METH LABS MAKE RETURN TO U.S.

Federal drug agents are reporting a resurgence of methamphetamine
production in such areas as rural California and suburban Georgia-a
consequence, they suspect, of meth crackdowns in Mexico.

The resurgence over the past two years comes after more than a decade
of falling U.S. meth production, and may signal a return to the days
when toxic meth byproducts littered roadsides and polluted waterways
across rural America.

Illicit meth labs declined after U.S. laws curbed the availability of
ingredients needed to manufacture the drug, a potent and highly
addictive stimulant. As large-scale production, especially in the
West, moved to Mexico, many U.S. dealers began importing Mexican meth.

Now, in a setback to efforts to curb unlawful drugs, meth labs are
back on the rise in places like Riverside. Once a hotbed of meth
production, this desert county saw a decline in production over the
past 15 years. But officials there have busted 15 meth labs this
year, up more than 30% from last year and the most since 2007,
according to the Riverside Sheriff's office.

On Thursday, San Francisco police also raided a meth lab in the
city's tony Laurel Heights neighborhood. Earlier this week, federal
and state agents raided a suburban Atlanta meth lab and found
hundreds of pounds of the drug, one of the biggest busts in recent
years. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration,
officials in Georgia busted 125 labs last year, up from 85 in 2008
and 68 in 2007.

State statistics for this year were unavailable, but nationwide the
DEA said, it has funded 10,481 cleanups of clandestine labs so far in
2010, up from 7,530 in 2009 and 4,830 in 2008.

John Donnelly, a DEA agent in central California, said that since
2009, he has seen an increasing number of meth labs in the state. He
blames Mexican drug violence for shifting production to California.
"There's a war there," he said.

Federal and California law-enforcement officials also point to
resourceful U.S. drug producers who developed new ways to circumvent
laws against making the drug, which can be produced from legal
substances including pseudoephedrine-a common cold medicine-and
various industrial chemicals, some of them toxic.

Mr. Donnelly said American meth-makers have expanded their use of a
technique called "smurfing," when groups of people go to pharmacies
to buy small, legally acceptable quantities of pseudoephedrine, which
then are pooled to make meth.

Mexico's meth crackdown began in 2005, when the government banned
imports of pseudoephedrine. The move was largely successful, said
James Cunningham, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona
College of Medicine. He published findings this year that
meth-related hospitalizations in Mexico and Texas fell after the
restrictions were imposed.

Still, the picture is murky, with meth-lab arrests this year likely
decreasing slightly from last year, Mr. Donnelly said. Some areas,
such as California's San Bernardino County, have seen declining meth
production, according to the San Bernardino sheriff's office. Some
studies have shown declining meth use nationwide in recent years,
though a federal government study published in September estimated
the number of U.S. residents who used meth within a month of being
surveyed increased more than 50%, to 502,000, from 2008 to 2009.

Sgt. David Teets of the Riverside Sheriff's Office said agents in
September discovered a meth "super lab," a facility on a scale that
Riverside agents hadn't seen for more than two years.

It wasn't a traditional meth-production facility, and instead refined
liquid meth into crystal form, Mr. Teets said. The liquid version,
easier to hide than powder, is coming from Mexico, he said, often
smuggled in gas tanks.

"It's like when you squeeze a balloon and it pops out somewhere
else," Mr. Teets said of the seeming U.S. resurgence.