New law is a bitter pill for makers of meth

Author: Paul Levy
Source: The Star Tribune

Minnesota's meth labs are disappearing.

Four months after a new law limited the sales of decongestants that contain an ingredient for making illegal and highly addictive methamphetamine, law enforcement officials around the state are reporting a sharp decline in seizures of the makeshift labs that have plagued many counties.

In a five-county area of northern Minnesota, only four labs have been discovered this year, down from dozens in recent years, said Bemidji Police Chief Bruce Preece. In Kanabec County, an hour north of Minneapolis and an area besieged by meth, Sheriff Steve Schulz said only one lab where the drug was being made has been seized since the law took effect July 1.

"This new law is huge for Minnesota," said Olmsted County Sheriff Steve Borchardt, who is reporting similar declines in meth lab busts in the southeastern part of the state.

Minnesota's law is modeled after moves made by states across the Midwest in the past year in their costly fight to stop the spread of meth.

The law restricts sales of many common cold and allergy medicines that contain pseudoephedrine, which is coveted by meth brewers. Products with that ingredient have been put behind pharmacy counters and anyone buying them now must show photo identification, be older than 18 and sign a log to obtain a maximum of two packages.

After Iowa passed a law making it harder to buy decongestants with pseudoephedrine, meth lab seizures in that state plummeted by 75 percent. In Oklahoma, which last year enacted the nation's first limits on over-the-counter cold remedies that are popular in the meth trade, lab busts fell by nearly 80 percent within eight months.

Tim O'Malley, assistant superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), said state officials have not yet formally tallied the impact that the new law has had on lab seizures, "but we repeatedly hear the numbers have gone down."

Still taking a toll

In 2003, police and other law enforcement agencies in Minnesota seized between 400 and 500 meth labs in the state, up from 100 in 2000.

The state also spends about $175 million a year dealing with all the effects of meth use, including cleanup and incarceration, according to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. Meth labs are hazards for fires, explosions and environmental contamination.

Despite encouraging signs from the new law, meth remains a major problem in Minnesota. State law enforcement officials estimate that 80 percent of the meth in Minnesota comes from Mexico.

But Borchardt said some counties are already feeling less "sapped" by having to find and destroy local meth labs, clean up the environmental mess they create or expose themselves to toxic contaminants.

Curt Smith, an assistant director for the Iowa Division of Narcotics, said the law's real impact may not be felt for months. In Iowa, he said, seizures of meth labs keep dropping every month.

"This is not a law that the offenders seem able to get around," he said.

Stitching a loophole

But earlier this year Oklahoma had to strengthen its law restricting the sale of cold medicines after discovering that some people who reached their purchase limit at one pharmacy counter were traveling to drugstores in other parts of the state that had no record of what they had already bought. Now, the state is connecting all retailers who sell over-the-counter decongestants that contain pseudoephedrine through a computer database.

Larry Carter, a senior agent with the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation, said merchants there are monitoring sales of decongestants as if their jobs and communities depended on it.

"If they see people buying four boxes of Sudafed, starter fluid, coffee filters in abundance, they say something," Carter said. "We needed these laws."

Even before Minnesota's step became law this summer, the number of meth labs had begun to decrease in some parts of the state. Law enforcement officials credit voluntary steps that some pharmacists, drugstores and larger retailers have taken to limit the sale of certain cold remedies.

"We'd seen how dangerous meth is, how highly unstable and violent meth users tend to be, and, frankly, we had to take action before the law came into effect," said Preece, a former BCA agent who dismantled his first meth lab in 1978.

In those days, Preece said, meth labs were operated by professional chemists in the basements of homes. No longer. Meth labs have been discovered in fish houses near Bemidji, the back seats of cars, forests, hotel rooms, even a church near Moorhead.

"Our local merchants were a little ahead of the state law," said Morrison County Sheriff Michel Wetzel, "but the law has opened everyone's eyes."