METH LABS SAID TO BE DECLINING DUE TO STRICTER LAWS

ROGERS -- Federal laws have made it harder to purchase the key
ingredients needed to manufacture methamphehtamine, but local police
officers are seeing a higher volume of the drug brought into Benton County.

The methamphetamine Precursor Control Act of 2005 forced cold and
allergy medicines containing ephedrine or pseudoephedrine off store
shelves and behind pharmacy counters and limited how much a person
could purchase.

Since the start of the new law, Captain Mike Sydoriak said the Benton
County Sheriff's Office has seen a dramatic drop-off in the number of
meth labs.

Methamphetamine can take the form of powder, a pill or crystal and is
smoked, snorted, injected or swallowed, according to the Drug
Enforcement Administration Web site. Sydoriak said he heard a month
ago methamphetamine was being manufactured in candy form, like a
lollipop, and with flavors, like strawberry.

A Rogers Police Department officer, who wished to remain anonymous,
has served five years with the narcotics division and said it's
getting harder to detect meth labs, but undercover officers are now
seeing larger amounts of methamphetamine, in the form of crystal or
ice, brought into Northwest Arkansas.

The Rogers department has seen an 11 percent increase from 2005 to
2006 in the overall possession of drugs and a 20 percent decrease in
the sale or manufacture of drugs from 2005 to 2006.

Five years ago undercover officers were buying just grams of
methamphetamine from dealers, then it was ounces, and now it's up to
pounds, the Rogers officer said.

U.S. meth labs have declined from 17,500 in 2004 to 8,000 in 2005,
and now two-thirds to 80 percent of methamphetamine is imported,
according to an Associated Press report.

The top five exporters of pseudoephedrine to the United States in
2005 were the United Kingdom, Mexico, South Africa, Switzerland and
Belgium, according to the U.S. Department of State Web site.

Rogers officers have tracked some of the ice they've seized to
Mexico, via Texas and California, the anonymous officer said.

It would take weeks to calculate how much methamphetamine has been
seized by the Rogers Police Department, said Lt. Mike Johnson, public
information officer. That's because before 1999, the collection of
evidence was notated in books, Johnson said. Since then, it's been
computerized.

Detective Travis Newell of the sheriff's office said users just need
a source of heat, acetone and cold pills to manufacture methamphetamine.

The average users encountered by the sheriff's office are
middle-aged, and police see a lot of burglaries and thefts related to
methamphetamine use, Newell said.

Joseph T. Ricketson, a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of
Investigation, said in a recent Associated Press report that users
sometimes stay awake for days, producing psychotic behavior,
including extreme self-mutilation.

Ricketson told of encountering a man who had cut open his abdomen
with a butcher knife "and began to pull his intestines out" after
using the drug for four or five days.

Web Watch

DEA's drug education

www.justthinktwice.com/

www.usdoj.gov/dea/concern/meth.html .