TERRE HAUTE — Federal data are now being used to back up a fact that many lawmakers and police in the Wabash Valley have known for a long time — electronic tracking of pseudoephedrine sales has not stopped the clandestine production of methamphetamine.
Vigo County law enforcement agencies in recent years have seen skyrocketing numbers of meth labs and the associated group purchasing of cold pills to make the drugs. And that is after legislation was approved on either a county or state level to put all products containing pseudoephedrine (PSE) behind the pharmacy counter, limit the amount that can be purchased, and require purchasers to show identification so police can track sales.
The ongoing scourge has left local police and legislators with the ability to say “told you so” to comrades in other parts of the state who just a few years ago gave a “it’s your problem, not ours” response to Vigo County pleas for limits on PSE sales.
But a look Friday at a map of Indiana marked with a pushpin for each meth lab found in 2008 and 2009 shows that the problem has spread throughout the state, most notably in the northern region.
With Gov. Mitch Daniels recently remarking that meth is “public enemy number one” for Indiana, new meth legislation is making its way through the Statehouse during the current legislative session.
Sen. Tim Skinner and Rep. Clyde Kersey, both Terre Haute Democrats, are also sponsoring legislation that will make pseudoephedrine a controlled substance in Indiana, thereby requiring a prescription for purchase.
Both long-time legislators agree that electronic tracking of PSE product sales has not worked to curb meth labs in Vigo County or the state, and they joined members of the Terre Haute Area Chamber of Commerce on Friday to talk about the controlled substance issue.
Part of Friday’s meeting, which included presentations by Sgt. Chris Gallagher of the Terre Haute Police and 1st Sgt. Niki Crawford of the Indiana State Police’s Meth Suppression Section, was to point out the economic impact that meth-related crimes have on all citizens.
“The Chamber’s concern is that every time the police have to go out and investigate or clean up a meth lab, that is tax dollars that local government has to spend,” said Chamber Executive Director Rod Henry. “And it’s potentially pushing some local governments to the brink financially.”
Former Vigo County Sheriff Jon Marvel agrees.
“We’re keeping people in jail as opposed to paving streets, or picking up leaves, or doing parks and recreation programs,” said Marvel, who was on the forefront of the meth battle in Vigo County.
He said he also thinks that the $350,000 estimated impact of each meth lab is a conservative number that doesn’t take into account the various social and health services used by children of meth lab cookers and meth users.
“There are meth addicted babies who become children in need of services for the state, and that becomes a tax-funded issue,” Marvel said. “The chances of those children excelling in school is slim to none. That is a societal issue.”
Henry agrees.
“There is not one single taxpayer in the state who is not affected,” he said. “You may not have a family member or know someone affected by meth. But there is an indirect impact. You are affected whether you know it or not.”
“Our message is very simple,” Marvel said. “We have to cut the head off the serpent. The best way is to do what Oregon is doing.”
Oregon, which reported 473 meth labs in 2003, has become the golden example of how to eliminate meth labs. Oregon’s legislature made PSE a controlled substance in 2006. Since then, the state has had fewer than 20 meth labs per year. In 2010, Oregon officials localed 12 clandestine meth labs, and police there said those labs were made with PSE products purchased in other states.
THPD’s Sgt. Gallagher presented some statistics that support the move to reschedule PSE rather than rely on the electronic tracking system to identify networks of people who are buying PSE.
Mississippi followed Oregon’s lead by being the next state to reschedule PSE as a controlled substance. That law took effect July 1. In the last six months of 2010, since a prescription has been required to purchase PSE products in Mississippi, 68 percent fewer labs were seized by police than in the six-month period from July 1-Dec. 31, 2009.
Another comparison of those same six-month periods in Mississippi showed than 76 percent fewer children were taken from lab sites. And the court system saw a 70 percent reduction in meth arrests.
The state of Kentucky, however, took another approach in its battle against meth.
