METH BUST REPORTED

A tip about a car traveling through Lafayette County over the weekend
carrying ingredients used to make methamphetamine led investigators to
shut down what is being called a "mega lab" for making the drug in
Suwannee County.

Seven people were arrested.

"This lab had the potential to make several ounces of methamphetamine
at a time and they were cooking about three times a week," Lafayette
County Sheriff Carson McCall said.

Based on conservative estimates that the lab produced 10-ounce batches
of methamphetamine at a time, each batch had a street value of about
$36,855. A week's production had a street value of more than $110,000.

The highly addictive stimulant is known as the poor man's cocaine
because it costs about half as much as cocaine and can produce a high
that lasts many times longer. Federal officials blame
methamphetamine's inexpensive, longer-lasting high for its
skyrocketing popularity. Methamphetamine is also blamed for a
disproportionate number of injuries among law enforcement officers who
are responsible for shutting down labs.

No one was injured in the Lafayette-Suwannee case.

McCall and Suwannee County Sheriff Tony Cameron issued a statement
Sunday night explaining how deputies followed a trail of clues to a
meth lab that drug investigators had been in search of for two months.

Acting on a tip early Saturday, McCall said he made a traffic stop.
Inside the car, he found cocaine and the components of a
methamphetamine lab.

Based on what was found during the traffic stop, a search warrant was
issued for a home at 20665 217th Road in Suwannee County. In the home
were additional methamphetamine lab components and some of the
chemicals needed to make methamphetamine. Information gathered at the
home led deputies to another Suwannee County home at 22781 90th St.

"When we got to that house, they were inside cooking right then," said
McCall, who identified the second home as the mega lab his agency had
been searching for since late summer.

Robin McDaniel, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent who
teaches classes about methamphetamine labs statewide and frequently
serves as the sight safety officer when rural methamphetamine labs are
found, told McCall and Cameron that the lab at the 90th Street house
was the largest lab he had seen.

The exact amounts of methamphetamine and methamphetamine-making
chemicals involved in the case were not available late Sunday and will
have to be determined by a state laboratory, a process that could take
a few weeks, deputies said. The liquids and other chemicals involved
are too volatile for safe field testing, McCall said.

The need for extreme caution around methamphetamine labs was
underscored by a four-year study released in April by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention in its publication, Morbidity and
Mortality Weekly Report.

Using information reported by 16 states, including Florida, between
January 1, 2000, and June 30, 2004, researchers concluded that making
and selling methamphetamine is more dangerous than spills and releases
of other toxic materials, in large part because many of the
ingredients are highly flammable accelerants. The study also found
that 56 percent of the people injured because of methamphetamine labs
were law enforcement officers.

The federal study found that 86 percent of toxic chemical releases in
methamphetamine cases happened inside someone's home.

The state fire marshal's office had investigated fires or explosions at
29 methamphetamine labs over the past three years. State Fire Marshal
and Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher said first responders could
be unaware that they were walking into a methamphetamine lab. He also
announced plans to ask the 2006 Legislature to impose criminal
penalties for those who operate methamphetamine labs where emergency
workers are injured.

The federal study compared the 1,791 reported incidents involving the
manufacturing and handling of methamphetamine with the more than
38,500 reported incidents involving other toxic chemicals like
accidental toxic releases from laboratories and tanker trucks. Among
the main ingredients in methamphetamine is toxic anhydrous ammonia.

While there were far fewer methamphetamine events in the study, they
resulted in a much higher percentage of injuries than non-
methamphetamine events. About a third of the methamphetamine events -
31 percent - ended with an injury, while only 7.3 percent of the non-
methamphetamine events ended with an injury, researchers reported.

Names and charges for those arrested in the Lafayette-Suwannee case
this weekend were:

[snip]

SIDEBAR

Meth Facts:

* Methamphetamine is cooked in ounces, sold in grams.

* 1 ounce equals 28.35 grams.

* 1 gram of methamphetamine has a $130 retail value.

* 10-ounce batches cooked a day have a street value of $36,855.

* A week's production had a street value of more than $110,000.