TOUGH METH PENALTIES GET PRAISE OF OFFICERS

With methamphetamine labs popping up all over the Georgia and the dramatic
drop in street cost, law enforcement officers are praising harsher
penalties signed into law this week by Gov. Sonny Perdue.

The new legislation strengthens criminal penalties for the manufacture,
transfer and possession of methamphetamines and criminalizes the transport
of materials used in its illegal manufacture.

"I think it will be a big help," said Mike Seigler, the special agent in
charge of the Thomson office of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
"(Dealers) have come up with new versions of making it much, much quicker.
It means there's a heavy increase."

GBI agents seized 148 labs in 2002 and is on track to reach higher numbers
during the current fiscal year. The increase of meth production is so
widespread that 25 percent of drug-related federal sentences in Georgia
involved meth, compared with 15 percent nationwide, according to the
Governor's Office.

The spread and increased production has caused an estimated 50 percent drop
in the drug's street-level price in the past two years, authorities said.

Police in Augusta and surrounding counties have seen the drug's impact:

a.. Two men died and a third was seriously injured May 9 in Jefferson
County while they transported three stolen tanks of anhydrous ammonia, a
substance used to make the methamphetamines, authorities said. A valve
popped off a tank, exposing them to the deadly chemical. GBI officials
connected the men to meth labs in Wilkinson and Twiggs counties.

a.. Richmond County authorities arrested four people May 9 after
discovering a meth lab in an apartment on Wrightsboro Road.

a.. Five men were charged Jan. 27 in an undercover operation targeting
methamphetamines in Richmond County. The meth problem also has spread to
Burke County, where sheriff's Lt. Frankie Parker said he hopes the stiffer
penalties might deter other people from manufacturing the drug.

"(I hope it will) get some of them off the street and send a message to
others that this is what happens when you get involved in it," Lt. Parker
said. "I think there should be stiffer laws than what they have been. In
some ways, there are loopholes for them to get out of it. The stiffer the
penalty, the better it is for us."

METH CRACKDOWN

Georgia's new methamphetamine legislation ranks among the strongest in the
nation. The law will:

a.. Provide stiffer penalties for trafficking methamphetamines

a.. Make it a felony to steal anhydrous ammonia, a substance commonly used
to make meth

a.. Make it a felony to possess anhydrous ammonia with knowledge that it
will be used unlawfully to make a controlled substance.

a.. Make it a felony to possess any product that contains ephedrine,
pseudoephedrine or phenylpropanolamine in an amount that exceeds 300 pills,
tablets, capsules or other individual units, or more than 9 grams of these
substances, whichever is smaller.