In 2007, Kentucky recorded 309 meth labs cleaned up by police. In 2008, the state began using electronic tracking as a way to combat PSE sales for use in meth labs. In 2009, Kentucky recorded 741 meth labs. And in the first 10 months of 2010, Kentucky had 919 meth labs.
Gallagher called Kentucky’s approach to the meth problem “absolutely inexcusable and unforgivable” and warned that some businesses interested in Indiana are pushing for the same eletronic tracking solution in Indiana.
“We can’t afford to make the same mistake as Kentucky,” Gallagher said.
Meth incidents in Arkansas increased 34 percent between 2008 and 2009, Gallagher said, and Oklahoma’s meth problem increased 164 percent.
Both of those states have relied on electronic tracking of PSE sales since 2008 as the main tool to battle meth labs, he said.
“We don’t have the manpower to investigate every meth cooker or user, and we can’t afford to incarcerate or treat them all,” Gallagher said.
A former member of the Vigo County Drug Task Force, Gallagher spent seven years in the trenches during the early years when meth labs became entrenched in the Wabash Valley. At some points, it was an endurance contest to make it to each lab found to clean them up, he said.
After the county instituted its own electronic tracking solution, which Gallagher supported at the time, he saw the meth cookers morph their culture to get around the purchase limits and electronic tracking.
“I never used tracking data,” Gallagher told the Chamber audience.
He said he finds the clandestine labs by either going to house fires, smelling the ether of a lab while on patrol, or in arresting a meth user who will rat out the location of a meth lab in hopes of getting a break from police.
Gallagher said Friday that he had cleaned up six one-pot meth labs in just the past week during his evening shift.
“There is always a lab going on in Vigo County. It never stops,” Gallagher said of the current problem.
Just this past week, Gallagher helped recover a 7-year-old boy who was asleep in a home where his father and another man were cooking a one-pot batch of meth. The fumes were overwhelming, Gallagher said, and the child was exposed to the toxic chemical cloud.
He used that incident as an example of how meth can take over an adult’s life at the expense of a child. The addiction to the drug clouds judgment, and makes good people do things they wouldn’t normally do, he said.
“That father loves his son,” Gallagher said, “but he’s cooking meth in a house with his son inside.”
Gallagher also pointed out two grisly murders in recent years by parents who were addicted to meth. Katron Walker plead guilty in the death of his young son in southern Vigo County. Chad Cottrell is also serving life sentences in prison for the death of his wife and two stepdaughters in Parke County.
Both of those men were heavy meth users, Gallagher said.
And other crime has gone up because of meth — burglaries, thefts of metal from vacant homes and buildings, violent assaults, and police pursuits of people on meth or transporting an active meth lab.
“These things never happened before meth came to our community,” Gallagher said.
The ISP’s Crawford is in charge of the state’s electronic tracking system, which has been in place since last July. It is a tool for police, she said, but e-tracking is not the way to solve the meth lab problem.
Rescheduling PSE as a controlled substance as it was prior to 1976 is the only way to get rid of the meth labs.
And, she notes that of all the meth labs she has seen in her many years of work in the meth suppression section, only two labs were being operated by people who were not meth users. Meth labs in Indiana are addiction-based labs, not a business operation for someone making dope to sell for a profit.
And as for the argument that meth imported into Indiana from Mexico is more potent that the one-pot or shake-and-bake meth that is now being producted, Crawford said that because Mexico has outlawed PSE, cookers there manufacture a different type of meth that is not as strong or addictive as the homemade meth cooked here.
Sen. Skinner said it is his hope that legislators will listen to the evidence that will be presented to them, and not fall for the myths that have been presented by those opposed to rescheduling PSE as a controlled substance.
“It’s hard to be present today during this presentation and not feel some urgency to do something about this,” Skinner said. “We have to dispel the myths.”
For more information on the state’s efforts to combat meth, go to www.in.gov/meth.
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