JASPER COUNTY LEADS STATE IN METH LAB BUSTS

Lawmen: Producers Drawn To Rural Nature Of Region

Missouri is challenging California for a dubious distinction, and Jasper
County is leading the way.

For years, California has been the undisputed capital of the
methamphetamine manufacturing business in the United States, but Missouri
is threatening to take one of the meth titles away from the glitter state.

According to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, law enforcement officers
busted well over 2,000 methamphetamine labs last year, pushing California,
which the patrol said reported 1,472 labs seized in 2001, to No. 2.

The numbers locally, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, are
sobering.

Patrol Lt. Tim Hull said the final numbers are not in yet, but it appears
that Missouri law enforcement officers found well over 2,000
methamphetamine-related sites in 2001. Final numbers are expected next week.

Hull said the numbers include working methamphetamine-making operations
where the glassware and chemicals commonly used to produce meth were found,
and dump sites where the toxic chemicals used to make meth were dumped.

"As of today (Tuesday), we had tabulated 1,770 reports turned in to us by
law enforcement agencies," Hull said.

"We still had 350 or so cases to process from the other police and
sheriff's departments and that doesn't count the 90 cases that we at the
Highway Patrol have worked and not yet processed."

Low-overhead product

According to figures from local agencies, Jasper County alone will have
turned in almost 10 percent of all the meth-related cases worked by
agencies in the 114 Missouri counties and the city of St. Louis.

Joplin police Lt. Carl Francis said the department worked 69
methamphetamine cases within the city limits of Joplin in 2001.

Jasper County Sheriff's Captain Tony Coleman said his department is still
tallying the count for 2001 but it will exceed 100.

"I'd say 142 was a good ballpark figure for the number of labs we've worked
by ourselves," Coleman said.

"These are places where we found the chemicals, glassware and tubing. Not
all are actually counted as working labs. When it came to actual labs, I'd
say we got our hands on about 80 of those last year," Coleman said.

Francis said the 69 reports turned in by Joplin police were for active labs.

"As far as I know, we've never actually worked something you would call a
dump site," Francis said. "All 69 we reported last year were sites where
meth was being produced."

The patrol said Jasper County is the leader in number of lab busts among
the counties in Missouri.

Sgt. Kent Casey, spokesman for the Carthage satellite office of the Highway
Patrol, said he has mixed feelings about Jasper County's record. "Are we
better in Jasper County than other law enforcement officers or do we just
have that many more labs than any place else?" Casey said.

"It all depends on what percentage of actual labs that are out there that
we are getting and that's something we will never really know."

In Newton County, the Highway Patrol said it had so far tallied 21 meth
bust reports, but Newton County Sheriff's Capt. Chris Jennings said he
thought that number was a bit low, and anticipated the number reaching at
least 50 by the time the count is over.

"We normally count when we've obtained a search warrant and found an actual
lab," Jennings said.

"Methamphetamine came in here a few years ago, hit us hard and has just stuck."

Jennings said the methamphetamine producers are attracted to the rural
nature of the state and Southwest Missouri in particular.

"One of the reasons people produce meth is that it is a low-overhead
product," Jennings said.

"Also meth is a very addictive drug and many times producers get hooked on
it and have to produce it to maintain a supply for themselves."

Among the items normally found in meth busts are anhydrous ammonia,
antihistamine drugs, lithium, sodium and potassium. Working meth labs are
described as those where quantities of meth are found at the scene.

Neighboring Problems

The methamphetamine problem is big in the states bordering Southwest
Missouri as well.

Kim Cook, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation,
said her department has tallied 877 responses to reports of clandestine labs.

Cook said that number does not include the labs worked in Tulsa or Oklahoma
City. Those agencies keep their own numbers.

Cook said the meth problem is spreading throughout the state, but northeast
Oklahoma has been hit the hardest.

"It seems to be migrating south and west through the state," Cook said.

"It's concentrated mainly in the northeast part of the state and fanning
out from there."

Mike Eason, an Ottawa County sheriff's investigator, said his department
worked 11 labs in 2001, but that was just a fraction of the number found in
Ottawa County last year.

Eason said most labs in Ottawa or Delaware counties are investigated by the
13th Judicial District Drug Task Force.

"We have two officers in the sheriff's department and all they investigate
is drugs," Eason said.

"They work closely with the drug task force, and most of the time when we
run across a lab we call them."

Kansas has felt meth's impact as well. Linda Grand, spokeswoman for the
Kansas Bureau of Investigations, said 846 seizures took place in 2001 in
Kansas.

The county with by far the highest number of seizures was Shawnee County
where the state capital of Topeka is located, but southeast Kansas had more
than its share of labs.

The KBI numbers show that Montgomery County ranked fifth out of the 104
counties in Kansas with 42 meth lab seizures in 2001, Cherokee County was
sixth with 33 labs seized, Crawford County was seventh with 29 labs seized
and Labette County was ninth with 26 labs.

The KBI numbers show that 20 percent of all labs in Kansas were found in
the nine counties that make up the southeast corner of the state.

California will, however, retain the lead in amount of the drug
manufactured because of the nature of the labs busted in that state.

According to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, a large percentage of
California's clandestine meth-making facilities are called super-labs
because they are capable of manufacturing more than 10 pounds of a more
pure kind of methamphetamine per manufacturing cycle.

The DEA said most of the operations found in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma
are "mom and pop" operations where small-time manufacturers use recipes
they got off the Internet to manufacture a smaller quantity of lower
quality methamphetamine.

"There has been a dramatic increase in the number of methamphetamine
laboratories operating in certain states, such as Kansas, Missouri,
Oklahoma and Arkansas," said a 1999 DEA report.

"The rise in laboratory seizures in these states does not reflect a
concerted effort by major traffickers to shift production from sites in
California. Rather it reflects the increasing effort by local
entrepreneurs, who operate on the periphery of the methamphetamine market,
to exploit the expanding demand for the drug by producing smaller amounts
of the drug in less complex laboratories."