Friday, October 26, 2007

A DRUG WAR WORTH THE FIGHT



Meth, crank, speed, crystal, whatever you want to call it, really does kill. It kills the user and it just might kill you if you happen to live next door to a cooker...and you might.

Let's say you live in Missouri. Seems like a pretty run of the mill state. Well, "Missouri will lead the nation again in meth labs," predicted Detective Sgt. Jason Grellner, commander of the Franklin County Narcotics Enforcement Unit (FCNEU) to the Missourian.

Grellner said Missouri authorities expect the number of meth lab seizures to reach between 1,000 and 1,200 by the end of the year. Nearly 50 percent of those will be in the St. Louis region which includes Franklin County and other nearby counties.
Or say you live in the rural town of Selma, California. Let's hope you don't live in the 2600 block of Apsen Street. Cops just busted a lab belonging to one of your neighbors...it hadn't blown up yet.

Or you live out in the sticks outside Huntsville, Alabama (famous for its Redstone Arsenal). Watch out if you take a stroll in the countryside. You might run into an exploding country cottage (see picture).

Or you live in an apartment building in Murfreesboro, Tennessee and you're wiling away your days not bothering anyone. Let's hope your not living in the "Applegate Apartments" on Wenlon Drive where cops fund a working meth lab cooking inside apartment D-61.

Or maybe you just checked into a Day's Inn. Let's hope it wasn't in Lincoln, Alabama where officials responding to a fire at the Days Inn there found what a methamphetamine lab in a room at the hotel there.

Or maybe you don't like to stay in hotels, so your camping at some roadside campground in Indiana. Not safe, dude. Two people were arrested after police found a methamphetamine lab at a Porter Township campground, the Cass County Drug Enforcement Team reported.

What I'm trying to say is even if you aren't a meth user or have a friend or love one who is, that doesn't mean the scourge won't get ya. The fumes and the odors from cooking meth are incredibly dangerous. But also the risk of explosion, fire, those things are just incredibly dangerous as well. And they are everywhere, rural areas, urban areas, suburban subdivisions.

Hell, the lab could be gone, but the danger persists. Meth is a sticky drug, not for its texture so much as its chemical and social effects. It sticks to the places and people that it contacts.

Its toxic residue seeps into the carpets, permeates the walls and remains in the vessels where it is synthesized. Gases get into building materials — even concrete, which has to be chipped away and replaced.

"I've seen a number of cases where a single mother of two moves into an apartment, the place used to be a meth lab, and within days the children have respiratory problems, nosebleeds, headaches," Dan Hannan, a manager at Bay West, a St. Paul, Minn., cleanup company told the local news. The cooking process often leaves a coating on walls, floors and ventilation systems. In some instances, said Hannan, a child can receive a prescription-level dose of the drug just by rubbing his hands on a wall coated with the drug residue.

Something really does need to be done about meth. That something can't just be the nonsense that the powers that be have been running for years.

I don't claim to have an answer.

I'm just here to say that it wouldn't hurt those of us who see the War on Drugs as the joke it to be thinking about this.

I'm just saying...

The following is from the Arab (Alabama) Tribune.

Meth lab explodes

Timothy Gene Brown, 40, is being held in the Morgan County Detention Facility on a bond of $501,000. He was charged with manufacturing and possession of methamphetamine after an alleged meth lab exploded Wednesday morning at a house on Telephone Tower Road in Morgan City. The fire was extinguished by Brindlee Mountain Volunteer Fire Department. At the time of his arrest, Brown was out of jail on bonds for two prior arrests for manufacturing meth. Drug agents said they are seeking to have those bonds revoked. For details, see Saturday's Arab Tribune. For more fire photos, visit: www.bmvfd.com.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Meth is not the problem the government policy is.

Oread Daily said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Oread Daily said...

Yeah, right dude. If you don't think meth is a problem, then you know squat about it. As for government policy, sure it's a problem, too. It isn't either/or all the time bro...