The Oregonian.
Federal data analyzed by the Portland newspaper last year showed that street meth’s purity had fallen while its price increased, suggesting dealers were having to increasingly cut meth with additives. Treatment professionals said some addicts, frustrated by chasing an unattainable high, were hitting bottom and entering recovery sooner.
But again the meth trade has adapted. Asian meth traffickers have easy access to meth ingredients thanks to lax oversight at drug factories in India and China. Using more sophisticated techniques, Asian “superlabs” can churn out 1,100 pounds of meth a week, compared to a home lab that makes an ounce at a time or a Mexican superlab that produces 10 to 100 pounds week.
Much of the meth goes to supply Asia’s burgeoning demand. But left unchecked, the drug could easily find its way to U.S. streets. In December, Mexican officials discovered a 19.5-ton cache of pseudoephedrine in a cargo container from China. There also is evidence that traffickers are tapping Indian and Chinese sources to mass-produce meth in Canada.
Plugging the foreign meth pipeline is a much more difficult and delicate proposition than cracking down on the guy making an ounce or two in his storage shed. Lawmakers in this state and others are winning one battle against meth and the harm it inflicts on communities; victory on the emerging international front is just as important if the nation is ever to beat the scourge of meth.

There is one truism in America and that is the Press never gets it right. They always imagine the problem bigger than it really is. It seems they are more interested in making the news instead of just reporting it. Only 400,000 people are daily meth users compared to 1,600,000 daily cocaine users in the United States. One thing coke does is it puts you in the poor house. It is just a bad menace as crystal even worse from swims experience. But coke is cool so no one really picks on coke users in the press, but they go out of their way calling meth users scum. Not everyone who uses meth gets addicted to meth, some do and some don't just like with other drugs. But if used too much it can have a harmful effect on the brain, body and teeth. But does this warrant 2 news stories in three days about meth when both stories sounded alike. Shame on the News Tribune for whipping up hysteria regarding a drug used by .3 percent of the population. Why not go back to what you done very well for over three years and that was bashing Bush everyday about Iraq. Narrow-minded press corp... They are just idiots. Anyone on the street can tell you that the quality of the meth has skyrocketed, prices have come down and one can find it anywhere. These turds in the press want you to believe all that legislation passed in the Patriot Act to stop meth (never did quite get the connection between AL Qaeda and meth but Nancy Pelosi insisted on it) precursors. Now they have a much bigger problem, higher the quality the easier to get hooked. The drug lords know this. Meth use to be 40-60 percent pure, now it is usually 99% pure. Thanks to the patriot act. And thank you nancy pelosi for making all this possible.