Meth trend

concerns

police

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Ask either Jeff Hohensee or Dan Louwagie and they'll tell you that methamphetamine is one of the most pressing concerns in the area.

For four years, Hohensee, an investigator for the New Ulm Police Department, and Louwagie, a Lyon County deputy sheriff, have been on the front lines of the local war on drugs as members of a drug task force.

Both spoke at a public forum at New Ulm Middle School Monday night.

Hohensee said the meth problem began increasing about five years ago.

Meth, which stimulates the central nervous system, was first discovered in Japan in 1919. It was used to treat narcolepsy in the 1930s. German and Japanese soldiers in World War II were sometimes given meth to keep them motivated.

One of the reasons behind the rise in meth use is that cocaine is often expensive because it is touched by at least four sets of hands before it is sold. With meth, you can buy everything you need to cook it for less than $250.

"You can buy the stuff to make $200,000 worth of drugs for $250," said Louwagie, who is a Brown Lyon Redwood drug task force member.

Another reason behind meth's increasing popularity is because it is easy to manufacture. Hohensee said meth recipes can be shared from jails and on the Internet.

The most common way to do meth is to smoke it in a glass pipe or a light bulb, but it can also be snorted, eaten, injected and inhaled. Hohensee and Louwagie have seen meth users who have stayed up for days. One reason why kids use methamphetamine is that they don't have to go to an older person to get it, unlike a six-pack of beer, said Hohensee.

Louwagie said meth "is not a low-income problem" noting that many of the defendants in drug cases come from middle-class backgrounds.

Al Alvig of Brown County Family Services said kids in drug treatment say that meth is easier to get than alcohol is. He said the recovery rate for methamphetamine addiction is "hard to generalize, but is generally poor."

Typically, an ounce of meth sells for $1,000 on the street. Half an ounce goes for $600. An eight ball of meth can be had for $175. Price varies depending on location, Hohensee said.

"It used to be that if we got a couple eight balls, that was good work," Louwagie said. "The amount has changed."

Some of the signs of a meth lab are increased traffic at all hours of the day and night, Hohensee said. Fans blowing air out of a window instead of inside it during winter is another clue, he said.

Hohensee said police often have one shot at raiding a meth lab and have to document the equipment and the chemicals as they are found inside the lab before they are hauled away by a government-certified contractor for disposal. Louwagie said the practice sometimes causes problems for prosecutors in court because juries often are shown photographs and a sample of the methamphetamine found when they like to see each individual ingredient.

The biggest health risk from methamphetamine is inhaling the vapors during production. Hohensee said that overcooked red phosphorous meth can make phosgene gas, which was used as a weapon in World War I.

Meth labs also generate their fair share of waste, since one pound of meth generates in between 5-6 pounds of waste during production.

Meth labs can be found in vehicles, mobile homes, rental trailers, hotel rooms and houses. Both said most meth cooks are armed. Louwagie said officers once found 21 weapons inside a house during a raid, three of which were fully automatic. He said labs can also be booby trapped. He recalled one incident where the door was rigged to a shotgun.

Louwagie said most meth cooks don't cook to get rich; they cook to have enough money to support their habits. The age group for cooks has fallen from the mid-30s to as young as 17 years old.

Most of the labs that are discovered locally are called box labs because all the equipment needed to make the drug can be stored in a box. Hohensee said Mexico has labs that can produce 20 pounds of meth quickly.

Louwagie said 90 percent of the meth in the U.S. comes from Mexico and southwestern states like Arizona.

A typical box lab cleanup costs anywhere in between $7-10,000 per cleanup. According to Louwagie, a total of 425 meth labs were raided in Minnesota last year. The costs are often high because the federal government considers most of the chemicals in a meth lab toxic.

Hohensee said the House of Representatives is currently looking to curb the sale of over-the-counter medication that contains psuedoephedrine, a key ingredient in meth. Brown and Nicollet County's proposed meth lab cleanup ordinance will require a chemical assessment of a former meth lab site before landlords allow people to return. The ordinance will require disclosure of a meth lab raid on the titles to vehicles and the deeds to real estate. Hohensee said both the local and state laws will put the responsibility for cleanup on the property owner.

"For every one we discover, there's 10 we don't discover," Louwagie said. "Three years ago, it was mostly out in the county. But it's moved to town because there are fewer farms to rent."

Hohensee said there are two methods for making methamphetamine. The difference is the "hot cook" uses anhydrous ammonia and lithium, while the "cold cook" uses red phosphorous. Louwagie said he sees a lot of red phosphorous methamphetamine west of Brown County. Hohensee, on the other hand, has mostly seized meth that was made with anhydrous ammonia.

Both said the kind of meth depends on who the cook learned to cook from. They said cooks will follow recipes down to the last detail, using those brands of ingredients only. Hohensee said he's seen cases where people will drive from town to town and store to store and buy small amounts of ingredients at a time in order to avoid suspicion.