MICRO METH LABS RUN RIOT

Undermanned Police Play Whack-a-Mole Hunting Down Soda-Bottle Outfits.

Police across the U.S. are struggling with a
proliferation of busts for methamphetamine
production, fueled by the rise of small but dangerous "one pot" labs.

The increasingly popular technique has largely
replaced the kitchen-size meth lab with a single,
two-liter soda bottle. Ingredients for a batch
can easily be obtained on a single trip to a
pharmacy and mixed almost anywhere. One-pot labs
aren't new, but they are spreading just as budget
cuts are reducing police forces.

In Christiansburg, Va., the police department is
paying thousands of dollars to clean up toxic
labs. Police in Tulsa, Okla., have handled 15%
more meth-lab busts so far this year than all of
last year, at a time when the department is down
some 70 officers. Nationally, incidents related
to meth production rose above 11,000 last year,
after falling sharply to around 6,000 in 2007,
according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

One-pot operations produce small quantities of
meth at a time, law-enforcement officials say,
but are toxic and highly explosive, occasionally
resulting in fires and deaths. Their small scale
makes them especially hard to find and stop, in
part because they don't require enough
pseudoephedrine=ADan essential meth ingredient
found in some cold medications=ADto run afoul of federal purchasing limits.

"They're small, they're mobile, they're easy to
hide," said Cpl. Mike Griffin of the Tulsa Police
Department. "As long as pseudoephedrine is
available, they're going to keep growing."

Methamphetamine, a stimulant whose side effects
include tooth loss, skin lesions and brain damage
after extended abuse, induces a lengthy euphoria
and is highly addictive. Some women take it as a
weight-loss drug. But as they chase after one-pot
labs,police fear they are neglecting bigger
drug-dealing operations involving global cartels
and other drugs, such as cocaine and heroin.

Since Tulsa police found the city's first one-pot
lab in late 2008, lab busts have soared, reaching
315 in 2009. So far this year, police have busted
372 labs, up from 323 in 2010.

DEA data show that the trend is similar
elsewhere. In Virginia, for example, the number
of labs and related sites discovered by police
has been surging. In Indiana, the number last
year was up 64% from 2008, at 1,213. The figures
include all types of meth labs, but one-pot operations now predominate.

The trend has prompted legislators in some
states, including Oklahoma, Michigan and Maine,
to propose bills requiring a doctor's
prescription for over-the-counter medicine
containing pseudoephedrine. Similar laws have
been passed in Oregon and Mississippi, where meth
operations dropped sharply afterward.

Drug makers have instead promoted a national
tracking network to monitor sales, which they are
financing. Seventeen states, including Kentucky,
Illinois and Louisiana, have signed up, and Virginia is considering joining.

"We don't like the fact that law-abiding citizens
will be penalized as a result of the actions of a
very small minority," said Carlos Gutierrez, a
spokesman for the Consumer Healthcare Products Association.

Federal regulations limiting over-the-counter
sales of pseudoephedrine to a few grams a day
helped keep larger meth producers in check after
the rules took effect in 2006. But producers
started scaling down recipes to require just a
few packages of cold medicine instead of hundreds.

"As crooks tend to do, they have adapted," said DEA spokesman Jeffrey Scott.

In Vanderburgh County, Ind., small-batch meth
cooks have expanded=ADone recent case involved more
than 100 pots, said Lt. Bret Fitzsimmons. Police
have busted three times as many labs so far this
year as they did in all of 2009. The caseload has
grown so much that police had to set aside three
investigators, out of a narcotics task force of
20, to work on meth cases full-time.

In Christiansburg, police started paying to clean
up one-pot labs after money distributed by the
DEA for that purpose was used up quickly this
year. The process, which requires a crew
specialized in hazardous materials, has absorbed
40% of the department's $15,000 budget to pay
informants, said Lt. Tim Brown. Meth cooks
usually don't accumulate cash or assets that can
be confiscated to offset a probe's costs.

"There's not a whole lot of money involved," Lt.
Brown said. "Either people manufacture to supply
their own habit or to trade for pseudoephedrine."