The number of methamphetamine labs uncovered in North Carolina is on the rise once again, as makers of the drug have learned ways to get around the state's restrictions on a key ingredient found in cold medicines.
Five years ago, state law made it tougher to obtain over-the-counter pseudoephedrine from pharmacies and other stores. That resulted in an immediate 40 percent drop in meth lab raids, since the decongestant found in Sudafed and other medicines is used to make meth, according to the State Bureau of Investigation.
But since then, the number of meth lab busts has climbed 50 percent -- from a low of 157 busts in 2007, to 235 busts in 2010. Just last month, authorities raided a trailer in Hoke County and arrested at least seven people, including a mother whose infant needed treatment for chemical burns.
In some counties, the number of lab raids has soared despite the restriction on pseudoephedrine. Authorities have seized nearly five times as many meth labs in Harnett County as they did in the five years before the law took effect.
Lawmen in Sampson County have seized more than three times as many meth labs in the same timeframe.
The law limits how much pseudoephedrine someone can buy at one time, and it requires stores to keep a log of who's buying how much.
Law enforcement agencies believe the law has helped combat meth. It has forced meth cooks to work harder for the drug, and it created a paper trail that law enforcement can follow when they're onto a suspected meth ring.
But the law had side effects. Imported meth from Mexico spiked immediately after pseudoephedrine became harder to purchase. Then local criminals learned to work around the restrictions, according to law officers. The result has been smaller labs that are more rudimentary and mobile. Their customers tend to be cloistered -- typically, family members and friends. The groups are hard for law enforcement to infiltrate, often requiring police to rely on informants who are already within their ranks.
"They haven't really slowed down, they've just gotten smart about where they're cooking," said an undercover drug officer with the Sampson County Sheriff's Office, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of his cases. "We've come across several (labs) that have been out in the woods. It's pretty much your tote tubs -- your plastic tub containers -- and inside there they'll have a ready-to-go meth lab. You just need the pseudoephedrine."
In Harnett County, which has led the Cape Fear region in meth lab seizures in recent years, law officers have seen a rise in "micro-labs." It used to be common for a single meth cook to make the drug for several groups of users, Sheriff Larry Rollins said. Many of the big-time cooks, however, are now serving time in federal prison.
"Most of them now are just going out in the woods and doing it and keeping it much more secluded than they were," Rollins said. "We find the results of them doing it, more than we're catching them doing it."
One-pot operations
Attorney General Roy Cooper attributed the uptick in lab seizures to an increase in the one-pot method, known as "shake and bake labs." Cooks add ingredients to a container, such as a plastic bottle, where they cook in one simple step.
Over the past year, more than 50 percent of the labs found in North Carolina have been one-pot operations, Cooper said. During the past two months, more than 70 percent have been, he said.
"The popularity of these shake-and-bake labs has risen as the method has become better known throughout the meth production community," Cooper said. "I'm alarmed by the quick spread of these one-pot labs."
The labs are small enough that cooks often toss them along the roadside when they're finished. They also make only limited quantities, such as a dose or two, and create less toxic waste, Cooper said.
Still, it's common for a cook to have 30 or 40 people "smurfing," or buying the maximum allowed amount of pseudoephedrine from multiple pharmacies. The smurfers get about $25 a box or finished product, according to the Sampson County Sheriff's Office. In essence, the users have become part of the supply chain.
Smurfers often buy pseudoephedrine in towns spread over multiple counties or states, then bring the drug to rural areas where it's easier to cook undetected.
"In any type of criminal activity, when you take law enforcement action, they're going to adapt to it," said Sgt. P. Berg of a Fayetteville police special projects unit. "Then we adapt and change to that."
According to a 2008 report by the National Drug Intelligence Center, meth was a serious problem in the Southeast. State and local law enforcement called it the second biggest threat behind cocaine.
Stiffer controls of the sale of precursor chemicals hurt local meth production, the report said. Now the most prevalent type in the Southeast is Mexican-manufactured "ice" meth, a high-purity crystal methamphetamine.
Mexican suppliers
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the introduction of cheap, quality Mexican meth to North Carolina starting about 15 years ago.
The Mexican drug-trafficking groups are organized, deeply rooted and able to move the most drugs, said Michael Franklin, resident agent in charge of the DEA office that covers southeastern North Carolina.
Their meth can sell locally for up to $25,000 a pound, there was potential for huge growth in imports of Mexican "ice" meth following the change in the law.
"The mark-up, the profit margin, is huge for these Mexican organizations," Franklin said. "Just like any other drug market, whether it's coke or marijuana, they're all over it."
But users of Mexican ice meth are a different demographic than users of locally cooked dope. Users tend to prefer the dope they started on, citing the "taste" of the drug, he said.
Locally cooked meth users tended to return to their product as soon as cooks learned to get around the state law, namely with smurfing, he said.
"When the law came into effect, the meth community kind of freezed up and were scared to try to get the pseudo," Franklin said. "They've found ways to adapt to that pseudo law. Where there's a will, there's a way."
Fayetteville pharmacies
That way often leads to Fayetteville and other large communities with multiple pharmacies. Smurfers often go in groups, with each member buying the maximum amount of cold medicine in intervals to avoid detection. They quickly learned they could still buy the maximum amount of the drug at every store within driving distance.
"It slowed them down in the beginning, until they figured out that they could still hit all of them," said Detective S. Valdez, one of two Fayetteville police officers certified to dismantle meth labs.
A few years ago, the law was amended to require records to be kept electronically, but there still is no centralized database police can turn to, she said.
Some pharmacies use commercial databases such as MethCheck, while others use their own independent databases that connect a chain's stores but not to others, she said.
"So if I want to look at their logs, I've got to go talk to them and say, 'Can you print out your log for me?' " Valdez said. "Then you've got to input that in a database to compare it with the other ones. And there's 43 pharmacies in this town.
"They've figured out that it's a lot of work for somebody to do, and it doesn't happen all that often, until you get a tip on somebody."
Cooper, the attorney general, said the state does have a database -- the Pseudoephedrine Tracking System -- that it is trying to get drugstores to use. That system shares records collected in Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina, he said.
But while stores are required to log pseudoephedrine sales, there is no law requiring them to use the state database, he said.
"Some have just chosen not to do it. Others have decided to just keep their own records," Cooper said. "We're certainly going to work with the legislature in this area to try to have a uniform system that law enforcement can use. We think that's important."
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
