I get a lot of grief about the number of methamphetamine busts we publish in the newspaper.
People either joke about it and tell me we should publish a special meth edition, or they criticize me and tell me it makes the community look bad when we put that stuff on the front page.
Well, to quote my least-favorite modern axiom: "It is what it is."Get used to it, people. The role of a newspaper is to paint a picture of the community it serves.
And like it or not, meth is a part - a significant part - of that picture.
According to recently released Indiana State Police statistics, there were 1,343 meth lab incidents in 2009 compared with 1,059 in 2008 in the state, a 27 percent increase.
And Kosciusko County has the dubious distinction of being no worse than No. 3 in the state for its number of meth labs.
The other two counties in the running are Elkhart and Noble. Truth be told, I think we trade off for the No. 1 spot month to month.
When meth first burst onto the scene, you needed anhydrous ammonia to manufacture it. Agricultural-based counties like ours had anhydrous tanks all over the place so it was natural for meth cookers to set up shop here.
So we locked up all the anhydrous tanks. But the meth cookers just figured out how to make their own anhydrous ammonia.
These days, a meth "lab" many times is nothing more than a 20-ounce pop bottle.
It's pretty easy to make meth and it may be one of the most addictive substances ever produced.
The most pleasurable human experience you can imagine - I'll leave that to the reader to conjure up - produces about 5,000 units of substances called endorphins in the brain. That's what makes you feel good.
The first hit of meth produces five times that much. After that, the meth user is in a constant quest to get high again. Nothing else matters. They will beg, borrow and steal to get more meth.
They're strictly motivated toward getting high. They don't work, they don't bathe, they don't watch their kids.
Drug task force officers will tell you about offenders who have literally called and asked to be arrested just so they could go to jail and get away from meth.
Users call it the "drug of Satan." They know it's ruining their lives but they can't stop doing it even as their teeth rot, their skin turns red and they continually pick at open sores.
About half of everybody incarcerated in Kosciusko County Jail are there because of meth in one way or another.
So yeah, it's here.
And it's available. It doesn't carry the same risk of acquisition of other drugs. Cocaine is made in places like Colombia and imported here. There's risk in transportation. There's risk in distribution at several levels. There's risk in purchase.
Meth is made right here. You can get everything you need at the store and you can make it yourself.
And meth cookers aren't only hurting themselves.
Did you know an 8-year-old girl opened up a discarded one-pot meth bottle behind a local shopping center and wound up in the hospital?
Did you know kids of meth cookers show up at the hospital with sores, lesions and meth-related staph infections because they eat with utensils used in meth production? Infants have tested positive for meth from involuntary contact caused by they parents because baby bottles get rinsed out in the same sinks used to rinse out meth bottles.
How absurd is it to watch an Indiana State Police meth lab technician in haz-mat suit carry out a baby clad only in a diaper?
Did you know that if you're a landlord and a meth cooker rents from you, you are liable to clean up the mess left behind? That house or apartment likely will wind up a hazardous wasted site which will need professional cleaning and certification by the EPA.
One apartment in Warsaw was rented for a month by a meth cooker. Cleanup cost: $38,000. And once in a while, these meth operations explode, burning up the meth cooker and the house.
The average cost for the ISP to clean up a lab is $5,000. Multiply that by 1,343 meth labs in 2009. That's $6.7 million dollars in tax money for cleanup alone. We're not talking about hours spent by cops investigating. The cost of running these people through courts. The cost of incarceration.
It's staggering.
And ridiculous.
I say ridiculous because it doesn't have to be this way.
This is not one of those intractable problems that defies a solution. The solution is relatively simple.
See, meth cookers can't make meth without pseudoephedrine. (From here on out, I'll call it PSE.) That's the active ingredient in cold medications like Sudafed® or Claritan D®.
No PSE, no meth.
Just make PSE available only by prescription. Simple. Easy fix. Problem solved.
Ah, but 15 million Americans use products containing PSE. Ah, but it's a $4 billion a year industry - with the vast majority of the stuff being manufactured in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, by the way.
So what, lawmakers? Make it available only by prescription. Just do it. Now.
The Consumer Healthcare Products Association is against the idea, too.
They say things like, requiring prescriptions will delay access to the quick-acting cold meds and drive up costs because there will be more doctor visits.
Bull.
There are plenty of other cold meds out there. And if you absolutely have to have PSE, I'm sure your doc will phone in a script for you. He'll know whether you're a meth cooker.
Besides, isn't this a small price to pay to virtually eliminate the scourge of meth from our community?
Oregon is the only state that requires prescriptions right now. But Missouri, California, Kentucky and Oklahoma are considering it.
In Indiana, there is a legislative study committee beating it around but no bill has been written.
So what about Oregon?
In 2003, Oregon had 473 meth lab incidents. Then they got busy.
In November 2004, an Oregon Board of Pharmacy rule requiring PSE products to be kept behind the counter and requiring picture ID for each sale.
In May 2004, a rule requiring PSE products be kept behind the pharmacy counter and requiring picture ID and logging for each sale went into effect.
In July 2006, a rule requiring a prescription for all PSE products went into effect.
Know how many meth lab incidents Oregon had in 2007?
Eighteen.
Know how many meth lab incidents Oregon had in 2009?
Ten.
In addition, authorities note the vast majority of the reported meth lab incidents in 2007, 2008 and 2009 were dump sites, partials or remnants. Oregon had only three operational meth lab incidents in 2007, three in 2008 and three in 2009. That's statewide.
And all nine of those were attributed to people bringing in PSE from neighboring states.
Don't tell me this type of legislation won't work. Don't tell me it's not worth inconveniencing somebody with a runny nose. And don't tell me we can't afford to decrease the profits of some overseas drug company.
We need a bill.
You want me to stop running meth stories on the front page?
