Indiana State Police found 362 children at meth lab sites in 2014.
That’s 362 babies, toddlers, pre-schoolers, elementary and teen-age children who lived amid toxic chemicals, fumes and trash that result from the clandestine production of methamphetamine.
Another 20 children were found by other Indiana police agencies living in the same type of hazardous conditions. That is less than the 458 children found at meth lab sites in 2013.
As Trooper Shiloh Raulston of the Indiana State Police Meth Suppression Unit knows, about 35 percent of those children will test positive for meth. Not because they have intentionally used it, but because they inhale the fumes. And if a lab is operated in the child’s home, the fumes will penetrate the carpets, walls, furniture and clothing to create a toxic home.
Raulston spoke to a forum of youth workers on Thursday at Gibault Children’s Services. The Indiana Youth Institute hosted the Youth Worker Café forum to explore facts about methamphetamines and what police have learned in the almost two decades that they have been tracking the mom-and-pop meth lab phenomenon.
According to a 2014 study from the Indiana Prevention Resource Center, nearly 2 percent of high school seniors in western Indiana report trying methamphetamines. Meth is a highly addictive, physically damaging drug, and Raulston said he has seen abuse of the drug in youths as young as 13. And that is both the imported meth from the Mexican drug cartels and homemade meth from so-called one-pot labs.
Raulston said he worked 300 labs in the Vigo County area last year. Statewide, police located 1,808 labs in 2013, and he said that is probably only 10 to 15 percent of the labs that actually existed. The decrease of meth labs located last year was probably a result of the increased import of Mexican-made meth, he said.
“While the majority of drugs are mostly abused by men, with meth it’s about 50 percent men and 50 percent women. That’s why meth use has resulted in many more children in protective services,” said Raulston. He was accompanied to the forum by Trooper Adam Edwards, who also works in the meth suppression unit.
In a majority of the cases, the children are neglected, sick, malnourished and abused, he said. The use of meth will enhance sex drive, he explained, and sexual abuse and assaults are associated with meth use because of libido stimulation. Meth users are not necessarily attracted to children as victims.
The social consequences for children who live in a meth environment are serious, Raulston said. Young children in particular may not know how to relate to adults, be sexually advanced, possibly violent, and reluctant to talk or interact with others.
In response to questions about various neighborhoods in Terre Haute where meth labs are routinely found, Edwards said the neighborhood commonly referred to as “the avenues” likely has many more clandestine meth labs than are found by police.
“For every lab we take away, I guarantee there’s six or seven other labs cooking right then,” Edwards said.